Guest post: What Getting A Credential Meant To Me

Dee Dee King, CG(sm), is a Texas-based forensic genealogist who doesn't have a blog, so I let her borrow mine during a week when FGS in Fort Wayne may monopolize my attention. Her thoughts:


I made a career change in my 50s - genealogy as a profession beckoned.  Having been in social services much of my adult life,  I was keenly aware of missed opportunities because of no degree in the field and some credentials dependent upon that degree.

What would my career path be in the profession of genealogy?  Education, education, education, networking and credentials.  Even my telephoneman’s blue collar field advanced his position and pay with each training and certification.

I piddled with my application.  Until hubby lost his contract work, we moved to Houston for a job that turned out to not exist, and we wound up living on his unemployment.  Go get a “real job” or kick myself in the butt and accomplish what I wanted for a career?  Against the advice of friends and family, we tightened the belt. Hubby fully supported my banishment to the office each day to craft a portfolio pretty much from scratch.

Within two years of tentative investigation into the career, I received that email saying the approved CGSR(sm) board-certification would follow by postal delivery.

What did that credential mean to me?  “Damn! I did it!”  Hubby beaming with pride.  Son-in-law congratulating me - I’d become board-certified in my field before he was board-certified in his. New business cards and updated website. Renewed confidence that I had been tested and /could/ make it.

New hourly rate higher than the hard-working ladies who cleaned area houses. Customers with a better expectation of professional services and more money to spend on research. Fewer customers who thought a fifth genealogist might overturn four who proved the customer was not 1/4 Indian Princess. Real depth of work to break brick walls or build the life story of a grandfather who abandoned his family.

The credential was the key on the resume to approach attorneys about legal work.  It convinced the judge to appoint me to the first probate case, over three genealogists who did not have credentials.  The legal field understands the term “board-certification.”  Another bump in hourly rate.

The credential helped lay the foundation to qualify as an expert in the field. It got the jobs that built experience on the resume. It demonstrated work had been peer-reviewed according to the accepted standards of my profession.  It demonstrated training and education beyond that of the “lay person in the field.” [Their words, not mine.]  The credential helped establish that working to those standards meant the research and conclusions were reproducible by following the same path and methodology.  That helped qualify as an expert witness.  My services were more valuable, another bump in the hourly rate.

I could not do the work that supports my family now without that credential. There would be no big legal cases, maybe a few small-estate probates where only an independent witness was needed.  I certainly would not be speaking everyday with family members of unaccounted-for Navy personnel. This is a humanitarian effort unique to this country - a congressionally mandated effort to locate, identify and bring home those who gave their lives for this country. A credential was required to even be considered for the competitive contract. My husband could not have quit his job and retired two years early.  We could not have bought a dream home in the country with grandkids romping amongst our cows, goats, chickens, piggies and garden.

No, it wasn’t all about the money.  It was about carving a career path that provided a decent, professional-level wage, a great deal of satisfaction, and a service necessary to those who hire me.  Pretty much what most of us want from a job?

The path to forensic genealogy is not for everyone. But this is an example of how a credential can, and did, make a difference in a career.








Dee Dee King, "Guest post: What Getting A Credential Meant to Me," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 August 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy Research Options after Ancestry ExpertConnect

Ancestry.com showed its power 24 January by announcing the closure of its popular online marketplace for genealogy research, ExpertConnect. No explanation was offered; the shutdown will be complete on 18 March.

In the six weeks since, everybody has been scrambling, especially those seeking professional genealogy help. I hope to write elsewhere about the professional angle, but here's the landscape for genealogists who are looking for research help or who think they might be in the future, with the readily accessible Ancestry ExpertConnect marketplace gone.

By far the biggest list of professional researchers and their qualifications is at the Association of Professional Genealogists. Currently, however, the site offers no place for people seeking help to post their needs and invite bidders. The same can be said on the local and regional level, where many state organizations maintain lists of researchers (such as Ohio and Indiana), as do many repositories (such as the Newberry Library and the National Archives).

But the marketplace idea is not dead, and Ancestry ExpertConnect showed that it can work if a sufficient number of buyers and sellers can be brought together. A number of smaller sites, some in existence prior to Ancestry ExpertConnect and some new, do list professionals and offer seekers the ability to post their wants and needs and receive bids on them:

Genealogy Freelancers

Genlighten (lookups only at this point)

GenealogyPro

Geneaxchange

Hire-A-Genealogist

Directory of Genealogists

I won't go all Consumer Reports on you and try to describe or rank the above; the web sites will tell you a lot. Obviously each of them (and some even newer counterparts in the UK) faces the same challenge in making a market as APG does -- trying to generate even a significant fraction of the traffic that naturally passed ExpertConnect's doors at Ancestry.

(Full disclosure: I am a professional, and an APG member and board member; I was on ExpertConnect for more than a year, and I am signed up on most of the above sites as well.)

My recommendations for hiring a professional in a specialized area?

From time to time, clients (or non-clients!) ask me for recommendations as to who they should hire that specializes in some area of research that I don't (often overseas). Not being omniscient, usually I am more comfortable with recommending places to look than I am with recommending specific individuals. Three particular places come to mind:

Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG)

International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen)

Association of Professional Genealogists (APG)

APG is a professional membership organization; a member has to pay dues and sign a code of ethics (it's at the bottom of the application form).

ICAPGen or BCG credentials are earned by passing different rigorous tests (described at the links).

The same person can be a part of any one, two, or three of the above. If I were looking in online marketplaces (such as Ancestry's ExpertConnect) or in particular libraries' or archives' list of researchers, other things being equal I would tend to favor someone with an earned credential, or failing that at least someone who was serious enough to join a professional organization. (The higher and harder the brick wall in question, the stronger my tendency to do so.)

Of course it is possible that someone with none of these affiliations might do an excellent job of research, but the odds are not as good.

Weekend Warriors Book Reviewing Edition

Christopher Capozzolo at Legal History Blog points to an interesting article, "The Art of Book Reviewing," by historian Bruce Mazlish of MIT, first published in 2001. The general points will be familiar to a reader of the relevant chapter by Elizabeth Shown Mills in Professional Genealogy, but the details and the slant are different. It had never occurred to me that professionals in history or social science get just the same amount of systematic training in how to review books as we genealogists do -- none. Make the most of it!