download PDF (Dutch – version 2) – 1.10 MB

The Genealogisch Onderzoeksproces (Genealogy Research Process) is important to researchers in the Dutch genealogy community and the Standaard voor Genealogisch Bewijs (Genealogical Proof Standard) is being promoted outside the United States.  Maybe the Board for Certification of Genealogists should consider working with genealogists in other countries to translate The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual into other languages.

One evangelist of good genealogy research practices in the Netherlands is Rob van Drie, the head of research services & deputy directory at the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague, the Netherlands, a state supported documentation center for genealogy.  Rob describes the purpose of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie and some sources of inspiration for their efforts:

As Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie we are from 1945 onward the central depot for results of genealogical research. Before the digital era those results were given to us either in print or in handwriting. To be able to continue our position in this field we are working on a webservice StamboomNederland. It is our ambition to give to the Dutch public a digital depot where they can store the results of their research for the future. We do this on a non commercial basis. Genealogists must be able to upload results (in Gedcom or XML) or to add information ´manually´ by typing it in the screens of the webservice. Your `10 Things´ has next to the GenTech Genealogical Data Model and the publications on source citation by Elizabeth Shown Mills, has been very inspiring to us.

Rob has already included the Genealogy Research map in a presentation now hosted on SlideShare and with this updated map hopes to get the word out to a wider audience in various educational publications.  It it my understanding that Rob has taught good research practices in educational lecturing and writing since 1998.  Of the Genealogy Research map, he has stated:

Your more detailed map is a nice tool to make the researcher aware of where he stands in the research process and what he has to do to come to a sound conclusion.

I want to make sure that proper credit goes to the BCG and Elizabeth Shown Mills for all their work (and continuing efforts) to advance genealogy research excellence.  All I did was try to incorporate their teachings into a visualization that I could use as a reference.

Best wishes to Bob, Rob, and many others in the Netherlands as they teach sound genealogy research practices.

This slide presentation goes with the syllabus material that I posted earlier.

Hope to see some of you on Friday at 1:30pm.

Source, Information, & Evidence

According to Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills, ”sources are artifacts, books, digital files, documents, film, people, photographs, recordings, websites, etc.” (see page 24)  Information is the content of the source.  Evidence “represents our interpretation of information we consider relevant to the research question or problem.” (see page 25)  So in order to classify evidence we need both information and a research objective.  Even though the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) does not include a step to define research goals, I’ve included it as part of the Genealogy Research Process Map because it is implied.  Step one of the GPS states:

“We conduct a reasonable exhaustive search in reliable sources for all information that is or may be pertinent to the identity, relationship, event, or situation in question.”
The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual, page 1.

How do we know which sources to search if we don’t have a research objective?  The definitions of direct and indirect evidence also points to the need to have a defined research objective:

Direct evidence – relevant information that seems to answer the research question or solve the problem all by itself.
Indirect evidence – relevant information that cannot, alone, answer the question;
Negative evidence – an inference we can draw from the absence of information that should exist under particular circumstances.
Evidence Explained, page 25

Even the definition for negative evidence hints at a research objective.

So how can we set the citation quality value for evidence in RootsMagic or any other genealogy software unless we have a research objective?

A research objective can be in the form of a question, statement, or hypothesis.  The following are all valid research objectives:

• What was Worth Tucker’s birth date and place?
• Where was Worth Tucker born?
• Worth Tucker was born 30 Nov 1870 in Ashe County, North Carolina.
• Was Worth Tucker born in 1869 or 1870?

How specific the research goal depends on the researcher and what they want to discover.

In RootsMagic, a source can be associated with a person, family, or fact:

And for each citation of a source you can specify a value for citation quality for source, information, and evidence.  But to classify evidence, what is the research objective implied or otherwise?

Let’s say we have a book that we use as a source.  It was created by its author and is an original source.  The source information is entered in the Master Source section and appears in the Master Source List.  A specific page of that book is specified in the Source Details section and some information from that page is entered as part of the Source Detail Text.  This information then needs to be evaluated based on who provided that information: the informant.  If the informant was a participant or eyewitness, then we can say that the information is primary, otherwise it is secondary.  Now we come to evidence.  We take that piece of information and compare it to our research objective, but since we don’t have one we must infer it from what the citation is related to: person, family, or fact.  It is important to note that it is usually the researcher that should determine the research objective and not the software. 

Since we don’t have research objectives, only what the citation is associated with, then we must imply the research objective.  This can be tricky. 

Evidence for Fact Citation

Since a birth fact allows you to enter date, place, and place details does information in the source we are citing need to contain all of this information before we can say that it is direct?  Put another way, is the implied research objective:

What is the date, city, county, state, and specific place of Worth Tucker’s birth?

or it is

What is the date and place of Worth Tucker’s birth?

Do they both mean the same thing?  There is room for ambiguity.  Not to mention the fact that as a researcher, maybe I wanted the research objective to be a statement or a hypothesis:

Worth Tucker was born 30 Nov 1870 in Ashe County, North Carolina.

Depending on the fact, the software ask us to enter different information:

• Birth – date, place, place details
• Alternate Name – given names, surname, prefix, suffix, name type, nickname, date
• Education – date, place, place details, description
• DNA – DNA results
• LDS Baptism – date, temple, status, live/temple

One workaround for fact-based citations is to define a guideline that the citation quality can be marked as direct only if all possible entry fields for that fact type are filled in completely.  If a date or place is only partially filled in or the information doesn’t allow all fields to be filled in, then it is indirect.

Evidence for Person Citation

What would be the implied research objective for a citation associated with a person?

When you add a new person it asks for given name(s), surname, prefix, suffix, sex, and nickname plus some vital facts.  So I guess the workaround for this situation is to have the research objective be:

What is the complete name, sex, and optional nickname of Worth Tucker?

If the information from the source can answer all the parts, then it is direct; otherwise it is indirect.

Evidence for Family Citation

Now what about the implied research objective for a citation associated with a family?

What are the complete names of both parents and all children as well as the birth order of the children for the marriage of Worth Tucker and Florence Abby Pulsipher?

If the information in the source can answer all parts of the question, then the evidence is direct.

An Eye to the Future

Part of the reason for the current implementation in RootsMagic 4 and similar software could be the decades-old focus on research results and not research analysis.  My first genealogy software was a DOS version of PAF.  Before using that software, all research and any conclusions I came up with were done on paper.  Even the first versions of PAF only allowed you to enter a single date for birth, christening, death, and burial.  So the software was intended only to record the results of your research.  Modern genealogy software allows you to enter multiple facts/events of the same type and associate a source citation to it.  That way, you could have half a dozen birth entries containing different values or different levels of detail as the your research required. The software is able to keep track of ongoing research, and not just results.  I think genealogy software will continue to innovate and allow more and more research collection and analysis to occur in the software.  That is the direction that citation quality is pointing in RootsMagic 4 and the similar feature in Family Tree Maker 2009.  The next logical step is to allow the software to define research projects each with their own research objectives.  These research objectives would then be associated with source citations and citation quality therefore clarifying the use of the classification of evidence as direct or indirect.

For Those Who Attended My Class

1. Was there too much material to cover in the alotted time? 
2. What content should I consider cutting?
3. What specific content that should definately be kept in?
4. How do you feel differently about the presentation a few months later than you did right after it was presented?
5. How have you found the presentation practical and useful?
6. What concepts could have been explained better?
7. If there were a follow-on presentation, what would it be about?
8. What ways do you think I can make the presentation better?
9. What can I do better as a presenter?

For Those Who Have Viewed The Slides Online

1. Can the slides stand on thier own?
2. What concepts are unclear by just reading the slides?
3. What concepts did you expect to see in the presentation that were missing?
4. How effective are the visuals at improving understanding?
5. How effective is the case study?
6. How have you found the presentation practical and useful?
7. What ways do you think I can make the presentation better?

Thank you very much for your kindness in helping me improve this presentation.  When updated, I will be post the new slides online.

Please provide your feedback as a comment to this post or you can e-mail me directly at: 

mail at thinkgenealogy dot com

Thanks,

Mark

Last November I presented a class titled: Navigating Research with the Genealogical Proof Standard.  The slides for this presentation are now available on SlideShare.  You can catch this presentation if you will be attending the 5th Annual St. George Family History Expo 2009 held February 27-28.

In the last two and a half months alone, the original Genealogy Research Process Map post received 500 pageviews.  Version 2 of the map has only a few changes.  Besides fixing two typos, the arrows separating the 6 process steps where moved up next to the step headers.  I did this to help it look more like a timeline.  Looking at the map, there are three main “rows”: the circle diagram, the process timeline, and the process details.  The idea is to start in the middle of the diagram to understand the steps in the process: Define, Search, Cite, Analyze, Resolve, and Conclude. 

Then you can read the step details below or see the concepts and artifacts above with color coding to relate them to the steps.

Click to download the Genealogy Research Process Map – Version 2 (PDF – 9.05 MB)

A complete history of changes can be found at Genealogy Research Process Map History.

I will be presenting at the Family History Expo 2008 held in Mesa, Arizona on November 14-15.  The Expo is organized by My Ancestors Found.  My presentation is currently scheduled for Saturday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. and is titled: Navigating Research with the Genealogical Proof Standard.

Here is the short course description:

(Beginner – Experienced) This class discusses the Genealogical Proof Standard and walks the student through the process by way of a visualization called the Genealogy Research Process map. Each step is explored through case study and uses traditional and online resources.

This is the first time that a conference by My Ancestors Found is being held in Arizona.  This is exciting as it will be about an hour drive from where I live.  It is a bonus that I get to present.

I encourage all that can to attend this conference.  If you are interested, attend my presentation.  At the very least, say hello if you see me.

downloadable PDF (Dutch) – 8.1 MB

Note: Due to some technical difficulties, the podcast is temporarily available here.

 Myrt writes in part:

The public genealogy mailing list of APG, the Association of Professional Genealogists, has recently discussed a topic proposed by ThinkGenealogy.com’s Mark Tucker who asked: [APG] How Widely Used is the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS)?

When I posted the question to the APG list, I was in the final stages of developing the Genealogy Research Process map and was wondering what kind of reception it would receive.  It has been well received.

 Thank you Myrt for the recognition.