Follow Friday: Two Reminders to Help Change Your Perspective

I wish I had time to read all the genealogy blog posts that are published. There is some really good stuff being written.

Here are two posts that I think are worth reading. They both take ordinary actions and try to get you to think differently about them.

Paula Stuart-Warren of Paula's Genealogical Eclectica wrote a blog post entitled "First Impressions Should be Captured." When I first read this post I thought "Yes, yes, yes!"  The research ideas that pop into your head when you first see or hear about a research challenge can be some of your best ideas.  Paula provides great ideas and an exercise to demonstrate the effect.

Melissa Mannon who writes the blog ArchivesINFO wrote "Shared Cultural Heritage: My Unlabeled History."  Her title really captured my imagination. I loved the visual concept of unlabeled history. Melissa demonstrates the importance of unlabeled history in a moving personal story.  She hopes the story will encourage you to care for (and label) your personal history.

Follow Friday: A Scandalous Topic that will Help You Improve Your Research

Polly Kimmitt over at Pollyblog has written a terrific 3-part blog that takes the reader through document transcription and analysis and then demonstrates building a research plan for future research.  Even more exciting is that the posts are on the very colorful topic of bastardy and fornication in 1802.

Polly examines Justice of the Peace records for two women who claimed paternity suits against the same man on the same day. Not only will Polly show you how to analyze these unusual records but you will learn how  cases like these were historically handled.

Part 1 and Part 2 deal with the individual document and their transcriptions.  Part 3 analyzes the records, puts them into historical context, analyzes the quality of the document source and then presents a research plan for future research.  The research plan alone presents a wonderful example of how to create a plan for your own projects.

If you haven't read this 3-part series yet please do!  You'll enjoy a fascinating topic and improve your research at the same time.

Part 1 - Justice of the Peace Records and Silvanus "Who's Your Daddy" Savage, Part 1

Part 2 - Justice of the Peace Records and Silvanus "Who's Your Daddy" Savage, Part 2

Part 3 - Justice of the Peace Records and Silvanus "Who's Your Daddy" Savage, Part 3

Follow Friday: Two posts that will change the way you think about your research

There were two blog posts that particularly struck a cord with me this week. I believe these two articles can make you re-think the way you approach your genealogical research.

"Learning from genealogical failure" by Michael Hait

This discusses a reasonably exhaustive genealogical search and evaluating conflicting evidence.  Michael provides a very useful example to clarify his discussion showing how the birth of an ancestor was actually in one state when all the other evidence pointed to another.  He then moves on to the topic of the importance of recording negative searches.  This article will give you new ideas and encourage you to continue working on your difficult searches.

"Ellis Island Oral Histories- How I learned Something New!" by Heather Rojo

This post also explores the depth one should research without explicitly talking about reasonably exhaustive research.  Heather talks about how she thought that the Ellis Island Oral History database had nothing to offer her because she didn't find anything directly related to her ancestors.  Then a blog post from another writer got her thinking differently.  By changing her approach she found a wealth of information about her ancestors that she never knew before.

These two articles will change the way you approach your research and may help you work through some challenging obstacles just by asking you to think differently.