No, not really. Don’t actually delete your database. Think about it instead. Scientists call this a thought experiment. Go ahead, put some effort into it and really imagine it. Imagine that it is gone. Now what?
A few thoughts come to mind.
The first thought might be about backups. If you don’t have one, then you should be imagining the wailing and gnashing of teeth that would be happening if you deleted your database.
If you have a backup, can you imagine using it or are you now realizing that you have no idea what to do with it?
What if we imagine that you have no backup. Do you have copies of the documents you used? Are they organized well enough that you could go though them and reconstruct your database?
What if you didn’t even have copies of your documents? How would you start over? Would you do exactly what you did before? I hope not and here is why.
- You’ve learned a few things since you started your genealogy. If you think you haven’t then think some more. There must be a few things that you’d do differently because you know more.
- New records are probably available. Do you know what they are? Have you already checked them or have you “finished” with some ancestors and never gone back to learn more about them? If you started over would you look at those records? I hope so. Why not look at them even if you don’t delete your database?
- Hopefully, you would make copies of the documents you find this time around. You’d organize them, and keep a record of where you found them. Very few of us have all of that for our earliest work. Maybe you should do those things for those early documents, even if you don’t delete your database.
- This time you’ll back up your data. Right?
- You’ll see things that you haven’t seen before, even if the information is exactly the same. You should write those things down, and you don’t need to delete your database to do that either ,but maybe it helps to imagine it.