RLP 165: Becoming a Professional Genealogist and ProGen Study Groups

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 165 ProGen study groups and becoming a professional genealogist.

Nicole (48s):
Hello everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro

Diana (51s):
Hi Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (54s):
I’m doing well. And I’ve been watching the lectures from IGHR that I missed. There were a couple that I didn’t finish watching cause I had to go pick up the kids from school. And one of them was Paul Woodbury talking about a case that he did, where he used a lot of coverage analysis. It was really interesting to think about that. So it was an advanced DNA evidence course, and his lectures were all based on client projects that he had done. And he has a lot of experience using DNA evidence to help him solve difficult cases. And he uses these interesting methods that are kind of unique to him that he’s kind of developed himself.

Nicole (1m 34s):
So it’s kind of fun to hear him talk about it. The thing that I really took away from it is that he really recommends testing several descendants of the research subject through independent child lines, and then calculating the coverage that you have of that research subject or that ancestor. But he has a formula that he uses, but basically it’s kind of thinking about like each of the children will inherit about 50% of the parents’ DNA and then that grows smaller the more generations removed you are from the ancestor. And so then what he has kind of started doing is estimating relationships of ancestors to other historical people based on the coverage that he has, of those historical people with descendants of theirs that have tested and comparing unique segments that they share.

Nicole (2m 26s):
And it’s a pretty advanced concept, but it’s, it’s kind of interesting because sometimes it’s, the relationships are ambiguous. You can’t figure them out from just taking like 95 centiMorgans and putting it into the shared set. And we’re going to project because there’s so many relationships that it could be. So it’s a little bit harder when you’re that far removed, but when you can take back and estimate how many centiMorgans, you know, this person might’ve shared with this other person who is hypothesized to be their first cousin, then you can see if that lines up.

Diana (2m 59s):
And of course it’s just estimating,

Nicole (3m 0s):
But it’s still a strategy that can get you closer to the answer

Diana (3m 5s):
Gives you a little bit more data to work with.

Nicole (3m 7s):
Yeah. I’m trying to wrap my mind around how I would do it, but it’s cool to hear how he had success.

Diana (3m 12s):
Yeah. Paul is really leading the way I feel like in a lot of these advanced methodologies, because he’s had to develop them to solve his client projects. And I feel like that is how we have learned so much is just doing these projects. And the client work that comes in is always so unique and interesting, and it makes you think of different ways to do things. So for any of our listeners, if you can do somebody else’s genealogy, like whether it’s paid or pro bono, it really is a great way to learn because you have to do something different than you’re used to.

Nicole (3m 44s):
That’s true. And if you’re doing it for a client and you’re under a time limit that really forces you to think about the most efficient way to do that. And Paul talked about that a lot. Like how can we be more efficient in getting to the data set that we need? And usually the way he does that is through clustering. So we talked about using node Excel to make network graphs, and he prefers that over Gephi, which I use Gephi, but Node Excel is nice too. And then he also talked about some other clustering methods he likes, which are the Collins Leeds method with DNA GEDCom. And of course he’s usually clustering, Ancestry matches because that’s the largest database. And then there’s also the shared clustering tool from Jonathan Brecher.

Nicole (4m 26s):
There’s a few different options out there for clustering Ancestry matches. And, and it’s really helpful to get you started on the right foot with that genetic network that you are wanting to focus on.

Diana (4m 37s):
Yep. That is so key to these projects. And especially with client work or when you’re working with someone else’s DNA, you don’t know their families, you don’t recognize surnames. You don’t understand how everything fits together. So it gives you a head-start on putting together the related groups. Yes.

Nicole (4m 53s):
So what have you been doing? Well,

Diana (4m 55s):
We’re actually getting ready to do a road trip going back to Wichita to see my other daughter. And we were trying to think if we had some family history sites along the way, and I seem to remember that my husband had some family in Nebraska and so he looked them up and we found the locations. And so going to see if we can go visit some sites in Nebraska, which will be fun. Some family history touring, I guess, is what you would say. So we’re kind of looking forward to that. Something a little different.

Nicole (5m 26s):
Yay. Did you find some cemeteries to visit?

Diana (5m 29s):
We haven’t found the specific ones yesterday. We just spent time finding the family and looking at all the records and trying to nail down the locations. And now we’ve got to go take a look and see who was buried and where the cemeteries are if they even still exist. But you know, if nothing else, we at least have the locations of the towns that they lived in and I need to take into it now and see what I can figure out someplace to go visit.

Nicole (5m 58s):
Cool. That’ll be, I wish I was going to go with you.

Diana (6m 2s):
Well, we’ll take pictures. Well, let’s get to what we’re talking about today, which is becoming a professional genealogist and the ProGen Study Groups. So I link these together in a blog post I wrote because you and I have both been through the ProGen Study Groups and I thought it would just be fun to talk about some of the things we study and if someone doesn’t want to do the study group, they can still use some of the things that we learned about to practice on their own. So what is ProGen, where did it start? Well, in 2007, the first ProGen study group met and they’ve been numbered consecutively from then.

Diana (6m 42s):
So number one was 2007 and they read and discuss the first edition of Professional Genealogy, which was edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills. And so the subtitle of that is, A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians. And as that title suggests there’s chapters written by experts in the field for all sorts of different types of professions that you might have through the field of professional genealogy. So the study group is all volunteer. And what it does is if you’re interested in being a professional in any way, shape or form, it lets you get together and study, it gives you motivation to read the chapters and then to study it and discuss it.

Diana (7m 27s):
Each group is mentored by either an accredited or certified genealogists. So someone who has also been through the project program and already working in the field, and I started as a student in 2016 and I joined ProGen 33. So there had been a lot of groups since it began. And then I recently mentored ProGen 44. So that was fun. You know, I’m an accredited genealogist and so they asked me to mentor that group, which was awesome. And it was really fun by ProGen 44 they had switched to the second edition of Professional Genealogy, also edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

Diana (8m 7s):
And this one has a different subheading, Preparation, Practice and Standards. So some of the chapters were very similar to the first edition and just updated. The world of genealogy has changed a lot since when the book actually was written, but we still use both both books. And I really enjoyed the assignments. They made me do some things I probably wouldn’t have done like writing a business contract or creating an education plan.

Nicole (8m 36s):
That’s great that you got that experience to kind of prepare you for becoming a professional. And I also did the ProGen study group. I was in ProGen 46 and my mentor was Shannon Green who’s a certified genealogist. And I really learned a lot from her. It was a wonderful experience. I learned a lot from the others in my group as well. The way that the study group works is you meet each month and complete assignments. And then you give and receive feedback on those assignments. And you also read the chapters from professional genealogy. So you’re kind of like reading about a subject and then you do an assignment that usually kind of goes along with it.

Nicole (9m 17s):
The assignments don’t always line up with the chapters because the assignments are mostly to help you prepare for certification. So a lot of the assignments have to do with the portfolio for BCG certification. So the program takes 14 months. Has it always been that way?

Diana (9m 35s):
When I did it, it was 18 months and then they went to 12 months and then they went to 14 months. So they’ve done a little bit of adjusting just to see what works the best

Nicole (9m 45s):
18 months is so long. I have to keep going. I think by the end of 14 months I was done. I think mine was 14 months.

Diana (9m 52s):
Yeah. Either 12 or 14 I think is okay. Yeah. They’ve been doing 14 for awhile when I mentored it was 14 because they had tried 12 months, but they realized some of the assignments, like the big writing assignments that worked better to write, get the feedback and then edit for the next month. So that’s why they added that extra two months.

Nicole (10m 12s):
Yeah. I really enjoyed having the chance to edit my case study and then turn it in again as kind of the final version. So yeah, it was nice to have that. So I’m looking at my Google drive folder and I have 15 different lessons. So I guess I did have the 14 month group. And then the last meeting we just had like no assignment and just a lecture about teaching and lecturing or a discussion. They’re not lectures. They’re they’re discussions. So back to talking about what progenitors, so you have these chapters that you read assignments that you do, and then you meet up once a month and you have a discussion with your peer group. And the mentor also is there attending and he, or she will give advice or answer questions.

Nicole (10m 57s):
And these are virtual discussions. So you get on zoom and you have some discussion leaders who will pose the questions and then everybody chimes in and answers, you know, and shares their experiences and their ideas. And kind of some of their takeaways from reading the chapter and doing the assignment often the discussion will go toward something that’s not listed in the set of discussion questions. And that’s okay. It’s always good because, you know, we want to talk about the things that are important and the things that we have questions about. And, and it just varies depending on the topic. It’s fun to meet different genealogists from all over the country and some from different parts of the world.

Nicole (11m 42s):
And everybody comes from different backgrounds and experiences and has different things they want to talk about and share and different plans for their professional life going forward. So it’s a very interesting discussion usually.

Diana (11m 56s):
Yeah, it really is. I love the discussions and I love just getting to know these different genealogists, like you said, from all over the world and the country, is really interesting because they do bring different perspectives. I’m here in Utah and it was fun to hear what genealogy was like Massachusetts or Florida or Australia, and, you know, really kind of opens your mind up.

Nicole (12m 20s):
Yeah. And it’s a good way to network too, because you can use these contacts in the future to help you and you need research done in that area.

Diana (12m 29s):
Absolutely. Because you’ve gotten to know them a little bit, you know, what their skill sets are and you trust them. It really is worth the efforts. You have to realize that it does take effort, but you really have a lot of benefits. So let’s talk a little bit about the experience you should have because you don’t want to sign up if you’re just barely beginning your genealogy journey, you want to have some significant experience before you apply. So you have an application form that you fill out and I’m just going to go over some of the things on that form. And it’ll give you an idea of whether you’re ready or not. So you want to consider how you measure up in each area. And if you don’t measure up, if there’s some things you need to work on, then just make a plan to get that experience.

Diana (13m 13s):
So they wonder if you’ve conducted research at four different types of repositories. So I want to know, you know, have you ventured beyond just online research, have you gone to a library or courthouse or archive to make sure that you understand how that works? And then you need to have some experience at writing research reports complete with source citations, documenting all of your findings, because you do a significant amount of writing and you need to know how to do that. You don’t have to be an expert because you will get feedback and you’ll practice, but you don’t want to have this be the very first time you’re writing or the very first time you’re making citations. You want to have some experience. And then you also need to have some evidence analysis experience and know what we’re talking about when we say source or information or evidence.

Diana (14m 2s):
And, you know, these are things we talk about all the time on the podcast. And if you’re actively researching and working on these things, then you would be fine. It is important

Nicole (14m 11s):
To think about the experience, you know, before you joined, because you’re going to be giving feedback to other people. And if you are brand new to genealogy and you don’t really have experience writing, it’s going to be a lot harder to give that feedback. And I do believe that they consider your application and see if you are ready. Right. So how do you get ready to apply? Well, there’s some educational prerequisites. One of them is that you have completed a genealogy research course attended a genealogical Institute or other significant education and genealogies or historical research. Some other things are, if you’ve studied scholarly, genealogical articles, and if you’re currently taking genealogy clients.

Nicole (14m 55s):
So those are just some ideas for things that maybe you can have done prior to applying to ProGen, that would help you be prepared. So when I started ProGen, I had taken the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy’s, intermediate foundations, their advanced DNA practicum, and an advanced DNA course with Karen Stanbary. So I remember so at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, it was time to, to meet the application for ProGen, because I’d been on the waiting list. I think so I was asking different people in my class like, oh, which mentor should I choose? Because you can put which one you prefer or whatever.

Nicole (15m 36s):
And I ended up sitting next to Anne Raymont, who is a close friend of Shannon Green, one of the mentors. And she recommended her. And I, I was very lucky to get to work with her. It was, yeah,

Diana (15m 46s):
That’s great. I was with Shannon in my first Institute, which was also done by Karen Stanbary. I think it was her first advanced DNA Institute courses. Like, so I got to know her a little bit there. So that’s great that you had such a good experience. That’s so fun. My mentor was Harold Henderson, who is just great. And he was so funny and gave us all a lot of confidence in our work. You know, I know I turned in my case study and his feedback on it was like, you should submit this to the NGSQ. And I was like, really? I still haven’t done that. But you know, it was nice to have that feedback from a certified genealogist who had also submitted to the Q and been accepted.

Diana (16m 30s):
So it does give you some confidence.

Nicole (16m 32s):
So what was your education? What did you done before?

Diana (16m 36s):
I had done accreditation. I was at the very end of accreditation. So I had written my fourth-generation project and submitted that to do accreditation. I had really done a self education course. I don’t know if you remember, but I would take one record type, like say the census and I were to read an entire book about that and watch all the webinars and I’d write my own outlines for how to use the census. You know, I just really went in depth on every single record type, as well as my study of my states. So for accreditation, you know, you need to have experience in all of these things of the analysis and the writing and researching it repositories.

Diana (17m 20s):
So I had a self study course. I didn’t do, you know, Boston University or BYU’s family history program. And I don’t know that I had taken many institutes. Maybe I had only done the one Institute, but I had just done a ton of self education. And I had done a little bit of client research at that point. I wasn’t doing a lot.

Nicole (17m 44s):
I’m just looking at their website now. And they just say the people who have the most success in the study group are those who have been practicing genealogy for several years and have completed some kind of coursework. And it sounds like your self study was a pretty good preparatory experience. It’s good to kind of have a background. You know, this isn’t like an intermediate study group, but it really is when you’re intermediate level ready to transition to an advanced professional level. So you should have already had some intermediate level experience with either coursework, self study, your own research or research for other people,

Diana (18m 19s):
Right. Just getting more advanced. So let’s talk a little bit more about the curriculum. You explained a little bit how we have an assignment due each month and you know, some of the assignments I liked more than others, but it makes you accomplish things you would otherwise procrastinate. So when I participated as a student, I knew that when I finished my accreditation, I wanted to start a genealogy business, but I had never done a business. You know, I had no business experience whatsoever. And there were two assignments that really made me look at the business side of professional genealogy. I had to create a business and a marketing plan and a contract and fee analysis.

Diana (19m 1s):
And I’ve used all of that. When we launched Family Locket Genealogists in 2017, I already had all these things in place because they had to do them as an assignment. So it really was beneficial. And I know some people in our group, both when I was a mentor, when I was a student, really didn’t have a plan to do a genealogy business, but you know, it’s always good to just do something a little bit out of your comfort zone and see what happens, right?

Nicole (19m 31s):
Yeah. We had the same thing with our groups. Some people already had a business, some people were planning to start when and others were just doing the steady group to improve their research skills. And weren’t planning on, you know, assisting clients or doing business in the future, but they still participated in the assignment to make a business plan and thought about if they did start a business, what would it be? And that kind of thing, which is always kind of fun.

Diana (19m 54s):
It is. And you never know what’s around the corner, what you might want to do in the future. And so it just gives you an opportunity to discuss it with others and get their feedback with everybody coming from different backgrounds. I think that feedback was really useful for one thing. It helps you see that, oh wow. I am better than I thought it was or her, it helps you see, oh wow, I need to improve. So it gives you a little bit of sense of where you are, because sometimes you have no idea, am I a good genealogist or am I not? And it’s really helpful to have some peers look at your work and give you some feedback on that.

Nicole (20m 31s):
Right. I think with a business plan assignment, even if you’re not planning to become a professional genealogist that takes clients and you have a business plan, I think it’s really good for all genealogists to kind of be aware of some of the things that professional genealogists have to do and have to with and reading the chapter and having the discussion was really enlightening to understand those things and consider the fact that like, when you do research for free for somebody, then they expect that all genealogy should be free and how that might hurt other professionals and that kind of thing. And I think it’s still okay to do pro bono work, but it’s just a consideration to take into account when you’re thinking about the professional genealogy world and how I agree.

Diana (21m 21s):
Well, you mentioned earlier that a lot of the assignments really helped you with the portfolio preparation for BCG. I’m just curious how this helped you, because I know you’re in the midst of portfolio work and I am guessing those assignments were really beneficial for you.

Nicole (21m 38s):
They were. I think that was the single most helpful thing I did right before starting writing portfolio. You know, I had done a lot of practice with writing research reports and research planning and analysis, but there were some things I hadn’t ever tried doing before, which were parts of the portfolio, like the case study and the kinship determination project. So practicing those portfolio elements and the project steady group where I got feedback and I had a chance to really work on how I would do it for my portfolio, where I really beneficial. And I learned a lot from them. I would highly recommend doing the ProGen study group to practice the portfolio elements before you start working on your portfolio.

Nicole (22m 21s):
And my mentor, Shannon Green said that one of the things she did when she was in ProGen was she did two assignments. One that she didn’t share, which was for her portfolio and one that she did share, she kind of worked along the ProGen study group schedule and worked on her portfolio as well. So I thought that was a really interesting idea, too, if you’re getting ready for certification,

Diana (22m 42s):
That is a great idea because you could take the feedback from the one that you get peer review on, and then you probably made the same mistakes or, you know, wrote it the same way. And then you could apply that feedback to what you’re using for your portfolio. It’s a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. I know in my case, I wasn’t working on a portfolio. I was in the process of submitting my four generation project, but it was really helpful because I needed to learn to write research reports, even though the first generation project is it’s really similar to research report. It was good to, to get feedback on a specific report for one, one generation, just one little project.

Diana (23m 24s):
And then the case study, that was fun because that turned out to be the one that I would like to submit to the NGSQ. And it made me write in a different way, you know, writing up a proof argument and then kinship, determination was fun too, because that one we get to add in all the details, historical background, all sorts of interesting things. So they’re all different and it was fun to take writing and explore some different ways to do it. Because quite honestly now in the client work, we do a lot of these types of things. I mean, I primarily do research reports, but sometimes a client wants more of a kinship, determination paper. They want to have just all the facts and all the interesting things and the stories you can find.

Diana (24m 7s):
And then sometimes some of the research becomes more of a proof argument where you’ve proven something for the client and you need to write it up a little bit more like that. So it’s good getting all those experiences. Yeah,

Nicole (24m 18s):
It was really good. And all the different kinds of writing are helpful to have under your belt as a professional genealogist.

Diana (24m 25s):
Right? Well, we’ve talked a lot about benefits, kind of intimated in a lot of them, but let’s just kind of focus on that for a minute. So we’ve already talked about how your writing gets better because you’re getting some feedback on it and you realize that you are using the same word over and over, or you’re writing in the passive voice, or you’re too wordy. You know, there’s so many ways we can improve writing. And then it also helps us with our business preparation, which we’ve talked about, but there’s some benefits we’ve hinted at. And that is that the professional genealogy field revolves around networking. We cannot all have every experience for every locality or type of research.

Diana (25m 9s):
And you are going to need to have some people that you can reach out to, or that you can refer potential clients to, for something that comes in that you just don’t know what to do with, you know, if you have a project comes in and it’s all Jewish research, you have no experience in that. You’d want to have someone you trust that you could refer that client to, or if you have a lineage society application come in and you really have not done that, you’d want to refer them to someone else. So it’s really nice to start building that network of trusted colleagues that you can suggest the client contact.

Nicole (25m 42s):
Yeah, that is a really good benefit that you may not consider that is really helpful in your professional career.

Diana (25m 50s):
And people will refer to you. I know two of the people in my study groups when I was a mentor reached out to their specific genealogy societies and suggested that I come and do a webinars, zoom meeting, whatever, you know, the online talk for their group. And that was really fun to meet with their group. And it gave me a nice introduction to a whole different group of genealogists. And then on the reverse side, I had a client project come in that was DNA as well as DAR. And I knew one of them who was really good at both of those things. And so I was able to give this client a good referral to someone that I knew I could trust.

Diana (26m 37s):
Networking is huge.

Nicole (26m 37s):
So even if you don’t want to become professional genealogists, I think the ProGen study group is a great way to raise the level of your research. So you can go to their website and learn more about it at progenstudygroups.com, and it’s a good opportunity to network, to meet other genealogists, to learn from each other, and to really push yourself to complete difficult assignments, when do something that you may not have done before. And then of course, if you are wanting to become a professional genealogist, this is a very good program for you to not only read well-written chapters from the professional genealogy textbook and understand the field of genealogy and some of the ins and outs of it, but also to practice and raise your writing and your research to the level that a professional should be at and prepare you to become a certified genealogist or an accredited genealogist.

Diana (27m 30s):
Yeah. And I think sometimes it really helps you make the decision. I know some of the people in my group said, oh, wow. After doing all this, I don’t think I want to be a professional. I want to just keep doing my own and write and submit to journals. And then others realize that they probably could become a professional and do client work. So if you’re on the fence, it might help you to know which way to lean. So it’s just a good experience. And it’s sometimes we just need something new and different to do in our lives. Right. We just need to challenge ourselves. And this is a good way to do that. All right. All right.

Nicole (28m 5s):
Well, thanks for talking about ProGen today, and we hope everyone listening who has been thinking about signing up for ProGen and will go check out their website.

Diana (28m 14s):
All right, everyone have a great week. Bye

Nicole:
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