Welcome to Monterey Peninsula College at Genealogy Research Associates

Eight Hours and Miles to Go

This week will be a relaxing, but interesting review of the many techniques we have studied this semester. Imagine as a researcher that you only have 8 hours to accomplish what you have done this entire semester. As the chapter will point out genealogy is like putting together a puzzle with many integrated pieces. Finding genealogy puzzle pieces draws on the sum total of your knowledge, research skills, and organizational abilities. If we break down the process to eight steps, it makes the process easier and faster to accomplish.

This week, you will mentally review the steps covered in the chapter and apply them to the ancestor you selected at the beginning of the semester. Perhaps you personally left out a crucial step, or found that step difficult to do previously, but with more information can return to it.

As a suggestion, the chapter asks us to pick one of the "easiest" ancestors to practice on mentally as we summarize the methodology used, or to use a case study of someone else from the same country as ours to help us see any parallels or difficulties in our own research. These steps will also help us prepare for the final.

Use the chart from your assignment sheet to mark off your own strengths and weaknesses. Now is the time to strengthen the weaknesses. The steps are summarized on the next page.