Welcome to Monterey Peninsula College at Genealogy Research Associates

CAPTURING EVIDENCE (cont.)

If you selected these five answers, you are absolutely correct.

It saves time and helps you to avoid duplication of research.
Your work is accepted as creditable.
Others can take off where you stopped and perhaps go further toward solving your problem.
You are able to analyze information more readily.
Documenting correctly at the start will mean little editing needed at the end.

What things should be included in your notes to sufficiently supply the evidence that one person is related to another? Look at the table below. The white boxes refer to a definition of the record source. With these items identified, anyone else could follow your trail.

The light turquoise box refers to the document itself. What is this document you have used. Is it a photocopy of an original record, a scanned image of an original record, a transcript, abstract, or extract of the original record? You would want to know all of these facts!

Items covered	Description of items covered
WHO?	The author, compiler, publisher and/or provider of the information.
WHAT?	A description of the source: the title of the book, a description of the collection, or an index to other records.
WHERE?	The places covered by the source, as well as the addresses of the publisher, the person providing information, or the repository where the information is stored.
WHEN?	A specific date or span of time covered by the source, whether it is a records collection, book, film, or fiche. Example — #Wills: 1834-1910
HOW?	Format of the source, e.g., book, film, fiche, electronic media.
THE DOCUMENT	It may be a photocopy, scanned copy, transcript, abstract or extract.
WHY?	The researcher's evaluation, the historical background, societal customs any or all which may provide the evidence to prove a point, etc.

Do you think it is enough to just know what kind of a document it was (photocopy, microfilm, scanned image, transcript, etc.)? Not really! You would like to see the real thing, or at least to read what the document said through a transcript, abstract or extract. That would be the only way you could analysis the evidence. This means you will want to data enter, or have someone data enter, the important information from everything you have found.

Now look at the dark turquoise box. The final item in recording your sources is to provide your evaluation, historical background of the individual, societal customs that play a part in your evaluation, or any other items that, put together in their entirety, could prove a point.