RLP 100: Top Ten Tips to Research Like a Pro

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 100: Ten Tips to Research Like a Pro. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (46s):
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer, co-host of the podcast, and I’m here with Diana Elder. Hi Diana.

Diana (54s):
Hi, Nicole. What have you been working on?

Nicole (57s):
I’ve been working on our new book that’s coming out soon, Research Like a Pro with DNA. I’m on the chapter about research logs.

Diana (1m 4s):
That is exciting. And you are going to explain how to use Airtable for research legs with DNA, because it’s so much better, right?

Nicole (1m 13s):
Yes. I’ve been studying about relational databases and how they’re so much better than using a simple spreadsheet because you can add lots of data points without duplicate data entry, which I hate. So I’m just getting so many ideas for how to expand my DNA research logs and make them even more useful.

Diana (1m 31s):
That’s exciting. And I’m really excited because I have a summer full of DNA projects. I have three client projects that will heavily rely on DNA, and then of course my own DNA projects, because I’m doing one for a case study for the book. I’m excited to learn from you about Airtable.

Nicole (1m 49s):
And what have you been working on?

Diana (1m 51s):
Well, I’m getting ready to record my last lecture for the NGS virtual conference, all about Texas land grants. And I’m really excited because of course, when you teach you learn, and I’ve been looking for some good examples and came across one just this morning for one of our Shults relatives who was an early settler in Texas in the early 1800s. And it was so interesting because as I was reading through it, I found relationships. We don’t always find those in land grants and land records, but this one stated this “James Shults is my son”. So this lecture is turning out to be so fun and just full of fascinating examples.

Diana (2m 36s):
And the really great thing about these types of land grants is that general land office for Texas is putting those up fully digitized in color and they are absolutely beautiful. And so anyway, I will be doing that lecture. That’s part of the NGS on demand. We were going to be exhibitors for NGS when it was at the Salt Palace here in Salt Lake City. But because that was canceled, we are just doing an online sale for everybody, whether you were planning to come to NGS, or if you have anything to do with NGS. So everything on our website is 20% off, and we want to offer that to all of our listeners and followers with NGS having to go virtual.

Diana (3m 18s):
So our coupon code for that is NGS 2020. We would love to help you in any way we can. We also have a dedicated web page at familylocket.com/NGS, and we will have our syllabus from the conference there. So you can also go check that out when that’s ready and up.

Nicole (3m 39s):
Yeah. We will be posting those by July 1st, which is when the on demand lectures become available. So the syllabus are not there quite yet. We’re still finishing them up. We have some expanded information to add, you know, after you make the presentation, you add a little more to the original syllabus. So that’ll be coming soon by July 1st and let’s go to our spotlight for the day. We have our listener’s spotlight from J J O’Carbone, and the title of the review is informative and interesting. And said, “thanks, Diana and Nicole, for your efforts at helping to raise the tide of all the genealogical research, floating boats. Good job.” So thank you to our listener for sharing that review with us.

Diana (4m 16s):
We love all of our reviews and we love all of our listeners, so thank you for giving us a little bit of your time. Well, we’re excited today because today is our 100th podcast. I can’t believe that it is 100 Nicole. How did that happen?

Nicole (4m 33s):
It feels like just a few weeks ago that we said, let’s start a podcast. And holy cow, it’s been a hundred weeks.

Diana (4m 40s):
That’s crazy. Time just goes by. Well, we were trying to think of a really fun topic for our 100th podcast. And we decided to revisit the original steps of Research Like a Pro at this time with a little twist with our Top Ten Tips. We have learned so much working with six different study groups, and one DNA study group, and then eCourse members, office hour questions, emails, we have seen some of the same types of questions come to us over and over and over about the different steps. And so we’re going to base our Top Ten Tips on all of those questions.

Diana (5m 24s):
So hopefully we’ll be able to give you some ideas on something that you already are having a question about.

Nicole (5m 30s):
So let’s start with tip number one, if we’re going through the steps of Research Like a Pro, the first step is objective. So that’s what our first tip is about. Typically, we encourage you to try to see if your objective is for identity, relationship, or activities or situation. Those are the three main categories for objectives. Often we get the question I need to figure out the parents of this person. Does that mean that I’m doing an identity question or a relationship question? They’re trying to do reasonably exhaustive research on their ancestor and extend back one generation. So the question becomes, what am I really trying to accomplish here, am I doing an identity objective or a relationship objective?

Nicole (6m 14s):
Typically, what we use to answer is that if you haven’t done pretty reasonably exhaustive research to identify that person and fully understand who they were, then you should probably start there and do an objective to identify that individual more fully. Then once you’ve done that, you’re ready to extend your research a little bit further back and try to identify a candidate for their parent and do another project to determine their relationship to their parents. So it’s kind of a building block process where if you haven’t done a lot of research on your candidate, you’re not really ready to find out who their parents were.

Diana (6m 51s):
That is absolutely right. And I’m going to illustrate that by talking about my client project of the week. I’m working on a family that settled in Texas, they were from Mexico, and my client wants to go back to Mexico, get the ancestry, she only knows as far as her great grandmother. Well, I have spent a majority of my time really researching the great-grandmother’s history in the United States, using the censuses and death certificates and marriage records of her children. And I have discovered so much just from those basic records, just trying to identify this great grandmother.

Diana (7m 31s):
There was no way I would have a foundation to build going back further generation if I had not done all of this research. It is such a good idea to just start with getting everything you can about your ancestor. And then that’s going to build that base going back. Sometimes we just want to jump back, but we need to take some time to identify a person.

Nicole (7m 54s):
Yeah. I think we tend to think of the overarching purpose for our research that yes, we want to extend the pedigree. And I think it’s good to have an overarching research question, but then we have to break it down into phases. So phase one is to do that exhaustive research on your person. So if we break it into chunks and think of each one of those phases as its own project with its own report, then it kind of makes it easier to really see the progression of our objectives over time.

Diana (8m 23s):
Right. So let’s talk about what our next step is and our next tip. So the next step in RLP is the timeline analysis. And one of our questions that we get repeatedly is should I include everything in the timeline? Our tip is to think about what your research objective is. If your research objective is to really fully identify a person so that you could extend the ancestry, going back to my example of my Texas-Mexico project, I looked at everything and included all of the records in the timeline.

Diana (9m 3s):
The scope went from the couple to their children and all of those records. And so, yes, I would recommend to you look at every record for a person to get all the clues. For example, one of the records for the son mentioned that he was born in Laredo, Texas, while I didn’t have a specific birth place for the children because we’re missing that 1890 census and that is when the couple first came in to Texas and so I didn’t know where they’d ended up. By 1900 they were in Frio county and I didn’t know where these children were all born between 1890 and 1900. And so it wasn’t until I looked at the marriage record of the son that I found a birth place.

Diana (9m 46s):
And then I also found that birthplace in the World War I registration card. So if I neglected looking at the records of the children I would have missed out on finding the location of the family from 1890 to 1900s. So you really need to expand the scope of that timeline. I think a lot of times we want to just kind of skimp on this step and just put in the basic things. But if you’re trying to break a brick wall, you’ve got to look at everything.

Nicole (10m 14s):
That’s really true and trying to ignore certain parts of the thing for the timeline to make it quicker or easier just means that you may be missing out on a really important clue that will lead you to the answer that you’re looking for. I really think it’s important to include everything that you have on that family and your timeline, especially if it’s a first time that you’re doing a Research Like a Pro project, because it really helps you to see all the clues and analyze all the different record types. I don’t usually exclude a lot from my timelines ever. Like I just really want to get all the clues, so.

Diana (10m 46s):
We have seen a few instances in our study group where someone had a really specific project. We had one of our study group members this last time researching her father’s World War II experiences. And so in that case, maybe you would make your timeline include different things. Each project will be unique, but overall, I would say you would want to get as many records in there as possible. Even in that case, there would be lots of different things that perhaps you would have missed if you hadn’t gone after all the records. So I guess our tip there would be go bigger rather than smaller.

Nicole (11m 24s):
Yep. It really just comes down to the principle of reasonably exhaustive research. You don’t want to miss out on a clue that you already have a record that you’ve already found. All right, let’s do locality guides now. So our number three tip is an answer to the question, how much should I include in my locality guide? And often in the study group, people will say, I could just keep going on this forever, there’s so much information out there. How much should I include? Typically our advice there is to focus on the time and place of the research question. So if you are looking for the parents of your ancestor and that person was born in 1805, then maybe you don’t need to focus on records after 1910, because that’s not going to be as useful to you.

Nicole (12m 9s):
So you can kind of narrow down the date range for the record groups, because a big part of the locality guide is just listing out all the different record collections that might be useful to you as you make your research plan. Another thing that you might want to do with your locality guide is include more than one place because our ancestors moved and maybe the answer that you are looking for is found in the county adjacent to the county where you think they lived. So I think it’s important if we know that our ancestor has records in two counties to do a locality guide for each of those counties. And of course we are going to do a multiple phases of research if we don’t find the answer the first time. And so we can always expand out to those other counties and other record groups in a later project.

Nicole (12m 52s):
So I think it’s good to just put maybe a time limit on your locality guide and just say they only have three hours to make my locality guide. And then the next time I do a project on this and maybe I’ll spend three more hours, even if you could spend all day or all week working on it, you will start to feel a little bit bogged down if you spend too much time on that step.

Diana (13m 14s):
Right. And a lot of times it’ll be in the middle of the research that I’ll realize I need to go and research a little bit more about the locality because I neglected finding a good county history, or I need to learn a little bit more about the land records and it’s okay to go back and do that. This is a fluid guide you can add to it whenever you want to. So the question, when is it finished? Well, it probably should never be finished. We should always be learning about our localities. And as more records come online where resources become available or we learn more, we can keep adding to them. But I love the idea about putting a time limit on it. That’s exactly what I do is to say, okay, I’ve just got a couple hours here to really dive in and learn.

Diana (13m 55s):
Then as you need more, you can learn a little bit more as you keep going.

Nicole (14m 1s):
Great.

Diana (14m 1s):
Okay. So number four has to do with research planning. One of the common questions we see is how do you create a hypothesis when you don’t know the answer to your research question? That’s why we’re doing this research. The whole purpose of a hypothesis is just to come up with an idea of what you think might’ve happened. It doesn’t mean, you know, it just means you have an idea. Often we are looking for more information on birth, but we can use our brains. And we can estimate from census records or the age of the oldest child, you know, we can subtract 20 years, 30 years, whatever it is to try to estimate an age range for an ancestor.

Diana (14m 46s):
And the same thing with a marriage, we’re looking for a marriage record, well, we can estimate based on that, based on the age of the first child, we take all the things we learned in that timeline analysis. This is another reason that we want that to be thorough. Then we can make a good hypothesis about our ancestor and about the research problem. Hopefully we figured out some locations and we can think, well, the marriage took place in this county about this date and that’s our hypothesis. Then we can make our research plan based on that hypothesis. Okay, we think the marriage took place 1850 to 1870 in Lubbock county, Texas.

Diana (15m 28s):
So I’m going to go search there and in surrounding counties. We have to start somewhere and so our hypothesis gives us a place to build our research from.

Nicole (15m 38s):
All right. Let’s go to tip number five, which is also about research plans. The tip here is to keep your plan relatively short, because you are going to want to break your research into phases and you don’t need to do all of your research in the first phase. Typically you’re just going to do the first three or four things and then write a report on that and then do another phase. And this really helps us to not feel overwhelmed and to not try to bite off more than we can really chew. And another thing this does is we leave in some space for flexibility in our plan. If we’ve planned out 20 things to do, we’ll probably just want to go ahead and follow each one step-by-step all the way to 20.

Nicole (16m 20s):
But what if we discover something in the second search that leads us off in a different direction? That’s fine. That’s not going off and looking at a bright, shiny object if it’s leading us to the answer of our research objective. So it’s good to leave in some room for flexibility in our plan. And if we discover clues in that second search that are going to take us to our answer faster, we should absolutely follow that.

Diana (16m 43s):
Absolutely. And the great thing about having a shorter research plan and doing this in phases is that when you go to write it up, you won’t have such a long report, right? It will be easier.

Nicole (16m 54s):
Yeah.

Diana (16m 55s):
So let’s talk next about source citations. I’m going to do two tips for source citations, how to do layered citations in FamilySearch and Ancestry. Those seem to be two databases that hold so many records that a majority of people are using. One of the trickiest source citations to do is a layered citation. Layered citations are where you do a portion for the digital information and a portion for the physical information. When I am working with FamilySearch records, I’m often looking at microfilm or digitized microfilm nowadays. And because I’m looking at microfilm, I like to lead with the physical information.

Diana (17m 36s):
So the first part of my citation, I like it to be about what the record is. If I were to be looking at that wherever a FamilySearch originally microfilmed it often as a marriage book or a tax list, so I like to just start with talking about the physical information. I go look at the beginning of the collection to see if I can cite the title of the book, the volume number, the page number, the county, or the state or the country that created it. And then after I do all of that, then I add the digital information, which typically is just FamilySearch, the URL at family search, the date of access, the image number.

Diana (18m 19s):
And then sometimes I’ll do a third layer, which is the actual microfilm number, what was an original microfilm. So that’s how I like to do it with FamilySearch. Just for me, that makes sense. But on Ancestry, it’s a little different because Ancestry typically groups its records into collections. So it’s easier to lead with the Ancestry collection, which is the digital information. The nice thing is that that is always right above the record. It’s browned and it’s highlighted there. And so I like to just take that and manipulate it a little bit. I’ll add the punctuation, like putting quotes around the title of the collection and marking the way points with the little carrots symbol on its side.

Diana (19m 4s):
And I will add a little bit of detail about the specific person and maybe the page number or line number. And then I will include a note after my semi-colon for the physical information. Ancestry will always tell you where they got this collection from. They’ll say something like the National Archives record group 159 or something like that. So I’ll just do my semicolon and put citing whatever that collection was that it came from. So that’s how I have simplified those collections. I don’t use the citation that is created by the website because it’s not complete enough, but I use that information that’s right above the record.

Diana (19m 47s):
And then add in some of the information that Ancestry includes. Nicole, what about you? Do you have anything to add to citations? How you do it?

Nicole (19m 56s):
I like those tips a lot. Sometimes I can just use the FamilySearch citation almost exactly as they give it to you. If it’s an indexed record and then tweak it a tiny bit, because usually the access date is wrong. And I like to format the item of interest a little bit differently, but those are usually pretty good. And then Ancestry, yes, I just make it myself. And I love your tip for copying and pasting the collection title and using those way points. I think that’s a really great way to do your citation quickly and help people get back to the record easily.

Diana (20m 29s):
Yeah. I discovered doing that because of my client work. I use a lots of Ancestry collections and I need to make those citations really, really quickly and easily. Yeah, FamilySearch is a little tricky because if you do have those index collections, I like to use theirs as well, but so many times I’m browsing the microfilm and then there’s no citation made for you. Anyway, layered citations are a lot of what we are using nowadays. So hopefully those two tips with FamilySearch and Ancestry can help.

Nicole (20m 59s):
Yes. All right. We’re on tip number eight. Tip number eight is about research logs. And often we’ll get the question now that I’m doing my research log, do I need to still go back and update my timeline? What’s the difference between a timeline and a research logs? Should I be combining those together? Here’s the answer that we give. The research log includes all of the searches for this phase of research that you’re in right now. It includes negative results. It includes entries for different search phrases that you used, but the timeline is more like the results that you actually got, but doesn’t include negative searches. The timeline is kind of like your research notes about that ancestor in chronological order.

Nicole (21m 42s):
So what we like to do is when we do find something relevant to our ancestor that we want to remember, we add it to the timeline. Although we recommend doing your timeline at the beginning, it’s not really done at that point because you’re going to find more about your ancestor’s life, hopefully, and then you can update the timeline as you go. Sometimes when you are making your research log, it is helpful to be able to sort it by date and turn it into a timeline. So I know that you do this sometimes in your client research, Diana, do you want to tell us how you do that?

Diana (22m 14s):
Yeah. I have started adding a column just for the date of the record. I only do the year because I put the full date and the results and comments section, but I do sort by that a lot. It helps me because keeping things chronological helps me to just look at and analyze the information better. And sometimes I’ll make really big discoveries because I realized the marriage was too late for this certain child who had been born. There must be a different mother, things like that. And so I do tend to keep my research log sorted chronologically with that column. And it’s very helpful, but sometimes I’ll sort just by the record type or the location to also see what I’ve done in certain locations.

Diana (22m 59s):
So that’s why I really like using spreadsheets for research log because you can sort by those different follow-ups

Nicole (23m 5s):
When you do client research, do you always create a timeline for them that separate from the research log or do you combine so that it’s all one?

Diana (23m 12s):
Because I am on a time crunch, I generally combine those and I start a client project by going through all of the client’s previously found research on their ancestor. So I just put that all into the research log, which becomes sort of a timeline. And then I add to that as I do the research. Sometimes in the research log, I will be wanting to do some FAN club research, so then I’ll add another page. I don’t necessarily want to put them in the main log. So I’ll just add another page. Sometimes I’ll be doing a search for all the John Smith’s in 1830 and I’ll want to put them on their own page. So I am kind of creative with my research logs.

Diana (23m 53s):
I add multiple pages all the time for different things that I’m searching to help me keep track of the information.

Nicole (23m 59s):
That is the beauty of being able to do whatever you want. We are giving you a process and ideas for how to stay organized, but you don’t have to do it the exact way that we do just be creative with how you do your research log and your timeline. It’s okay if you want to make it all one, or if you want to keep them separate. And it probably really does depend on the type of project it is. If it’s for your own family and you’re planning to do multiple phases of research, then you’ll probably want to keep your timeline separate where you only put those records that you’ve found that really do match your ancestor. Whereas the log will include all your negative searches, all the possible records that might match your ancestor, that you’re not sure about yet multiple pages for the FAN club and that kind of thing.

Nicole (24m 40s):
So that brings us to tip number nine, which is very similar, but should we put all of our research for one ancestor in the same research log? So we like to add multiple pages to the log when we have a different objective. So this can kind of solve that problem. If you want to have one big research log for your ancestor, but you’re doing multiple projects, just add multiple sheets within the log. The first sheet could be your objective to find out their marriage date. And then the second objective or the second sheet could be to find out all of their children. Then you can really break it up however you want to.

Diana (25m 15s):
We’ve seen a lot of really creative research logs in our study group, and it’s always fun to see how people use the basic tool and then tweak it to meet the needs of their project. I got an email from someone a while ago and they had a question and then they said, but then I keep hearing your voice in my head saying, just do what fits with your brain. And it really is true. We all have different research needs, different projects, and we look at things a little different. So feel free to take our basic template and our basic ideas and then make it your own so it works for you.

Nicole (25m 51s):
We are always doing that too, and I’m sure you can tell by the way we talk about it every time we have a new project, we’re trying to make it better, trying to be more efficient. So we just have to be flexible sometimes, especially with DNA research, we do have to be creative and think outside the box sometimes for how to keep track of what we’re doing.

Diana (26m 11s):
One thing with that question about putting all your research for one ancestor in the same log, I think that’s such a great idea. And remember to make sure you put that research log in your ancestor’s folder. If you have digital files set up on your computer and you have a folder for each ancestor, make sure you’re keeping that log in the folder so you don’t forget about it. I’m sort of speaking from experience because I was working on this presentation and I discovered a research log I’d done a couple of years ago on an ancestor, and I’d completely forgotten about it because I do so much client work that I forget about my poor ancestor. I was like, oh wow, I’ve already done a whole research log on this ancestor.

Diana (26m 52s):
So if you can just keep it in their folder, then when you start your research and go look and see what you’ve got, and it will be such a pleasant surprise when you discover that you had something already created.

Nicole (27m 5s):
So that’s tip nine and a half, put all of your research logs in a place where you will see them again.

Diana (27m 12s):
Absolutely. And that takes us to tip 10, which is report writing. How to get this done, because I think people get to the research and they find their stuff, but then writing something up is just intimidating and difficult. So how do you really get it finished up in our study groups, we have assignments and you know, somebody is going to be reading it and giving feedback. So it’s always a big incentive to have a deadline. And for my client work, I obviously have a deadline and if I want to get paid, I have to turn in a report. So that’s a huge incentive. So maybe set yourself a deadline, have a purpose for your report, share it with a cousin or maybe create up for a family reunion or have it be the beginning of your book about your family, have an accountability partner, maybe say, okay, let’s work through a project together.

Diana (28m 3s):
And then let’s share reports and I’ll give you feedback on yours, you give me feedback on mine, figure out some way to be accountable to yourself, or if it works for you, just set yourself a deadline and say, okay, by the end of this month, I’m going to write a report. And anyone who purchases the book or eCourse can join the Research Like a Pro Facebook group. You can upload it there and get feedback on it. And so that would be a really fun way for you to have a deadline and have a purpose. And don’t ever feel afraid to show your research. We’re all friends and everyone is so kind and gives really good ideas.

Diana (28m 44s):
Writing your first report can be absolutely so fun as you start seeing things come together. And if you can think of it as just being a learning process and that it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time you do it, that you just have to get something on paper, then you can actually get it done and start honing your skills and getting better and better.

Nicole (29m 1s):
Yes. I think it’s so important to have a deadline or an accountability partner or reason to get it done. And once you have that, then even if you slightly missed the deadline and get it just a couple of days after, you still got it done.

Diana (29m 18s):
It’s getting started. I think sometimes we get writer’s block, I don’t know how to start. So here we go. Tip 10 and a half: just start writing. Take one of the records that you found and just start writing about it, or start writing the background information, what you knew at the beginning of your project, just get started with something. And I think what you’ll find is as you get going, you start getting excited because you’re getting something on paper and then you’ll want to keep going. I tend to be like that. I tend to procrastinate getting started and then once I’m getting into it, I can’t stop. It’s kind of funny.

Nicole (29m 53s):
It is funny. There’s a lot of inertia with writing. Once you get going, you just want to keep going, especially when you’re in the flow.

Diana (30m 0s):
Yes. So let’s do a recap of those top 10 tips. So number one was on objective: we suggested that you fully identify your person before you start working on relationship. And the number two was to have the scope of your timeline be pretty big, include as much as you can to get the best foundation for research.

Nicole (30m 24s):
Tip number three was focused on the time and place of the research question when you’re making them your locality guide so that you don’t get overwhelmed by having to include everything. Tip number four was when you’re making your hypothesis and your research plan to just estimate the vital facts for the person that you’re trying to find, make your best educated guess.

Diana (30m 43s):
Number five was to break your research into phases, so your research plans should be relatively short. And number six was doing layered citations in FamilySearch to use their citation, if there is one and tweak it, or if there isn’t one, then look at the microfilm and try to determine all the good information from that to get started on your citation.

Nicole (31m 9s):
Tip number seven was to create layered citations in Ancestry, by leading with the Ancestry record collection title, and tip number eight was include in your research log all the searches for this phase of research and then update your timeline so that it has just the relevant records about your ancestor.

Diana (31m 28s):
Tip number nine on research logs was to put all your research for one ancestor in the same log and then add multiple objectives or pages to the log as needed, and to keep that in your ancestor’s folder. And tip ten was to set a deadline and have a purpose for your report.

Nicole (31m 46s):
All right. That was a great wrap up. I hope you guys enjoyed our Top 10 Tips for Researching Like a Pro on our 100th episode of the podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. We just are amazed by how many amazing listeners we have out there. And we want to thank you for all of your emails and for your positive reviews and for sharing our podcast with others around you.

Diana (32m 9s):
Yes, everyone go make some fun discoveries today and celebrate the 100th podcast of Research Like a Pro with us.

Nicole (32m 15s):
All right, everyone. We’ll talk to you again next week. Bye bye.

Diana (32m 21s):
Bye bye.

Nicole (32m 19s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next Study Group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com. To share your progress and ask questions join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our eCourse or Study Group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.