Genealogy Research Log Tools: Six Ways to Stop Losing Your Work

"I need to get organised" is the single most common resolution in genealogy and the least useful, because it describes four different problems that need four different answers. Before looking at any tool, work out which of these is actually costing you time.

The short answer. If you keep re-searching collections you already exhausted, you have a process problem and you need a research log: a spreadsheet, or Goldie May if you want it captured automatically. If you have documents whose contents live only in your head, you have an evidence problem and you need an organiser such as Clooz. If you have a conclusion you cannot defend, you have an analysis problem and Evidentia is built for it. If you have hundreds of people and no idea which are wrong, you have a scale problem, which is the one we work on. Most people have two of these at once.

Four problems that all feel like disorganisation

The process problem. You cannot remember which repositories, collections and spellings you have already tried. You re-run searches. Worse, you lose your negative results, which are genuine findings: a register you have read cover to cover without finding your ancestor tells you something real, and it is only useful if you wrote it down. That is negative evidence and almost nobody logs it consistently, because recording an absence feels like recording a failure.

The evidence problem. You have 180 documents. What each one actually says lives in your memory, or in a note you cannot find. To answer "what do I know about this woman" you reopen a dozen files.

The analysis problem. You believe two people are the same person. You cannot write down why in a way that would survive scrutiny, and you are no longer certain which sources persuaded you.

The scale problem. Your tree has four hundred people from an inherited GEDCOM, a decade of your own work and three cousins' contributions. Some of it is wrong. You do not know which parts.

The options, by problem

A spreadsheet. For the process problem this is genuinely good, free, and the honest recommendation for most people. Columns for date, repository, collection, years covered, search terms, result and next step. Its weakness is discipline: it only works if you fill it in during the search rather than afterward, and most people do not. If you have abandoned three research logs already, the tool is not your problem.

Airtable or Notion. A spreadsheet with relationships between rows, so a source can link to the people it mentions. More capable than a spreadsheet and considerably more setup. Worth it if you enjoy building systems, a trap if building the system becomes the hobby instead of the research.

Goldie May. Solves the process problem by removing the discipline requirement. A browser extension that logs any page you visit as you research, with particular support for FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Findmypast, Find a Grave and BillionGraves, generating citations automatically for FamilySearch and Ancestry records. It adds locality research links and country-specific hints for around twenty-five countries, and exports logs to CSV. Constraints worth knowing: it needs a FamilySearch login and assumes you work from a FamilySearch tree, there is no mobile support at all, and while some features are free, there is no free trial of the paid tier. It does no transcription and no translation, and it is not an evidence organiser.

Clooz. Solves the evidence problem. A desktop organiser with over 230 document templates matched to document types; you enter what each document says and it indexes people, events, sources and citations so you can cross-reference them, with a hierarchical Composite View for analysis. It exports to tree programs rather than replacing them. Entry is manual, which is either its main cost or its main virtue depending on your temperament. Two-week free trial.

Evidentia. Solves the analysis problem. A structured framework for source analysis and evidence evaluation: record a source, extract its claims, weigh the evidence for each, resolve conflicts, produce a documented conclusion. It integrates with RootsMagic, Legacy and FamilySearch and exports GEDCOM. Sold as a one-time purchase, bundled with a companion book, 14-day trial. It is explicitly a supplement to your tree software, not a replacement.

RootsMagic and other tree programs. Solve the conclusions problem, which is a fifth thing. Strong source-citation templates and reporting, one-time purchase, data on your machine. Useful research logging is not really what they are for, though their citation handling is better than most hosted trees.

Side by side

How to pick without buying four things

Name the problem before the tool. Re-searching means process. Reopening documents means evidence. Cannot defend a conclusion means analysis. Cannot find the errors means scale.

Try the free version of the obvious answer first. A spreadsheet costs nothing and settles whether your problem is tooling or discipline.

Do not buy a system you will have to maintain. The most common failure here is not choosing the wrong tool, it is choosing one elaborate enough that keeping it current becomes the work.

Expect to need two. Process and evidence are genuinely different jobs, and the tools that claim to do both usually do one well.

One disclosure

We make KleioBase, so treat this section as a pitch. Everything above stands without it, and we are deliberately not in the table.

KleioBase works on the fourth problem, scale, and it is the one the other tools leave alone. Import a GEDCOM and the whole archive is analysed with no documents uploaded at all: people reconciled across every source, likely duplicates flagged, contradictory evidence raised as conflicts rather than silently overwritten, missing generations named, and the lot questionable in plain language. It is not a transcription tool - documents are read and translated when you add them, as one way in among two.

What it is not: a research log. You can record a search that found nothing as negative evidence on the person it concerns, but it does not keep a running log of every search you run, so if your problem is process it is the wrong purchase and Goldie May or a spreadsheet is right. It does not write proof arguments, so if your problem is analysis, Evidentia is right. And it holds no record collection of its own: its Research Companion can search the public web for archives and collections that might hold a missing record, but it cannot search inside Ancestry, FamilySearch or any other account-based site for you.

Where to start this week

Pick the last research session you remember being frustrating and write down, in one sentence, what actually went wrong. Not "I need to get organised" - the specific failure.

If the sentence contains "again", it is process. If it contains "I could not remember", it is evidence. If it contains "I think but I am not sure", it is analysis. If it contains "somewhere in this tree", it is scale.

Then buy nothing for a fortnight and try the free option for that one category. Most people discover their problem is smaller and more specific than the four-tool subscription stack they were about to assemble.