This page brings together the resources from my talk at the NSW & ACT Association of Family History Societies Annual Conference. Held in Port Macquarie in September 2026, the theme was Beyond the Paper Trail: Digital Workflows for Family History. Rather than a blow-by-blow recap, think of it as the companion page: the templates, the prompt, and key resources, all in one place, so you can go straight to what’s useful.

Summary of the Key Idea

Family history research often feels like juggling. A spreadsheet entry, a photo to restore, a record to look up next time you’re at the archive, a name you can’t yet place in the tree, all in the air at once. The instinct is to try to hold everything simultaneously. The real skill is knowing which ball to set down, and how to set it down so you can find it and pick it back up later. A good digital workflow means fewer balls in the air, not more, because the ones you’re not actively juggling are somewhere safe.

Juggling Logins Using a Password Manager

Several people asked about RoboForm, which I use for password management, useful when you’re juggling logins across the many archive and subscription sites family history research tends to involve. A password manager allows you to ensure your passwords are complex and secure. If you’d like to try it, my referral link, gets you 2 years of RoboForm Premium for the price of one. Full disclosure: This is a referral link, and using it gives me a small benefit too.

Ryerson Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet below is genuinely the one I use, not a cleaned-up stand-in. A few things worth knowing about how it works:

  • The header row is bold and frozen, so sorting and filtering takes seconds.
  • Once I add a page number, the cell turns green. That’s my visual signal that I’ve found and saved the article.
  • Blank cells in that column are the ones still outstanding. Filtering by blank shows me exactly what’s left to chase.
  • The Notes column is where cross-references live, so a name change doesn’t quietly create a duplicate person in the tree.

Download the Ryerson Spreadsheet Template

MHNSW State Archives Spreadsheet

Keeping track of records that you want to view when you visit a repository such as a library or archives can be a bit of a chore. This spreadsheet, which I use specifically to track records to view at NSW State Archives can be adapted for any repository. I prefer to keep each repository separate as it is then easier to order records and keep track of the ones I have viewed and copied.

Download the MHNSW State Archives Spreadsheet

AI Photo Restoration

My current tool of choice for this is Google Gemini. It can do a genuinely impressive job of lifting detail out of a damaged or low-quality scan, but it’s worth being clear about what is actually happening. The output is a new image, generated by the AI based on what it infers should be there, not a recovery of the original pixels. That means it can fill in, smooth over, or occasionally add details that were never in the source photograph, faces, textures, even objects that look plausible but aren’t real. Treat every result as a hypothesis, not a fact, and check it carefully against the original before you trust it or share it. I also make a point of labelling any AI-enhanced image as such, with a watermark or a note in the caption, so nobody mistakes a generated reconstruction for a genuine historical photograph.

Here is my current prompt that I use for photo restoration. Replace the text in red with a more accuarate description of your image. For example: newspaper greyscale image, wedding photograph from the 1930s etc

Prompt Template

Restore this [photograph from an 1897 newspaper] to its original quality while maintaining complete faithfulness to the original context and historical authenticity.

Remove all physical damage including scratches, tears, creases, dust spots, stains, and missing sections. Repair fading and discolouration by restoring original colours and tones without over-saturation. Enhance clarity and sharpness by reconstructing blurry details into accurate physical details based on surrounding context. Apply natural lighting correction with proper shadows and highlights. Add authentic surface textures including natural skin pores, fabric properties, and material accuracy where damaged areas need reconstruction. Preserve all original composition, poses, expressions, and historical characteristics.

Output should appear as a clean, well-preserved version of the original photograph, with all damage repaired and quality improved while remaining completely true to the source image at maximum resolution.

Other Tools or Examples

I have just provided a few of the main digital tools and software I used during the presentation. Please contact me if you require any further information and also, please let me know via the comments below if you found these tools useful.