Source-Based Thinking - Tue, 11 Nov 2014

It’s time genealogists stopped their conclusion-based thinking and started going source-based.

Source-Based Document Organization

Source-Based Data Entry

Standardizing Sources

and now

Repository-Based To Do Lists

(Do you think there’s a not-so-subtle theme here?)

I advocate that everything is better if you start with the source. 

Genealogists have for too long been recording their name/event/fact/relationship conclusions first manually onto family group sheets, and now into the similarly organized data entry forms of their genealogy software. If they think of it, and if their software makes it convenient enough, they then just might decide to add a source to it … if they feel like it.

I find it unbelievable to think that people do all this work, and the result is they have no idea what they’ve entered and what they haven’t. Their source materials are a shambles. They can’t find their originals since their filing system for their physical documents are an unorganized mess, as are their computer files. Or even worse – organized by family.

By organizing your documents, computer files, data entry method, to do lists, and everything else by source, suddenly the world opens up. You know where you are and where you are going.

One-name and one-place studiers have known this for years. They thoroughly analyze all the information they can from every source. They know what they’ve extracted and what they haven’t. Every item of information they have comes first from the source and is entered by source and every item is documented with its source. Their to do lists are the sources they are going to look at. The only thing they lack is good source-based software, because almost all genealogy software is conclusion-based which provides minimal help for them.

Are you looking through a hundred haystacks for one needle? Then are you looking through the hundred haystacks again for the next needle? That’s a lot of work for every needle. For every little fact you need.

Wouldn’t it be better to look through one haystack at a time and find all the needles you can in that haystack? Once that’s done, go to the next haystack. Get everything you can out of every document while you’re accessing that document.

Source-based genealogy. Source-based thinking. It will change everything.

Behold’s getting there.