I'm behind in my assignments for the Salt Lake Community College, Genealogy Course. Right before RootsTech I had an assignment that wasn't hard to do, it just took a lot of time to get done. Time is something I didn't have right then so I put off completing it. I am happy to report that things have settled down enough to get back on track again.
The assignment this week was to look for previous research that others had done on a person in my family. I selected my great-grandfather John Henry Weatherwax, Sr. born 3 Mar 1855 in Wilton, Saratoga, New York. We needed to create a Research Log in RootsMagic and record where we searched and the results. I have 14 different entries in the 7 page Research Log that I handed in. Let me just tell you it took FOREVER to go over the results in each search. With all said and done I really didn't find anything new that I hadn't already seen. Maybe I should have selected someone I knew nothing about.
The next step after the research was to create a SHORT Research Report. All it needed was three simply things.
1. Research Objective
2. Summary of searches
3. Conclusion
The hardest part for me was trying to make 14 research log entries into a SHORT report. I finally got it down to almost 2 pages. I had 2 lines spilling over to a third page but I didn't want to lower the font size any smaller to get it onto exactly 2 pages. To me 2 pages isn't exactly what I call SHORT either. Oh, well I'm sure I've over thought this whole thing way too much.
The fun part for me was the conclusion. It felt very professional to write up my findings and where I would start next in my research. I have been horrible about searching for one thing and running off on different leads for totally different people in my database. It was really nice to just focus on one person at a time. I do have notes on other things I observed so my findings will be helpful when working with other family members. As hard and time consuming as this assignment was, I rather enjoyed where it took me in the end.
See ya tomorrow, for tomorrow is always another genealogy day!
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