Not really sure where to put this message. Does anyone transcribe their information by hand? I know most of us use genealogy software and I do as well. But, I've been reading articles about transcribing or extracting/abstracting information from the documents as well. My main concern is on census records. If you transcribe the information, do you copy the entire page or just your family's information onto the blank form? To me, transcribing it in my own handwriting (while looking at it enlarged on my monitor) is much easier to read later for further research. Then I have the "sometimes unreadable" document and my legible document, as well as the information in my software. The transcribed legible would come in handy if my software were to crash. (Yes, I also print out an updated copy of all of my family group sheets from the software, every so often.) I know transcribing can be very time consuming but that's really how genealogy has been for a long time (before computers).

Thanks,
Kim