Ah, the excitement of an Olympic year! By the time you read this, we’ll be mere weeks away from the point where Paris welcomes in world-class athletes to compete in all manner of sports.
Yet those athletes don’t simply turn up to their event and hope for the best. They spend time practising in a variety of ways to ensure that they can deliver when it counts.
Our family history skillset
Our own pursuits as family historians are – mercifully – less physically demanding than those of the Olympic athletes, but the principle of practising our skills still applies.
Take the humble search, for instance. It might seem like the easiest thing in the world, and yet running a really good search is a skilled endeavour, one which truly benefits from us bringing our ‘little grey cells’ to the table.
Just like those sports climbers who prepare themselves by running, doing cardio workouts, finger strength training and practising on the climbing wall, we have to hone our skillset in a range of ways if we’re to deliver a really thorough search for our ancestors.
In a moment we’re going to think about what qualities make for a good ancestral search.
And then, if you fancy getting ‘match fit’ for the next time you’re on the trail of an elusive ancestor, I have some training tasks for you to sharpen your search skills. Most reassuringly, you can do all of these from the comfort of your own home, you don’t need specialist sports kit, and you can even eat a pile of biscuits during your genealogical workout…
Have you learnt the skills for a good search?
Search skills are a core component of family history research! Those elusive ancestorsdo this well, then we need to identify what makes a good searcher in the first place.
