Compiled Sources & Where to Find Them: Difference between revisions

Regardless of your experience as a family history researcher in using primary and original records, and no matter how many years of experience in researching family trees, this important checklist of Compiled Sources will help you more comprehensively search for data already constructed on your family lines. Family history seekers are guaranteed a pleasant surprise as they strike ‘gold’ by discovering already completed research on at least one or some in-common ancestral family lineages. This list helps you to more meticulously search in secondary or what genealogists call compiled sources. It’s to help you identify, then search as many of today’s offerings for completed family genealogical (research) work which in today’s world has become a quantumly more complex and unwieldy task than ever, from library and archival catalogs and published inventories of collections, to online databases, family websites and surname-specialty sources! So, how does one keep current on all the repositories, web sites, and other places compiled (or survey) sources in order to implement this fundamental step in the research process?  

The ‘lists’ of compiled sources in this article are a great start. Collectively, these literally represent family history 'silos' containing billions of ancestral names with already compiled data about them! The searches in these sources should be performed before you begin actual genealogical researching in original record sources.

#Search in indexes (and in the original record) sources in the host country of settlement  

#Search in indexes (and in the original record) sources in the country of origin (works as a first-step IF surname is not too common)

=== Step 1. Preliminary search in home sources<br> ===

=== Step 2. Preliminary search for compiled genealogies, biography, local history <br> ===

Like a research scientist before seeking an advanced degree or a government-sponsored grant to fund forensic or frontier research or a campaign of discovery, preliminary search-protocol requires diligent and broad-spectrum searches for and in compiled sources to determine ‘what’s already researched and thus far discovered in the chosen area of scientific research. Every researcher—beginners or scientific—must do the same, diligently! It pinpoints on a ‘map’ more precisely where you’ve ‘arrived’, in your research, by learning what’s already “known” or a given, about your family. How will you know where you want to go if you don’t know the current point to where you’ve progressed in your family’s historical research? If your preliminary searches stops after completing ‘closet or attic or basement searches’ on shelves and in boxes for family and home sources, you ignore outside sources, that is far too limited in scope for what should be a comprehensive and more thorough search for other compiled sources available and waiting to be discovered outside the home! To smugly fold the arms, cock the head back and think, ‘That’s all I need to know; now let’s start researching in original and primary record sources’—is naïve at least and, at worst, it short-circuits the comprehensive research process!

This ‘Second step’ is a worthy strategy in the research process which everyone ought to employ—but regrettably, it is also the most overlooked part of the research process, or is routinely discarded or not always considered standard procedure. Millions worldwide currently seek their ancestry; most of them have made some of their findings accessible in some form or manner. Why then would we tend to ignore these “findings”?

Why would any true genealogist or passionate family history buff discard the standard of seeking and searching in compiled sources outside the home, by narrowly considering that no one else is “qualified” to research? For every thousand family history compilers who may generate fuzzy genealogical ‘data’, there are many&nbsp;very competent researchers and writers who have credibly researched and written professional-level family history compilations. It is especially for these latter "credible" compilations of competent researchers for which we all should seek and review.  

Here’s the ‘Second step’ every resaercher should&nbsp;employ in the research process—but it is also the most overlooked part of the research process and not always considered standard procedure.  

Here’s a good a list of places for where to find online, published and manuscript (compiled) sources on family surnames and lineages:  

 Dallas TX Public Library <span id="fck_dom_range_temp_1261416119601_644" />  

