Recently, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings challenged his readers to use Research Notes to create a biography of an ancestor. [Saturday Night Genealogy Fun] His prompt immediately struck a nerve—because I know I don’t do a very good job of keeping my research notes current.
My honest first reaction?
Ugh—research notes.
Back in 2025, I watched one of Connie Knox’s GenealogyTV videos on Research Notes, a presentation she has since updated for 2026. In that video, Connie explains the value of maintaining a single, chronological document that records each event in a person’s life, along with the sources—and often abstracts—supporting those events. Her approach makes it much easier to spot gaps, inconsistencies, or overlooked clues in our research.
Using Connie’s template, I did spend time creating research notes for several ancestors. The problem? Those notes are now over a year old, I hadn’t revisited them, and—worse—I wasn’t even sure where I had saved them.
Hence the renewed ugh.
Randy’s gentle reminder that Research Notes are meant to be a living summary of everything we know about a person pushed me to rethink my approach. Since I already keep transcriptions and locality research in Scrivener, my first instinct was to use Scrivener to compile research notes for James Barr Ralston. One advantage was the ability to link directly to transcriptions stored in the same project. Although Scrivener supports footnotes, I found it faster and more practical to simply copy and paste citations into the document rather than use its formal footnote feature.
Still, I kept finding myself returning to my RootsMagic database to recreate the same information. That led me to ask an obvious question: could RootsMagic generate this type of document for me?
Here’s where terminology gets a little confusing. RootsMagic uses the term Research Notes to describe notes attached to a citation—such as transcriptions or commentary about a source—while Connie Knox uses the term to describe a standalone document. Same phrase, two different meanings. Despite that, RootsMagic does offer several report options that can produce a document very similar to Connie’s Research Notes template:
- Research Notes Report – prints notes attached to citations and creates endnotes
- Timeline Report – can include notes when defining the citation type
- Narrative Report – can include notes when defining the citation type
Of these, the Narrative Report works best for my purposes. It presents events in chronological order, provides richer contextual detail than a timeline, and allows me to include citation notes—effectively embedding my “research notes” directly into the report.
By using RootsMagic’s reporting tools, I can generate this kind of document on demand, without maintaining a separate, standalone file. The result closely mirrors the template Connie Knox recommends, but stays fully integrated with my database.
So instead of worrying about where my research notes are stored—or whether they’re up to date—I’m going to focus on what matters most: locating records, documenting events carefully, and attaching solid sources in RootsMagic. When I need a comprehensive set of Research Notes, RootsMagic can create it for me.
And that feels like a much better solution than ugh.
I use Scrivener as well. I sorta combine all three reports you mentioned as one. It starts as a fact with citation, then as I research the fact, I add notes which ultimate become a narrative.
I found your write up interesting. I have tried all the reports and I found the research notes report included my notes written with the citations. While the narrative report did not unless I checked the box, but then the notes were in the footnotes, not the narrative. Where are you writing your research notes?
Thanks for the comment!
Most of the time, my ‘notes’ go in the ‘reseach note’ field of the citation. Sometimes, I’ve added them to the ‘Note’ field for the event.
Randy Seaver’s prompt of Jan 10 for ‘Saturday Night Fun’ caused me to think about how I was keeping research notes. In that task, we used research notes to create a biography of an ancestor. For me, this resulted in a better AI generated biography than just using the narrative report (where I don’t have a lot of notes).
Since I tend to ‘lose’ information not kept in RootsMagic or a Scrivener folder, I started investigating options — and settled on RootsMagic since I can copy/past the transcriptions of deeds, etc. into the ‘research note’ field of the citation. This makes it available when I want a more detailed report to use with AI to create narratives.
I have seen RootsMagic presentations where the NOTE field of the event was used to expand on the event and ultimately enhance a narrative report. In the end, the presenter was able to ‘write’ a book from the narrative reports. Unfortunately, I don’t have those writing skills so my notes are usually from the records themselves. Thus, they don’t lend themselves to creating a book — but they do help enhance AI generated materials.
While this method words for me, it may not work for you.
Good luck with your research!
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