BCG Will Make Two Changes to the Certification Process in 2016

BCG Will Make Two Changes to the Certification Process in 2016

            At the May meeting, the trustees of the Board for Certification of Genealogists authorized two significant changes in the certification process for new applicants. These changes will go into effect in 2016, when the new Application Guide is published. Briefly, for the first time (1) new applicants will be evaluated on their genealogically educational activities, and (2) new applications will be limited to 150 pages.

            Genealogy standards 82 and 83 state that genealogists regularly engage in formal and informal development activities for four reasons: to better meet the standards, to learn more about useful materials, to enhance skills in reconstructing relationships and events, and to better present their findings to others. Years of data also show that applicants with more genealogy education are more likely to produce successful portfolios for certification.

Accordingly, as is currently the case, applicants will be required to briefly describe the genealogy-related activities that help prepare them for certification. However, as is not currently the case, this section will now be evaluated. Genealogical-education activities will meet the evaluation criteria if they show that the applicant “has engaged in a variety of development activities aimed at improving genealogical standards attainment.”

This change adds one rubric to the evaluations of portfolios. The new rubric emphasizes the need for ongoing genealogy education. Failure to meet one specific rubric does not disqualify an application. Other questions currently asked in the resume will be eliminated.

            The second change will reduce the size limit for new portfolios to a maximum of 150 pages total. The current limits were established when BCG had more requirements for certification than now. The new size limit provides ample room for applicants to demonstrate their abilities.

            “These changes are part of BCG’s ongoing analyzing, evaluating, and refining the certification process,” said BCG president Jeanne Larzalere Bloom. “We hope that these two changes will streamline the process, make it more manageable for applicants, and encourage applicants to engage in a variety of genealogical-development activities before assembling a portfolio.”

            For questions or more information, please visit http://www.bcgcertification.org  or contact Nicki Birch, CG, at office@BCGcertification.org.

            CG, Certified Genealogist, CGL, and Certified Genealogical Lecturer are service marks of the Board for Certification of Genealogists®, used under license by board certificants after periodic evaluation.

Two kinds of genealogists and the question that sorts them out

You're researching Thralls, and someone posts this image on line. What's your first thought?

(a) Thank the poster for breaking down your brick wall.

(b) Enter the information into your genealogy database.

(c) Message ten friends about this breakthrough.

(d) Ask "Where did that come from? How do they know?"


Options a, b, or c = Type 1 Genealogists

Option d = Type 2 Genealogists (For details, check out the first section of Evidence Explained.)

One goal of genealogy education, from which most everything else follows: to encourage Type 1 folks to recognize that (d) is a possibility, and to choose it more often.



Harold Henderson, "Two kinds of genealogists and the question that sorts them out," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 29 September 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

GRIP 2014: Leading with DNA

The nationwide moveable village of genealogists appeared in the form of the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh at La Roche College in suburban Pittsburgh on Sunday the 20th and disassembled Friday the 25th. In between, friendships were renewed, projects discussed, books were bought, business cards were exchanged, genealogy TV was watched, sleep was in short supply, and a lot of teaching and learning happened in six courses.

This third annual session of the institute arguably places GRIP in a leadership position among genealogy institutes, as it offered the first ever full five-day course on genetic genealogy, coordinated by Debbie Parker Wayne, with top-notch faculty CeCe Moore and Blaine Bettinger. (Who knew that three collaborating instructors could be so good in such different ways?)

The trio taught 73 students in two sections and were generously applauded by the students at the final session. The course lived up to its title of "Practical Genetic Genealogy," based on biology but focusing on multiple genealogical applications, and will be offered twice at GRIP in 2015. (Note: in January the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy will include a similar course as well as the first-ever advanced DNA course.)

I took the course as a comparative newcomer to the subject, and I am now astonished to recall  discussions (not very long ago) about whether there was really enough information to fill a five-day course on the subject of DNA! Clearly there has been enough information for quite a while. Now, if anything, there is too much material to pack into one week, especially when one tries to include the exercises and workshops that newcomers need to sharpen their understanding and skills.

Six years ago DNA was still an optional side order in genealogy, useful at most in researching only the direct male and female lines -- a small fraction of our ancestry. With increased computing power, technological innovations, and deeper understanding of autosomal DNA, it is now no longer a side order but part of the main course. Moore demonstrated the power last January, at the Professional Management Conference of the Association of Professional Genealogists. (For instance, by comparing the DNA of second cousins, genealogists can often identify specific segments as the "genetic signature" of the cousins' shared great-grandparents.) That taste drew many researchers to GRIP this summer

As Wayne said in the concluding session at GRIP, there was a time when genealogists complained about having to learn to use computers; now they're indispensable.

I expect that similarly, and in an equally short time, knowing and applying DNA evidence will be as commonplace and integral to proving our conclusions as computers have become, and as property and probate records have long been. For individual genealogists and genealogy educators alike, there is no alternative to keeping up.



Photo credit: GRIP Facebook page with permission 
https://www.facebook.com/GRIPitt/photos/pb.217409114950759.-2207520000.1406378822./825947214096943/?type=1&theater

Harold Henderson, "GRIP 2014: Leading with DNA," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 25 July 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Learning from the January NYGBR

How do you prove that your great-great-great grandparents were NOT married? How do you deal with a great stroke of genealogical luck? We don't always have to figure these things out for ourselves.

Two articles in the January 2013 New York Genealogical and Biographical Record show how top genealogists dealt with these questions. In both cases they involve nineteenth-century immigrants to New York City and nearby. These folks are not ancestors for most of us, but the research problems presented can happen anywhere.

Melissa A. Johnson correlated indirect evidence with a goodly number of negative search results to reach the conclusion that one of her ancestral couples, surnames Morgan and Geldart, did not marry.

And Donn Devine, CG, who by good fortune received some nifty evidence on the German origins of George Falk (1823-1900), considered whether the Genealogical Proof Standard required an additional search in this particular case.

For those of us who can't attend national conferences or institutes, publications like NYGBR are a relatively inexpensive form of education.




Harold Henderson, "Learning from the January NYGBR" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 13 March 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Sources? What's That?

There's nothing like being at the forefront of genealogy education. James Tanner reports from his front-line duty aiding a patron at a Family History Center:

"We focused on one family where the ancestors of both the husband and the wife were missing. I asked her where she had looked for information about her family and she gave me a blank look as if to say, what did I mean where did she look."

Read the whole thing over at Genealogy's Star. I don't always agree with Tanner's theoretical ideas, but his point here is spot-on: when we talk about the importance of "sources" we may think we're starting at the beginning, but we are already assuming a whole lot of stuff that many newcomers to genealogy do not know.

That would explain why so many emails to proprietors of unsourced trees go unanswered. And it shows once again that teaching is something that it is easy to do -- or appear to do -- but it is hard to do well.






Harold Henderson, "Sources? What's That?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 31 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The Genealogists' Neighborhood

A few years ago, a product whose name I have forgotten produced a TV commercial based on the premise that several star professional football players lived in adjoining houses in the same neighborhood, and would encounter each other while going out to walk the dog or fetch the newspaper. The houses looked significantly more middle-class, closer together, and less exclusive than would be likely for anyone in that income and fame bracket, but never mind. The point was to create a readily recognizable community.

Attending a genealogy conference or institute is a bit like living in one of those commercials -- with fellow genealogists as neighbors, rather than large violent men. We encounter colleagues and idols at every turn. The setting is apart from normal daily life -- no dishes to do, no opportunity to borrow a cup of sugar from the author of "The Children of Calvin Snell" -- but it is real in its way.

Typically we start by attending the same classes together. Over time as we develop specialties and responsibilities, there are fewer occasions to share the same experience or the exhilaration of beginning. But there are also new ways to collaborate and keep in touch at a distance. The neighborhood was always fictive, but the friendships can be real.



Harold Henderson, "The Genealogists' Neighborhood," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 21 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogy Education on the Cheap

Sometimes you have to spend money to save money -- that would be the case if you're perplexed about how to learn more about genealogy and are not already a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. The new (December) issue of the APG Quarterly -- a member benefit, not available in stores -- includes my article enumerating more than a dozen ways to learn without spending too much. (I do serve on the board, but do not receive a commission on new memberships.)

I can mention two ongoing good places to look. One is Angela McGhie's blog, Adventures in Genealogical Education. The other -- which I somehow neglected to mention in the APGQ article -- is Archives.com's free "Expert Series" with short articles with all kinds of advice and information. My latest contribution over there is on "Resolving the Paradox of Research Planning."



Harold Henderson, "Genealogy Education on the Cheap," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012

Once again it's time for the monthly popularity contest, listing the most-viewed blog posts made here during November.

I'm happy to see that #1 ran well ahead of the pack: "Cut-and-paste genealogists are free to spread unsubstantiated, dubious, false, or absurd information -- and will remain free to do so. We can build however we want. But what we can't do is build poorly, glory in it, and expect respect from those who know better."

1. Misteaks (November 24)

2. A Day in the Life: Probate (November 29)

3. Sowing Primary and Secondary Confusion (November 14)

4. We'll Always Need Advanced Genealogy Education (November 2)

5. Lost Causes in NGS Magazine (November 6)


Least viewed:

Disasters Are Part of Genealogy, Too (November 1)


Harold Henderson, "Most Viewed MWM Posts November 2012," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 January 2013 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

$500 Scholarship to the National Institute on Genealogical Research

Those interested in attending the 2013 session of the highly regarded National Institute on Genealogical Research at the National Archives in Washington, DC, should check out the recently issued press release reprinted below. I have heard only good things about this institute, and my understanding is that winners of the scholarship are often genealogical librarians or others very active in the genealogical community. In any case, they are expected to help others with the knowledge they acquire at NIGR. The application deadline is not far off, so pass the word to your non-blog-reading friends and colleagues!


Richard S. Lackey Memorial Scholarship Available

The National Institute on Genealogical Research Alumni Association (NIGRAA) announces the
Richard S. Lackey Memorial Scholarship for 2013. This scholarship is awarded to an
experienced researcher employed in a paid or volunteer position in the services of the
genealogical community. The amount of the Scholarship is $500, which covers full tuition for
the National Institute on Genealogical Research, attendance at the Alumni Association Dinner,
and will partly defray hotel and/or meal costs.

Applications must be submitted in PDF or Word format. The completed application form and
attachments should be e-mailed to Beverly Rice at and received by
15 December 2012. The application form can be found at the bottom of the NIGRAA website at
.

The winner will be notified no later than 15 February 2013. The scholarship winner will
automatically be accepted for the National Institute on Genealogical Research (NIGR), to be
held at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., from Monday, July 15 through Friday, July
19, 2013. NIGR is an intensive program offering on-site examination of federal records and is
intended for experienced genealogical researchers. Note: an application to attend in 2013 must
also be submitted to NIGR.

Membership in NIGRAA is open to anyone who has completed one or more sessions of the
National Institute on Genealogical Research or who has lectured at any session.

We'll Always Need Advanced Genealogy Education

Stanford historian Sam Wineburg, interviewed by Randall Stephens over at The Historical Society blog, explains another reason why good classes in evidence evaluation, analysis, and correlation are unlikely ever to become unnecessary. Even today, even the best students are not learning this stuff.

Wineburg describes how he uses a popular book that many history students (but few professional historians) love, the late Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States 1492-Present.

Please note (as some of the commenters on the original post do not) that the issue here is not whether Zinn's claims are true/false/absurd/other, nor whether his book on balance has value, but how to think about any historical claims. If you know the book you probably have an opinion on those questions too; please share it elsewhere.

I have students take a claim and then follow the chain of evidence for it back to its source. This is not easy with Zinn, as the book contains no footnotes. So, we have to figure out where Zinn gets his information by looking at his bibliography (there is no archival research in the book—all of Zinn's references are to secondary sources). So, I have students go back to the books Zinn read, and then have them go to the notes in these books to try to figure out how Zinn has used this information and whether its original context has been preserved.

This course is part of Stanford's freshmen seminar program, so my students are young people who only months before had been in high school. They have never experienced anything like this before. Nearly all of them are survivors of AP history, where history class meant memorizing copious amounts of factual information to do well on the 80 multiple choices items so they could get into a college like Stanford. . . . Students know how to find information but many are ill-equipped to answer whether that information should be believed in the first place.

Sound familiar? From our point of view, the roots of genealogical malpractice run deep.

Randall Stephens, "Teaching History to Undergrads: An Interview with Sam Wineburg,"The Historical Society, posted 29 October 2012 (http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2012/10/teaching-history-to-undergrads.html : accessed 30 October 2012).

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States 1492-Present (New York: HarperCollins, 1980-2003).


Harold Henderson, "We'll Always Need Advanced Genealogy Education," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 2 November 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Explain This!

Sometimes the problem in genealogy education is not explaining things . . . it's knowing what to explain. Every time I attend a talk for beginners I learn, especially when people ask about things that we no longer recognize as needing to be explained. Two real-life examples:


"What is the DAR?"

"What is a 'census'?"

As a writer, I know that even just one undefined (or unclear) term is likely to doom a whole paragraph (or article, or book). Readers will slide over it and then discover themselves in a swamp of mysterious verbiage, and give up in puzzlement. Same goes double for lectures.

Good beginners will ask these questions. But, quite aside from the embarrassment, it can be hard to know how to ask.

I'm frequently on the other side of this gulf when talking about technology hardware and software. If I don't ask, I'm going to be under water so fast . . .

Whether I'm on the asking end or the answering end, what's usually needed is not a dictionary definition, but a vivid example showing how it's used in practice. The definition can come later if at all.

So two teaching talents are called for here: recognizing what needs to be explained, and finding ways to do so effectively.



Photo credit: MrJVTod's photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrvjtod/196799758/ : accessed 7 October 2012, per Creative Commons.

Harold Henderson, "Explain This!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 10 October 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Get Out of That Rut!

 Archives.com has just posted my article, "Ten Little Known Indiana Records," but the truth is that these sources are little-known, and underused, everywhere! My examples come from the Hoosier State but most of these records exist elsewhere. If I were rewriting that article today I would probably shoehorn in a mention of "local laws" from the 19th century as another example.

Genealogy learning is a constant alternation between learning about new (to us) sources, and learning new ways to use them (methodology). We need to keep doing both in order to keep growing.








 Harold Henderson, "Little Known Indiana Records," Archives.com (http://www.archives.com/experts/henderson-harold/indiana-records.html : accessed 26 July 2012).

Harold Henderson, "Get Out of That Rut!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Get a GRIP and Go Read Another Blog!

 I have been well educated and nurtured and networked at the Salt Lake Institute and at Samford Library's IGHR, but there's a special place in my heart for the new kid on the block . . . because it's closer to home -- all but Midwestern. The Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh opened its first session this week, and here are the three bloggers I know about who are chronicling a sliver of their experiences. Give links in the comments if you know of more!

Shelley Bishop at "A Sense of Family"

Cathi Desmarais, CG(sm) at "No Stone Unturned"

Chris Staats at "Staats Place"

Between them, they should help explain why institutes may sometimes be a better fit for your genealogical learning style than conferences, especially when you need in-depth education.



Harold Henderson, "Get a GRIP and Go Read Another Blog!," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 24 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Be Kind to the Newbies

It can be hard for us to remember what it was like to be a stranger in the strange land of genealogy. We may think that because we've talked about "abstracting records" 100 times, that the 101st person knows what we're talking about.

And by "us" I mean everybody, from active professionals to those whose main involvement is to attend their local society meetings.

Many local societies are composed of old friends. I once attended a small society meeting with another newcomer. We were invited to introduce ourselves and did so; no one else did, and the meeting went on. It wasn't being mean, just oblivious.

After one talk that I thought had been carefully pitched to beginners, an attendee asked, "What is this DAR you were talking about?"

Professionals can be annoyed or annoying in their own ways. I'm always a bit surprised that some Hoosiers aren't acquainted with the Indiana Genealogical Society's wonderful county-by-county research information pages. Another pet peeve is hearing from folks who want to resolve conflicting information about an ancestor's birth or death date -- without saying where either piece of information came from!

But we all had to learn that sometime; now it's our turn to teach in a friendly way -- forever. Showing irritation is ungracious, bad business practice (for professionals), and just plain counterproductive for the good of genealogy. Just as we are committed to our own continuing education, we have to be committed to providing accessible education for the never-ending stream of hopeful newcomers who may kindly reply "Bless you!" when you first speak the word "Ahenentafel."


Harold Henderson, "Be Kind to the Newbies," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 12 July 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Learning to ask the hardest question

One of the essential, least expected, and least polite questions in beginning genealogy is also the simplest:

"How do you know?"

In the beginning, we have to ask the family member who is sure that your Websters are all related to Daniel Webster . . . somehow.

Later, we have to ask the helpful stranger who responds to an on-line query by sending you a virtual pile of alleged information about your mutual ancestors.

Later, we have to ask the client with preconceived opinions as to what more research will turn up.

Without this question, it's all for nought. No point in learning about citations if we don't know what to cite. No point in putting together a (nonfiction) book or article about the family.

To ask this question is to step out from the comfortable home hearthside into the cold still outdoor air of history. It also challenges others to do the same.

The people who ignore the question are happy with their mythology (some of which may well be true). Those who object indignantly to the question want the credibility of calling themselves genealogists without doing the work. Those who answer and try to improve their answer are on the road to success.



Harold Henderson, "Learning to ask the hardest question," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 27 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Are you On Board?

Arguably the thrice-yearly newsletter of the Board for the Certification of Genealogists, OnBoard, has the highest information per ounce of any genealogy publication. In the current (May) issue it's Tom Jones 1, "source snobbery" 0; and Stefani Evans shows just how closely we can analyze even a derivative source.

You do not need to be certified in order to subscribe, and a subscription also supports an organization crucial to maintaining and advancing genealogy research standards.

If you don't have $15 to spare, or aren't sure, check out the generous sampling of articles published 1995-2010 under "Skillbuilding" on the BCG web site. Whatever our level of research, reading these short articles will make us better.





Thomas W. Jones, "Perils of Source Snobbery," OnBoard, vol. 18 no. 2 (May 2012):9-10, 15.



Harold Henderson, "Are you On Board?" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 6 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

Genealogist behaving badly, but not for long

Good examples are indispensable, but sometimes a bad example at the right time can teach a lesson that stays taught. Here's one published example from a few years ago, and here's another, simpler one:

Once upon a time, a friend of mine started a project with the information (source unknown) that the person of interest had been born in 1849 and married early in 1870. She sneaked a peek at the census and found the couple all right, noting that he was a property owner. She was in a hurry and didn't make a copy or write down the citation. How hard could it be to find a census again?

Then she looked for the marriage record. It wasn't in the index for 1870, or 1869, nor was it in the chronologically organized register itself. Then she looked for a deed of purchase. Again, not there. Annoyed but not altogether surprised, she went back to the 1870 census and looked again. Now she was surprised. The household wasn't there either -- even though it had been the day before!

That sound you hear is not the old "Twilight Zone" theme. It turned out that the census she had viewed, showing an apparently newly married couple, was for 1860, not 1870. The provided birth and marriage dates were more than a decade too recent, and in the absence of notes or copies she'd misremembered the date of the census she had consulted. (By 1870 the family had moved west.) The project went on to a successful conclusion with only an hour or so wasted.

And maybe it wasn't wasted. I'll skip the language of standards for the moment: No matter how picky we may appear to our non-genealogist friends, chances are we aren't picky enough.



Harold Henderson, "Genealogist behaving badly, but not for long," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 5 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

I know what you asked, but it's not what you need to know

More than a decade ago, I was working in crowded library room where folks were giving and receiving genealogy advice. I overheard the ultimate beginner question from an anxious newbie: "Where is my family tree?" (I wish I could remember how the volunteer in charge responded!)

These days, when someone asks me a question, I usually have two answers.

The short version answers the question they asked. ("Umm, well, no, there were no birth certificates issued in Illinois in 1830.")

The longer version, which the questioner may not want to hear or read, answers the question they should have asked. ("Here are some ways you might be able to prove parents without a birth certificate.")

Highly skilled question-answerers can make this transition smooth enough that the asker sees the point before s/he stops reading. I have a ways to go on this part.

But we're all question-askers sometimes. How do we learn to ask better questions? I think it's part of moving from seeing genealogy as a series of lookups to seeing it as a long and sometimes circuitous research process. To be more specific, it's also a process of surgically removing assumptions from the question itself. Of course, in order to do that, you have to know what your assumptions are! (How many wannabe Native Americans ask what kind of kinship system their supposed tribe has?)

Check out page 11, standard 28, in the BCG Genealogical Standards Manual for starters. The standard is that "Previous assumptions (presumptions) brought to the correlation, often unconsciously, are recognized," and it's followed by thought-provoking examples of good and bad assumptions.

Improving our genealogical habits usually involves moving away from our comfort zone in time and space, into places where people had very different assumptions and expectations and institutions . . . and records. Sometimes part of the quest is just to figure out exactly how strange this new place is. What words have changed meaning? What did these people take for granted that I don't, and vice versa?

If we don't manage to ask ourselves these kinds of questions first, we may wind up as the research equivalent of a boorish foreign tourist, talking louder instead of learning the language, and wandering randomly into trouble.

[According to Blogger's count, this is the 900th post since Midwestern Microhistory began 23 January 2008.]



Board for the Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual (Provo UT: Ancestry Publishing, 2000).


Harold Henderson, "I know what you asked, but it's not what you need to know," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 4 June 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

The toughest genealogy course you can take?

I haven't taken every possible genealogy course, but I suspect that the Advanced Evidence Practicum is the hardest. It's being offered for the second year 14-18 January 2013 at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. (Registration opens 9 AM Mountain Time, Saturday morning June 2.) The following was published earlier this week as a guest post on Angela McGhie's blog Adventures in Genealogy Education, and benefited from her editing:

Want to spend a week solving the toughest genealogy problems, a new one every day?

That describes the most challenging genealogy course I've ever taken, the Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG). Oh, I learned more in the advanced methodology classes given annually by Elizabeth Shown Mills at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) at Samford University and Thomas W. Jones at SLIG. I could not have functioned in the practicum without them. But the level of difficulty in the practicum is something else because I had to apply that knowledge repeatedly, and found out right away whether I had headed in the right direction or found the answer. I also had to adjust to very different record environments and kinds of problems than I was used to working on.

The course actually grew out of the 2011 session of Tom Jones' Advanced Genealogical Methods class at SLIG. He gave a couple of homework assignments involving a problem to be solved, with evidence provided. We enjoyed the challenge and wanted more of this type of assignment. One day four of us were sitting around and somehow the idea was born of trying to design a whole course consisting entirely of this kind of homework. Now two of that group are coordinating the 2013 course, one is the director of SLIG, and I'm the only one remaining with a purely student's-eye view.

The format of the Practicum course is simple. Every afternoon a different expert, usually a board-certified or accredited genealogist, presents the initial evidence for a genealogical case that they have worked on and solved but not yet published. In some cases, all the evidence and documents are provided and the students analyze and correlate it, trying to come to a well-grounded conclusion. In other cases, some evidence remains to be found, either on line or in records at the Family History Library. Where off-line records are required (as they were in four of last year's five cases), the information is available in digitized files on request if the student can figure out exactly what s/he needs (since even the Family History Library can't be expected to create two dozen copies of those particular microfilms everyone will be wanting). The following afternoon, the group reconvenes to discuss their research and evidence-evaluation adventures with the expert and find out how they approached and solved the problem. And then it's time for the next case to be introduced.

The format differs from most genealogy institutes in that there are five faculty members (experts), so you deal with a new personality every day as well as a new problem. The 2013 lineup of instructors is mostly different from last year, but my main sense last year was, “I had no idea there were so many different ways to be equally excellent!”

Compared to the usual SLIG class schedule, this course looks light. So few hours in the classroom! But few of us had time for anything else. (I had invested in some evening lecture sessions but ditched most of them because the problems were so tough, and one of my main approaches to such problems is to spend a lot of time fussing.) Most participants found it both educational and humbling. Questions of research strategy arose that I'd never heard discussed so specifically anywhere else. If you've been through an advanced course or the equivalent, and want a truly challenging workout in a friendly setting, this is the course for you.

If you're still wondering whether this course is a good fit, name three of your favorite articles from the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. If you can't think of any, or if you don't enjoy reading the Quarterly, maybe you're not ready. Because this course is like being dropped down the rabbit hole into the middle of one of those articles, and having to claw your way out.

[Also now available: Melinda Henningfield's take on the same course.]


Harold Henderson, "The toughest genealogy course you can take?" Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 May 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]

CAFG's Newsletter

The Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy is a relatively new professional group with stiff entrance requirements and a mentoring program. Their newsletter, however, is public, and the January issue of "Forensic Genealogy News" includes two concise and thought-provoking articles. And anyone who want to improve their research skills will find some nifty suggestions for productive practice in Cathi Desmarais's article.

[Catherine Desmarais, "Not Quite Ready for the CAFG Mentoring Program? Gaining
Experience with Forensic Genealogy Techniques," Forensic Genealogy News 2, no. 1 (January 2012):4-5; digital image, Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (http://www.forensicgenealogists.com/Resources.html : accessed 20 January 2012). ]

If you're counting, this is post #827 since this blog was opened exactly four years ago.