Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Quick Tip #40: Always look for the document image

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one is important for new genealogists to understand.

Always look for the document image

When we’re searching online, it can be exciting to find a record that verifies information or gives you new information. But here’s something to keep in mind: If that record is an index, have you more work to do. You want to try to find the original document that was indexed, if at all possible. That document will probably give you more information than was provided in the index. And by looking at the original document, you’re increasing the chance that the information is accurate. Indexes are great to find, but the original documents are even better.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #39: Gather up your learning resources

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one will help you take advantage of the learning resources you’ve downloaded. 

Gather up your learning resources

If you’re like me, you have learning resources scattered all over your hard drive. They’re so easy to acquire that they’re also easy to forget about. But you have a fighting chance of actually benefiting from them if you take the necessary time to gather up these educational materials (classes, handouts, guides, etc). A folder on your hard drive coupled with a checklist can help you stay on top of the the materials that you have acquired. Alternatively, you can store them in the cloud or in an app like Evernote. Wherever they are, the key is to put them together and schedule time to learn!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #38: Ask yourself open questions

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can save you time and effort. 

Ask yourself open questions

It’s always a good idea to start a research session with a question that you want answered. And it can pay to be careful how you phrase those questions.

Rather than asking yourself a confirming question like “Was my great grandmother Alice Ruberson born in Kansas?” it’s better to ask an open question, like “Where was my great grandmother Alice born?”

The reason for this is confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories (according to the Oxford English Dictionary). As Amy Johnson Crow explained in this morning’s Wikitree Symposium, when you think you know the answer, you’re likely to stop researching once you find evidence that confirms it. But when you ask an open question, you tend to search more extensively.

Next time you come up with a research question, consider how you’re phrasing it.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #37: Take the time to read about a collection

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every now and then on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can save you time and effort.

Take the time to read about a collection

It can take some discipline to take the time to read about a collection when you’re researching. But these notes can be so valuable. They keep you from making false assumptions about the information you’re looking at. They might even solve a mystery.

Case in point: I found a collection on Ancestry of Appointments of U.S. Postmasters, 1832-1971. I found ancestors’ names in the collection but the columns on the pages lacked headers. Instead of trying to guess what each column meant, I read the information about the collection beneath the search box and source information. It helped me make sense of a fairly confusing set of pages.

It doesn’t take long to read about a collection and it can be time well spent!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash