Do You Know What You Have?

Between Google searches, mindlessly surfing the internet, and websites that serve up results from numerous databases, it is easy to locate an image of a record and have no idea what that record is of.

It’s important that you find out and not assume.

There are several reasons, including:

  • citations can’t be made if you don’t know what the record is
  • you may have a cropped portion of the original image
  • the record may be just one page in a multi-page document
  • there may be other records generated as a part of the process that created the record you did find an image of

Ask your genealogy colleagues, genealogy society members, genealogy Facebook group members, etc. what the record is of if you don’t know. Not asking and assuming could end up creating a brick wall you never should have had in the first place.