Principles of "The Pinball Approach to Genealogical Research"
DearREADERS,
When I published The pinball approach to genealogical
research this past Monday, I knew
it was a complicated blog post, but I wanted to discuss it during Mondays with Myrt at noon. Aside from describing the willy-nilly research
habits beginning genealogists have, my
post went a step further to encourage thoughtful analysis and correlation of a
variety documents. I probably should have put that later section in a separate post.
The post also included my thoughts about how to organize more
complicated kinship determinations, where no single document hold the
information we seek. My example included info about the type of spreadsheets we
were taught to use in Dr. Jones’ SLIG course.
The reason I inserted those additional concepts was to describe the difference between simple, quick fix “pinball” genealogy, and anything
resembling analysis up to and including a spreadsheet. But I failed to adequately describe
I’ve been told Ol’ Myrt here has coined a
new phrase “The Pinball approach to genealogical research” or “pinball genealogy”. We did discuss this concept somewhat during
this week’s Mondays with Myrt and I feel it will be a recurring theme.
Randy Seaver attended the webinar and has taken
the, er, um “pinball” and decided to run with it. In this post Pinball Genealogy – My
Ancestry.com Hints Practices, Randy cites my
original post, and describes his reaction to it. Randy says the pinball
approach to genealogical research “is a
great description – I can surely relate, and I’m sure that many of my readers
also can relate to it, and probably enjoy the experience. I know that I
do! I’m “in the hunt,” finding new names, dates, places,
entering data into my genealogy database, all’s right in my genealogy cave.”
Perhaps there was once a time when Randy had to think hard about Ancestry.com “shaky leaf” suggestions. As with many more experienced researchers, Randy can now more readily assess the reliability of information provided in a document. For instance, experience has taught him that he should categorically not connect to other
Ancestry Member Trees (AMT) as they are usually fraught with errors. So Randy can quickly “ignore” that suggestion and move on to the next, though he does admit to
using AMT for clues.
PHOTO: Circa 1948 pinball machine,
from WikiPedia Commons.
What does
Ol’ Myrt consider “pinball” genealogy?
- Quickly accepting
unsubstantiated information. - Seeking a single document that
answers the question – say, “who is the father of …?”, when more than one credible
source is recommended by credentialed genealogy professionals such as Dr. Jones, my SLIG
instructor. - Looking at only “quick-click”
online resources. - Relying on an index entry as the “final
word” without making eforts to find the original. - Assuming everything is online,
after all “those Mormons are digitizing their entire granite vault.” - Being unaware of the need for
microfilm, fiche and on-site research of surviving record groups for
clues about family relationships. - Being unaware that only a fraction
of the world’s vital records, etc. have ever been filmed or digitized. The rest probably won’t be during our lifetime, due to cultural and financial constraints. - Being
unaware of the Genealogical Proof Standard when making kinship determinations based on the documents at hand.
- Quickly
canvassing a variety of online genealogy websites for the low-lying fruit
obviously mentioning an ancestor. - Deftly entering the information
contained in a document in one’s genealogy management program, based on years
of experience with that software. - The ability to type quickly.
Randy has
spent a great deal of time explaining his “pinball” approach to genealogy and I love it. But Randy’s definition is very different from this Ol’ gal’s definition. Randy’s years of genealogy blog posts suggest he is a competent researcher, and his work bears no resemblance to the negative elements of my definition of “The Pinball Approach to Genealogy.”
Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt 🙂
DearMYRTLE,
Your friend in genealogy.
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