Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Reports

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Courtesy PublicDomainImages.net "Car Burning Rubber"

Deadlines

I used to dread writing reports, from grade school on. Deadlines caused dread, and there was no pleasure (or learning) from scrabbling together all the sources into something readable. When I began doing genealogy research, writing reports of my findings never entered my mind! Not even when I found massive help from various books and articles. I never saw myself then as a contributor to the body of knowledge; only as a consumer. 


From Consumer to Contributor

https://www.wikitree.com/

Two things changed my viewpoint. The first was finding Wikitree, where I took responsibility for the linked profiles for many of the family members I had found through my years of research. The Wikitree focus on sourcing, collaboration and narrative, not just a bare skein of facts, began to change that "consumer" stance, into becoming a contributor. 


Focus and Collaboration

The other event that taught me how to contribute better was our SKCGS Study Group of the book Research Like A Pro, where we learned to focus and plan the research, write citations into a research log, and write as new facts are found. I found writing timelines, in particular, profoundly powerful. And I'm happy to say that while timelines are incredibly important, they help produce stories, which I've come to see as the end product of all our work. 


Writing as Analysis

Sometimes it seems that "writing it up" takes too much time, time that I need for other things, like research! What I have found though, is that writing time is a valuable - even critical - part of the research process. Writing opens up another part of my brain and a whole new level of analysis. All of those good strategies we've studied about such as gathering context, researching the FANs (Friends, Associates and Neighbors) and writing good citations come into play as the story is written. And we cannot meet the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard) until that report is written and shared.


Sharing and Collaboration

Collaboration is a wonderful part of this process as well. I've come to value the feedback of my readers, which is why I love comments on blog posts! If you want some peer review before publishing, send your writing to our Family History Writing group: https://skcgs.groups.io/g/Family-History-Writing.

I urge you to think about writing reports in a new light. School would have been a lot more fun for me had I learned all this when young and it is good news that my research does not have to die when I'm gone - the stories will live on, at least those I've written and shared. We would love to publish your story here on the blog. Submit to m.strickland@skcgs.org and thank you.


Valorie Zimmerman


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