RULES FOR BUILDING A GOOD RESEARCH DATABASE

To see if you understand the methodology known as the "Surname-Locality Approach" to research, try answering the questions below for yourself. If you don't know, enter your comments in the discussion area under this week's assignment. Or if you have questions, enter your comments there as well.

Why would anyone want to build a research database of a single surname?

What items should be included in that database?

How should the information be entered in a research database?

Can you edit records in your genealogy computer program easily, so you can bring consistency to your notes? How do you do that?

Do you know how to search for everyone in your genealogy computer program who was born in the same locality? How?

It is important to add people of the same surname that you find in the same locality because they may eventually be related and it would save you time and expense from searching for them again later. However, you do not link them to your family at this time. You merely add them as individual family clusters until you have enough information to disregard them or to pull them into your family.

How do you add an individual family to your database without having it linked to other people? What program are you using to do this?

Some people make a list of exactly what abbreviations and titles they are going to use in their own data entry and keep it by their computer. This way they remember to standardize their own entries.

Have you found yourself using non-standard abbreviations: MO, Miss., Missouri; or putting Co. (punctuation should be avoided in databases) for county sometimes and not at other times; listing the cemetery last instead of first on some records; abbreviation Ch, Chur, Church or Cem., Cem at other times? What can you do to prevent this in the future?

How are you entering surnames in your computer. What if a man was name Brubaker, but his father was named Bruebaker. How can you take care of this in your data entry?