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From: "Natalie Cottrill, ProGenealogists, Inc." <>
Subject: RE: [APG] How to site [cite] 1920 census (general comments)
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:01:57 -0700
In-Reply-To: <000001c2bf38$50ba84f0$cb1c4141@K9>


Jerry Fitzpatrick writes:
>>1. Genealogists seem obsessive about obtaining data, yet reluctant to
adopt technological standards for preserving and distributing it.<<

Make the technogical measures meaningful, useful, all-encompassing, easy to
use, and cost effective. Then, prove all these elements with published case
studies. This is the very same path that other sets of measures take on
their way to becoming adopted standards in other fields. Other fields will
probably adopt standards more quickly than ours, because in other fields,
researchers are employed by corporations or educational institutions who
enforce a set of formally adopted standards. With most all genealogists
being independent, any measures that will ask a genealogist to change what
they usually do (and thus perhaps become their new standard), will need to
provide the genealogist with substantial proven benefit.

Jerry writes:
>> 2. Experts press for discipline in finding and citing sources, yet there
seems to be little consistency in the type and amount of data (and metadata)
collected.<<

As for "consistency in the type and amount of data collected" issue, I
thought that Donn and others had pretty much illustrated the complexity of
the situation. Trying to put into consistent form, data that by its very
nature is inconsistent seems as futile a job as walking through the forest,
picking up random sticks and trying to push them all through the same square
quarter-inch by quarter-inch opening. There are few birth, marriage, or
death certificates that contain precisely the same type and amount of data -
even in the same state and the same time period. Individual clerks and
other people in history who made the records we study, generally scribed
things just they way that they felt like it that day ... sometimes they
would use forms if required, sometimes they wrote free hand comments, and in
the early records we often find the same name spelled several different ways
on the same document! Sometimes, we are left with remnants of records from
burned counties and just remnants of pages still exist or medieval documents
that have suffered so much bleed-through and mildew, that we are pleased
when we can count the minims for a couple of words on the page. What part
of this data do you think needs to be made consistent? Why?

What good genealogists will consistently try to do is record at least as
much about the source of the data as it is necessary to tell others where
they found it.

As Elizabeth pointed out, there are different subsets of genealogists
participating on this list. It seems a safe presumption to say that we all
have the consistent goal of learning as much as we can, and endeavoring to
do a good job with our research. But, each subset has different needs,
different goals, different concerns and different audiences. What may be a
necessity for one group (a professional genealogist being hired for X hours
by a client to research a family must provide a research trail and cite
mundane things like census index searches to provide an accounting to the
client of how their time was used and to prevent future professionals from
doing the exact same search over again), might be a nuisance for another
group (why cite a census index when I didn't find anything in it, or when I
can just cite the census page that shows the family I'm studying?).

Jerry writes:
>> 3. Genealogy has tremendous potential for formal treatment (e.g. I
suspect a calculus could be developed for describing and evaluating
genealogical assertions), yet genealogists seem disinterested in (or unaware
of) such prospects.<<

There are genealogists who already see and participate in the formal
treatment of genealogical studies, hence the genealogical institutes,
college classes, etc. However, there is a difference between "formal" and
"formulaic," and perhaps you meant the latter, rather than the former, since
you mention devising a "calculus." The complicated fact of the matter is
that most difficult genealogical research is intuitive, rather than
prescriptive or formulaic. Most of the finer aspects of genealogical
research are much, much more than "if you do this, you get this" ... or, "if
you see this, then you know this," or "if you look here, you'll find this."
On average, I evaluate over 470 genealogical research reports a year, from
many different genealogists all around the world. This is one of my "jobs,"
in addition to doing client research. The abilities that I've noticed most
genealogical research experts have high on their skills list are pattern
recognition, deductive reasoning, conceptualizing multiple solutions for
complex problems, ability to distill significance from seemingly disparate
data, an exceptional memory capable of holding and _understanding the
ramifications of_ centuries of historical and social mores and laws within a
thought's touch (or within the reach of the appropriate book), and to top
that all off, a high degree of ordinary "gut instinct" Even with my fairly
good mathematics and computer science background, it seems to me that a Star
Trekkian leap in technology would have to occur for these intuitive
qualities to be encapsulated in any type of mathematical or otherwise
formulaic environment.

Natalie Cottrill
ProGenealogists, Inc.
PO Box 900188
Sandy, UT 84090-0188
(801) 699-9470
(801) 596-3380 - Fax
http://www.progenealogists.com

ProGenealogists, Inc. 2003, All rights reserved.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Fitzpatrick [mailto:]
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 2:27 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [APG] How to site [cite] 1920 census (general comments)


I find Elizabeth's remarks here very perceptive.

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