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IMPORTANT IDEAS TO CONVEY TO A BEGINNERS CLASS:

• 1. Teach everyone to start with themselves or with younger generations in their family and work back one generation at a time. The biggest waste of time is when folks pick a famous person with their surname and try to work forward in time, assuming they are related!.

• 2. Teach them to use pedigree charts, family group sheets, and lists of what resources they have already checked with results noted. Also, teach them about the US Census and give them some census forms .Make copies of these for samples and stress they should use a black pen for easy photocopying later.. Teach them to use similar datasheets on computer software if they have access to that, but to keep a printed copy of any information they collect.

• 3. Give them a list of local libraries in your area with genealogy and local history collections , and teach them to use the Library Director in the reference department to find libraries in the locality of their ancestor. Don't forget the historical societies and ethnic societies which may have private libraries as well.

• 4. Teach them to document their sources, and to know the difference between primary sources, (original documents and living witnesses to events) and secondary sources such as printed books or distant cousins,

• 5. Teach them to use a wide variety of information in their home and the homes of other family members. Get them started organizing anything they have at home that records the family they live in today--report cards, insurance papers, school records, death records, church event records, etc. Keeping a notebook for each family and each locality is a good idea, and have them use page protectors for most information. Tell them not to laminate original documents, but to keep them in acid free boxes, folders or page protectors.

• 6. Teach them where to find out more about genealogy standards in how to books and on the internet. Make sure they know how to use search engines to search for surnames, locality maps, webpages of those with the same surnames, etc.

• 7. Get them to subscribe to listservs for their localities and interests to meet folks with the same background. Show them how to sign up on common genealogy website query pages like rootsweb.com, ancestry.com, USGenweb, etc. Make sure they know about Cyndi Howell's list and point them to my site with the explanation that it was written to help anyone, but has a librarian slant because I did it as a library school project.

• 8. Teach them to write, email or snail mail to every cousin they can for information. The sooner they contact the older generations the better. Many of my primary sources are now dead and they knew things that are not written down elsewhere.

• 9. Teach them to become subject matter experts in the locality of their ancestors and to understand about juridictional history, as well as the local history of ancestoral birthplaces. Knowledge of the geography, history, and sociology of ancestral communities help explain why ancestors lived where and how they did and why they might have moved, and also where they might have moved.

• 10. Teach them to publish their works in anyway they can. Online webpages are the easiest, and reach the most people. It is not common to get rich selling family books to cousins, but you won't get poor either if you put your results online and let distant cousins print out their own copies of your work. Register these sites with search engines, and new cousins will find you!

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Return to:

• Table of Contents
  • Book Resources
  • Library Resources
  • Internet Resources
    • Online Resources
    • Listservs
    • Search Engines
    • Email

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This website written and designed by:
Sharon Marie Centanne,
Genealogy Research Instructor and Internet Trainer
Please direct any questions to:
Sharon.

This page updated April 14, 2008

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