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Whew! I finished the final piece of the 14-day Research Like a Pro Challenge. I am a few days late due to another commitment last week, but no worries.
Here's my daily report through the end of the challenge:
Jan. 29-30—Citations
Whenever creating the project timeline and researching, it is recommended to write up source citations immediately, and I am a big proponent of that. I reach that goal about 85% of the time; but 100% is the goal. I use Airtable as my research log (Thanks Nicole Dyer for creating the templates!), and once the citations are written, it's a breeze to then just copy and paste them in the report-writing phase.
Here's a couple citations I wrote while I was creating my project timeline:
Cathedral
of St. Catherine of Alexandria (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada),
"Baptismal Register, 1860-1906," p. 1, baptism of Charles F. Cassidy, 7
Dec. 1860; digital images, Ancestry, "Ontario, Canada, Roman Catholic
Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1760-1923," (https://bit.ly/2VRK5Yu : accessed 5 July 2020), image 107/554; citing Archdiocese of St. Catharines, Ontario.
Jan. 31-Research Log: Follow Plan and Research
I began researching in my prioritized sources—all marriage record collections for Catholic churches in Buffalo. Two of them were available on FamilySearch from the comfort of my office chair, while for the others I needed to visit my local FamilySearch affiliate library. I did not have any luck in the St. Patrick church records as I had hoped—drats! Since I had a conflict with traveling to the library last week, I had to put off the final research phase until I had time to drive there.
Feb. 1—Transcribe and Abstract
It's useful to transcribe or abstract the records we see into our research log, to save time looking the record up again to remember what it said. And sometimes the records are not in English. In my case, the church registers were written primarily in Latin. That meant I had to translate them in order to understand what I was reading. I depend on two great tools for translations: Google Translate (which includes Latin), and Deepl (good for other languages I sometimes need, like Slovak.)
Here's one translation I did during my research for the marriage record of Philip Cassidy's sister Elizabeth to Thomas Saul (a bonus find during my research):
Latin transcription from the register:
Dec. 2 Ego conjunxi en matrimonio Thomas Saul et Elizabetham Cassidy coram Timotheo Ryan et Maria Keligher. G. Whelan
Google Translate:
December 2 I joined in marriage Thomas Saul and Elizabeth Cassidy in the presence of Timothy Ryan and Mary Keligher. G. Whelan
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I transcribed and translated this marriage record into my research log.
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Feb. 2—Outline Results
This is the first step in writing the research report. Fair disclosure: I usually skip this step, as I am writing up portions of the report as I go. I use a research report template provided by the Family Locket team as my base.
Feb. 3—Write up Results (completed Feb. 4)
This is the final step in the process, and the part I like the most: writing the report. Everything comes together in this final step. Analysis is done, a conclusion is reached, and future steps are noted. And best of all, I have a final product that I can share with other researchers or on the FamilySearch family tree or my Ancestry tree.
What was my conclusion? Like the gal in the image above, it appears I still need to do some climbing to reach my goal!
Many thanks to the team at Research Like a Pro for offering this 14-day challenge again. See you next year!
Until next time...
Thank you Nancy for this view of the sometimes difficult life of a genealogist ... and methodologist. Daniel
ReplyDeleteThanks Daniel!
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