I stumbled upon Obsidian for a completely different reason, but I quickly realized it could be really useful for my genealogy research. I’ve tried many genealogy software, but there are things about each of them that didn’t work with my way of thinking. I haven’t explored it much yet, but I think Obsidian could offer me the flexibility I want.
My biggest concern about storing my family tree data in Obsidian is that I may someday want to use some of the features of traditional genealogy software or share data with someone else who is using this software. To do that, I need to be able to convert my Obsidian Vault to the GEDCOM file that’s industry standard for transferring genealogy data between programs. It would also be nice if you could import GEDCOMs to a new Obsidian Vault. But right now, there’s no plugins to help with this.
I’m not a tech person at all, so I don’t know how difficult something like this would be or if it’s even possible. But if someone could figure out how to do this, I think I may be able to finally make the switch.
I don’t see any replies to this and while I’m not a tech person per se, I can possibly provide enough info to help you decide how much to invest in the idea of a future plugin for this:
I also see huge potential for using Obsidian for genealogy, because a person can link things in so many ways. It’d help “track” non-ancestor clues like that one guy who for some reason witnessed the weddings and land transactions for a specific family (and then turns out to be the person to follow to break through a brick wall).
I doubt there will ever be such a plugin because of format issues. Obsidian makes links between different text files, and things that use GEDCOM are all database type software. Databases have “fields” and “records” and Obsidian doesn’t have an equivalent way of tracking data.
My recommendation would be to use Obsidian for research notes and transcriptions, alongside a traditional database-type family history software. I also suggest using it to capture “present day” family history by making notes of current events and attaching photos and so on. Or, if someone doesn’t want to build a tree in family history software they can still do their families a favor by using Obsidian as a step up from typing it as a single two-dimensional text file in Word, Pages, or Google Docs.
A little late to the party here, sorry!
I do not have a perfect solution, or any solution. My little rant below is just my way of doing things (feel very free to disagree).
But trying to integrate Obsidian with GEDCOM is for me an exercise in futility.
Always, always use a GenProg for managing your data. Just be sure that your program can export to GEDCOM correctly.
In my experince you have to do two or more steps to connect research, notes etc with the data.
Then a loopback to update the your main DB in your main prog.
To get some very basic info out from a GEDCOM (after export from my main app).
Use: https://github.com/toboid/gedcom-notes/