Effective searches
A few hints on how to do effective searches
Here are some links that lead to interesting articles on doing effective searches for ancestors.
I would like to begin with an article from Future Learn
This article starts by pointing at the importance of having a searching strategy. Starting a search for ancestors seems like a huge task (and in some cases it is). Concentrating on one or two persons at the time will focus our search and break it into manageable problems.
Another good piece of advice mentioned in this article is not to get sidetracked, but to note down interesting information and get back to them later.
Read What is an effective search?
When you design your search strategy, be sure to start from a known person. Read my article Start your family search here.
In the FamilySearch blog, we find an interesting article by Amy Johnson Crow
The entire article is interesting reading, but I want to especially draw you to what Crow writes under the heading Explore What Is Available.
“Many websites, including FamilySearch.org, have online collections that are “image only” collections, meaning that they have not been indexed and aren’t searchable by name.”
This is true for the Norwegian Digital archives also. Many of the records are not yet indexed and in those cases, we need to go through the scanned images to hopefully find what we are looking for.
Be sure to pick up Amy Johnson Crow’s bonus tip.
Read 5 Tips for Effective Genealogy Searching
One of the ways to find information about our ancestry is simply by doing a Google search. A lot of information is presented on the internet outside the “famous” websites. Unfortunately, this kind of information is not always supported by sources. Remember; a family tree on the internet is not a valid source. We need to check the information we find with primary sources.
Here is an article from Find my past about how to make effective searches using Google
