If you have been doing family history research for any amount of time - that should be an answer that is easy to choose.

But you would be surprised at how many "genealogy types" take great pride in displaying their NUMBERS.

Some examples (NONE of these are mine by the way):

• "I" have traced my ancestry back to the 15th century
• "I" have 12,358 people in my family tree
• "I" have traced my ancestry back to Charlemagne, or the Mayflower, or Genghis Khan, or Adam

Well guess what? I don't care. Why? Because tracing one's family history is not a competition. If you want to make it so - go for it.

To me it is all about Quality. I would rather know that my great great grandfather was born in Kolmar (AKA Chodziesen and now Chodziez) on July 2, 1825 and was the first of any of my ancestors to come to America (in 1851 to San Francisco via the steamer ship "New Orleans") - and that he was a furniture dealer and had several stores on Broadway in Oakland, California and that he and his wife had 9 children, and only 5 girls lived to adulthood. And that he was a very early member of two B'nai B'rith organizations - one in Marysville and the other in Oakland. Etc Etc. It would be nice to know the names and BMD information about his parents and grandparents - but even if I did - how much more than that would I be able to find out? From 18th century newspapers in Germany/Prussia? I doubt it. Unless they were famous there is a one in a billion chance that I would know more than date information and how certain would that information be?

I make sure that I don't gum up my tree with a bunch of extraneous "stuff." And I don't seek additional names just to increase the numbers. I have attempted to discourage "research runaway" by establishing some pretty strict rules for myself regarding collateral lines and "sideways" research, not to mention what I call "downlines."

So in addition to all my direct line ancestors of course, I have what I call 3 levels - !st, 2nd, and 3rd for sibling research. How deep (both directions) or wide are explained below:

1st Level – Siblings of Parents (my Aunts and Uncles)

(Name them here and include names under each sub-category below)

• Spouses of parent’s siblings (my aunts and uncles by marriage)
• Siblings and siblings spouses of aunts and uncles by marriage
• Parents of aunts and uncles by marriage 
• Grandparents of aunts and uncles by marriage and their children and children's spouses
• Only one generation of downline of siblings of spouses of aunts and uncles by marriage
• Complete downline of all aunts and uncles (first cousins and their children, grandchildren,etc.)

2nd Level – Siblings of Grandparents (my Great Aunts and Great Uncles)

(Name them here and include names under each sub-category below)

• Spouses of grandparent’s siblings (my great aunts and uncles by marriage)
• Siblings and siblings spouses of great aunts and uncles by marriage
• Parents of great aunts and uncles by marriage
• No children or downlines from siblings of great aunts and uncles by marriage 
• Downline of great aunts and uncles children limited to two generations

3rd level – Siblings of Great Grandparents (my Great Great Aunts and Great Great Uncles)

(Name them here and include names under each sub-category below)

• Spouses of great grandparent’s siblings (my great great aunts and uncles by marriage)
• Parents of great great aunts and uncles by marriage
  
• No siblings of great great aunts and uncles by marriage
• Downline of great great aunts and uncles children limited to two generations

Now - there are certainly going to be exceptions, and those tend to be selected subjectively, depending on the situation. And this does not mean that some folks are not researched - the living might be found in order to provide clarity on some of the "selected" folks. But those living folks may not be added to my tree.


So there you have it - if you want to have a better chance at having a quality tree - one way is to limit the number of names that you include and the only way is to set and stick to your own rules.


By the way - I only have 820 names in my Family Tree - and unless someone starts having lots of babies - it won't get to a thousand any time soon. And there are just a small number who were born in the 1700s - and that's fine by me.

Approximately two weeks ago in my never-ending quest for more resources and repositories to research genealogy through newspapers, I wrote an article, Elephind - One To Watch  about a dynamic service that searches multiple online newspaper repositories at one time. I had considerable interest and have been in contact with them to discover more about their capabilities, technologies, etc.

Subsequent to reading my post, several genealogy bloggers have also written short articles about Elephind - attempting to inform their readership about this site. One of the articles was quite interesting in its comparison of results of a search using Elephind and the same search using the Library of Congress - Chronicling America newspaper research site. As a result of a comment penned by the Elephind folks in that article, I suggested that they write a guest post describing search technologies and the impact of fuzzy search on newspaper research.

So I am pleased to present the following guest post from Meredith Palmer of DL Consulting, the creators of Elephind:
______________________________________________________________________________________________

Search engine logic:  When is “fuzzy” search a bit too fuzzy?

By Meredith Palmer, DL Consulting

As a genealogist, family historian, or ancestor hunter, the almighty search engine is likely your most important forensic tool in the initial stages of discovery. These days, almost every website you come across, especially websites housing historical records, operates under some type of search functionality. It is the only way to wade through pages of documents efficiently and organize information in ways that make finding that hidden gem possible.

Faceted, federated, fuzzy…these are all terms to describe the various functions search engines can perform and each type has an important role to play in returning relevant results. Faceted search is something you are probably already familiar with as it is the function of filtering search results by criteria, such as date, title, or subject. Federated search is like an “uber-search”. It allows you to search multiple searchable resources with a single query. And finally, fuzzy search is…well…fuzzy.  It is a technique that helps us out by searching for words similar to the word we query, broadening the search to include likely alternative spellings. But, is it really helpful?

That depends. As Stefan Boddie recently described in response to a blog by Phillip Trauring on his website, www.bloodandfrogs.com, sometimes it can be very helpful but it may also be too clever for its own good, generating lots of false positive results. As Stefan points out, fuzzy search is useful in sorting through poor OCR text because it is intended to find close matches, assuming the resulting words are distorted versions of your query. The problem is the results are likely to include distorted versions of words similar to but not the same as your query. Suddenly, you have hundreds of thousands of results to sift through.

Chronicling America is an example of a website which uses fuzzy searching, for at least certain searches. To see how the search function on this site would behave I experimented with a search for my grandfather’s family name. 60 pages of results were returned, most matching a word similar to Meerse including “Monroe”, “Messrs”, “Melbourne”, “course”, “license” and many others. In a way, fuzzy search is like the wide angle lens on a camera. Turning the lens widens your view of the landscape including everything around you. If that’s too much to look at all at once, you need to dial back the focus, if the website you are using allows you to do that.

All historical news aggregators, such as Chronicling America, Trove, Papers Past, CDNC, as well as the pay per view news banks perform searches in slightly different ways. To make searching these sites easier and to provide a fast, federated search across all of them, Stefan Boddie and his colleagues built Elephind.com. Elephind incorporates many different digital newspaper collections and allows a user to query all of them at once. As Stefan says to Mr. Trauring, “Our goal is to make the search functions in Elephind better than those in the underlying collections like Chronicling America and Trove…” Therefore, the site is not set to conduct fuzzy search except on request.

If you would like to test out the search capabilities of Elephind and are interested in giving your feedback, I will pose the same questions Stefan asked Mr. Trauring. Do you think fuzzy search as implemented in Chronicling America is a good idea? Would it be better if searches were for exact matches by default, with some sort of "search for similar words" option the user could choose when desired? What other search features would make it easier to use these collections? Feel free to leave a reply here or contact me at Meredith@dlconsulting.com with your comments.

Now before all you experienced folks have a mini freak out at the title or think I am naive, please notice that I didn't say it was EASY. But genealogy really is pretty simple.

Now if you are a "newbie" you probably read books and blogs, attend webinars, listen to podcasts, etc, and find that all the stuff out there confuses the heck out of you. You hear words like evidence, and proof standards, and source citations, and you say to yourself "I just want to find out about some of my ancestors - I don't want to make a federal case out of it!"

Well guess what - genealogy is pretty simple. If I were to boil it down to 4 things to remember, they would be:

1. LOOK EVERYWHERE - This means that those documents and records that you are seeking to determine important dates and relationships? They aren't all online. Some of the ones online are free and some not, but many are in courthouses, libraries and other institutions.
2. TALK TO OLD PEOPLE - Family history researchers have two regrets - one of them is that they did not talk to their oldest relatives before they passed. Stories, photo identifications and other important information are lost once these relatives are gone. Frankly you should talk to all your relatives.
3. WRITE STUFF DOWN - Keep track of who and what you are searching; document where you found things. The official terms are research plans and source citations. Despite what they are called - just write it down. Experienced researchers will tell you that not writing stuff down when they started is also a regret.
4. USE YOUR OWN BRAIN - The analysis of all that stuff you have accumulated - evidence? Whatever you call it - just use your brain to analyze it to come up with conclusions - and don't talk yourself into making a premature conclusion. And please do not use somebody else's tree without your own analysis just because they published it somewhere.

That's it - it is no mystery and no secret. I repeat - I didn't say it was easy. The "not easy" part is why we develop experience and also why sometimes professionals are needed.

And guess what else - not only is genealogy simple - it is the most fun avocation I have ever had - because I have kept it simple.