Oh, Please, Mr. Mailman, Won’t You Bring Me Something Good?

I love my genealogy periodicals, as y’all well know. Perhaps I’m a bit obsessed with them as well, but that could be because I’m an avid and somewhat compulsive reader. Or just nosey, but who’s to say?

I confess that each quarter around the time I expect the National Genealogical Society Quarterly to be published, I begin checking the NGS web site every day to see if the latest one is available. I revel in the fact that the Association of Professional Genealogists posts their quarterly online, and that the Executive Director e-mails an announcement to the APG list when it’s ready for viewing. And the back issues of many excellent journals available through such worthies as the New England Historic Genealogical Society, there for the reading whenever I have a few spare moments! But I’ll not expound upon that subject again.

What I love most is receiving crisp new copies of my favorite reading material in the mail. Every quarter, and sometimes more frequently, the mailman delivers these lovelies right to the bottom of my driveway, many encased in plastic or paper envelopes to protect the glorious contents. On those days, I race to work, shoo everyone off, shut myself away in my office, and take at least a few moments to savor the feel of paper, the smell of the freshly minted page, and the hope that this time, perhaps, my family or an associated one will make an appearance within.

When I’m expecting a particular issue and it seems to never arrive, I often walk away from my mailbox with a disappointed slump. As the days drag on and I open the hatch to find only junk mail and bills, I reach around and pat the inside, just to be sure, and can’t help myself from entertaining an inkling of a notion that my mailman is sitting in his car right at that moment enjoying my copy of A Lot of Bunkum. Dratted mailman, I say with my fist raised in the air as the traffic whizzes by, I curse you and your journal-reading ways!

But the next day, as if by magic, the long-awaited periodical arrives in the mail, seal unbroken, and I laugh off my suspicions. Oh, Dawn, you silly goose, I think, to suspect the mailman of such a thing. And then I receive another e-mail that a new issue is hot off the press. As I trundle down my driveway each morning thereafter, I stare at my mailbox with suspicion and some weighty consideration. Would a camera catch him in the act? And really, how much could one guard dog eat?

Yet there he is, the much-anticipated issue in one hand, the other raised in a friendly wave, and all is well in the world.

Until the next quarter…

Noteworthy Blogs for 2013

While many are reflecting on the past year, I want to take a moment to encourage you to think about the upcoming one.

Every day, one of my first actions is to read the activity of my favorite blogs. I have learned a great deal about a wide variety of subjects by doing this, particularly in genealogy. If you’re not reading blogs, you should be. These are one of the easiest and best ways to stay on top of happenings in the genealogy world, to meet new researchers, including family, and to grow as a researcher. I use Google Reader to access nearly every blog I read, but I’m sure there are other options available.

Before recommending specific blogs, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge two men whom I consider to be blog masters, Thomas MacEntee and Randy Seaver.

Calendar, Calendar on the Wall

Well, folks, it’s that time of year again, time to dust off the New Year’s Resolutions and plan for the coming year’s work.

This year, I’ve resolved not to make any more resolutions. My to-do list is already quite full, thanks to my conversion to David Allen’s organizational system. If you’re wondering, I use OneNote as my base note-keeping device, but I’m having a problem finding a good calendaring system. In 2012, I used my standard annual pocketbook-sized calendar (a day planner) and experimented with coupling it with Google’s online calendar. It didn’t really work out as well as I had hoped, so for the coming year I’m trying something different. I’m keeping my day planner but moving up to the notebook size. I’m also using an office-oriented (i.e. no pictures) wall calendar with one month per page so that I can see everything that’s going on each month and plan my days accordingly.

I put a lot of things on my calendars, from the standard family birthdays to mileage to all of the genealogy institutes and society meetings that are important to me, even if I don’t plan to attend. Deadlines go in a different color and are underlined if they can’t be revised or missed. All events go in my day planner in one to three places, depending upon the event. Institutes, for instance, are entered under Important Dates, the pertinent month-at-a-glance, and then on each day they’re scheduled to be held. Finally, they’re written onto the wall calendar. Again, I do this even if I’m not planning to attend a given institute, if for no other reason than so that I can keep up with some of the major comings and goings in the genealogy world.

Hopefully, this system will help me stay on track in 2013. I’m not a super organized person, but the older I get, the more things I have going on. All these calendars may seem like overkill, but if they keep me from missing something important, then that’s good enough in my book.

Home(work) for the Holidays

It may seem like an odd thing to do, but at the end of a project I often suggest specific resources for clients to study, on the (perhaps misguided) belief that an educated client is a happy client. This homework, so to speak, often takes the form of reading material, especially research articles that highlight a problem similar to the one the client is trying to solve or that cover families in the same geographic area.

These suggestions are drawn from material that I’ve found particularly helpful, and I’m constantly looking for new articles or studying ones with which I’m already familiar in the hopes of refining my own understanding of research techniques and strategies.

Things That Make You Go Hmm

Google Reader is perhaps one of my favorite tools. I have several blogs I follow religiously, and Google Reader makes it incredibly easy for me to keep track of all of them. One blog I particularly like is Craig Scott’s As Craig Sees It, where he recently posted The Angels, the Donkeys, and the Prodigal Son.

I’m fortunate enough to know a lot of genealogy angels, but I’ve also had the misfortune to run into a donkey or two. One memorable experience occurred a few years back, not long after I began researching professionally. I made the mistake of posting to a mailing list in search of guidance. I was writing an article about a family of mine, hoping to correct a genealogist who had incorrectly linked a family together in a publication. But I was stuck and needed a bit of help.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.
–John of Salisbury, Metalogician, 1159 (via Wikipedia)

A sincere and heartfelt Thank you! to all those who have helped me during the past year, either through questions directly answered, or through your individual publications, message board posts, mailing list responses, lectures, seminars, classes, and discussion. I am fortunate enough to know many giants who readily lend their shoulders.

Many thanks also to those who have lent support in other ways, whether through purchases of books, requests for lectures or research, publishing articles, exchanging ephemera, or through friendship and kindness.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Books Galore, Round 2

Our second trip to Elaine and Bill’s to pick up more books netted another filled car…and still there are books left! We estimate that this time there really will be only one more trip needed. This picture shows the number of books brought home from the two trips combined, somewhat sorted into stacks by locality and topic.

This batch held quite a few research guides, including some by authors Noel C. Stevenson and George K. Schweitzer, on topics ranging from Southeastern research to German research to researching military ancestors. I feel like I’ve hit the mother lode.

The Absorene came in a few days ago, so I’ve been cleaning books. Here’s what I’ve cleaned so far.

Yes, I have a ways to go. Any volunteers? No? Well, I had to try…

This Time Next Week

In spite of looming deadlines, this time next week I will be taking time off from genealogy to shop and prepare for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. I’ll still be working. Lord knows, my laptop is a fifth appendage. But I’ll be cutting back so that I can clean, bake, and spend time with family.

The holidays are a Big Deal for us. Throughout most of the year we try to have family time at least once a month, but for some reason, we spend most of our time together as a family from about September to the following February or March. Part of that is the holidays, and part is due to basketball season. Some must be attributed to winter weather, when the nights fall early and a chill is in the air. This is when we all have the urge to gather ’round the card table for a competitive game of Canasta or two.

When we were little, Thanksgiving was divided between the homes of my two grandmothers. Mom always began preparing days ahead of time, either at our home or at her parents’ home in the Longview community of Macon County, just a few miles up the road. The children were always drafted into helping. We hauled and carried, chopped and washed, cleaned and swept. Ours were the menial tasks requiring little thought but much effort, so that the skilled hands of our mothers could continue apace.

When all the cooking was done, the counters were so full of pies, cakes, stuffing, my grandmother’s special rolls, and other goodies that there was no room for anything else when the feast began. And when everyone was too full to move, the children were called upon once again to expedite the massive clean-up.

My grandmothers are now gone, as is my mother. I imagine they’re sitting up in Heaven looking down on us, thankful that their good work is being carried on to another generation.

Books Galore

The past month has been very hectic here, and I apologize for not posting more often. Amongst other things, I’ve been working on two book-length transcriptions, both of which should be available by January.

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit a dear friend, Elaine English, and her husband. Elaine wanted to clear out her book cases, and I volunteered to assume custody of the books she has no need for. During our visit, we boxed up and carted off about half of the those books. Elaine and Bill acquired most of these from Allen’s Book Store, which was located here in Clayton, GA, but which went out of business in the ’80s, I believe. Mrs. Allen was herself a genealogist. I remember going into the bookstore and standing in awe before her personal collection of genealogy and local history publications, which ran the length of the wall behind the counter. Now, part of that collection has come into my hands.

There are about 200 pieces all together, bound in a variety of ways from three-ring binders and coil-bound pamphlets to paperbacks and hardbacks, as well as forty or fifty reels of microfilm. Localities covered include Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Connecticut, New England, and Germany. Topics include census records, church records, newspapers, the Pennsylvania German Society, marriages, and no telling what else. Some of the books are quite fragile, but most are in excellent condition. We hope to pick up the other half of the books from Elaine this week or next, after which I should have a better idea of what’s what.

In the meantime, I’ve ordered some Absorene to clean some of the books, which have a little mildew and dirt from being in storage over the past few decades. Some of the books are cloth-covered, and I’ve been told that Absorene is not an appropriate cleaner for those particular books. If anyone has suggestions for the care of cloth-covered books, I would appreciate the help.

I will be keeping many of these books, particularly the ones covering Pennsylvania and New England, but may be looking for good homes for the remainder. We’ll see!

If You Can’t Prove It, It Ain’t a Fact

I recently had a conversation with a fellow researcher that I thought was a mutual complaint about undocumented research.¹ I’m sharing the gist of my remarks because I think they’re relevant to the problems encountered when sharing information with other researchers.

Now, I want to start this off by saying that I’m just as guilty as the next researcher of making statements of “fact” without having adequate evidence…or was, when I was beginning researcher, a stage it took me a long time to leave for a variety of reasons I shan’t name here. Unfortunately, and much to my present embarrassment, some of those statements are still hanging around, although I’ve retracted as many as I could and am correcting what I could not.

Secondly, it’s difficult in certain forums to give specific documentation, message boards being the one that comes to mind because that’s where the above conversation took place. So, please do not read this as a criticism necessarily of those who have not named sources with their message board posts. I understand how difficult it is to do so. As long as you’re willing to share that documentation when asked, that’s probably the best one can hope for (although I know many professional researchers who would disagree with me).

The problem I have, then, is not necessarily with people who don’t name sources, but with people who refuse to name sources when asked. I’ve encountered a number of those, including the person I was ranting about the other day. I find it particularly hypocritical when someone complains about the circulation of undocumented lineages in one breath, but in the next won’t name, specifically with identifying details, the record from which he or she gleaned a piece of information he or she is touting as fact.

Here’s the thing, though: If you can’t prove it, it ain’t a fact.

Now, I’m not trying to be a hardliner here. Believe me, I understand about research foibles, having made plenty of my own with enough left over for two or three others. But when someone asks you for documentation, be prepared to man up (or woman up, if you prefer). You don’t have to share the actual document, but you should be ready and willing to share enough information about that document that someone else can chase it down. Citing a “birth record” found in a “newspaper from Virginia” doesn’t tell anyone diddly squat. What newspaper in what location? What issue and page number, and where is that newspaper held? Or if you took it from microfilm, what was the title of the film and what was the agency that filmed it, or where did you access the film? And so forth. I’m not talking about academically correct citations here, but about giving enough identifying information that a document can be retrieved by someone else.

If you’re not willing to share the documentation, then, respectfully, don’t share the information. Withholding the former while spreading the latter only makes the problem of undocumented lineages worse. It’s certainly not helping anyone with their research, particularly those who don’t understand what does and does not constitute proof, let alone the differences between proof, evidence, information, and sources.²

So please, share your sources when asked for them. If you have no intentions of doing so, then perhaps you should think twice before “helping” the unwary with undocumented assertions.

* * * * *

1. The other person apparently was in another conversational realm entirely. S/he thought I was demanding that s/he turn over all of his or her research, which of course I was not. (I’m being gender-non-specific because this person refuses to attach his or her name to any message board posts, etc.) I merely wanted to know exactly where this person obtained the information s/he was widely purporting to be fact, which s/he only did after a great many requests, and then only in the most vague manner possible.

2. Many thanks to Elizabeth Shown Mills for making discussions about proof (linked to above) freely available online through her web site, Evidence Explained: Historical Analysis, Citation & Source Usage. The web site is a companion to her book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, 2nd Ed. I highly recommend both to all researchers.