Mark the places your ancestors lived for easy location during your trip. Indicate townships, wards, and other political jurisdictions that are not on the map and might be necessary to locate certain records. Create specific reports for any records or sources you will be using. A list of individuals who had an event taking place in the same area can be particularly useful. If I have access to newspapers for a given county, there might be fifty people for whom I would like to locate an obituary.
Nothing is more frustrating than to have to load the same microfilm several times.
For this reason, I created a list of individuals who died in that county, sorted by death date. Individuals living in the county might not have died there. Spouses' names are also included, since they're necessary for locating married females. Researchers should always think about how the records are filed, indexed, and maintained when creating customized reports so that all information needed to search the record thoroughly is included. Put pages you won't be writing on in plastic sheets.