APG-L Archives

Archiver > APG > 2008-02 > 1203530594


From: "Mills" <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Re; FTM and natural
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:03:14 -0600
References: <200802200953.m1K9rIO2009989@mail.rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <200802200953.m1K9rIO2009989@mail.rootsweb.com>


Peter wrote:
> What might have been have
> been satisfactory practive given the state of computing ten or twenty
> years ago might
> now be obsolescent. How many of todays clients are at least to some extent
> computer
> savvy. The experienced computer user will be familiar with printouts that
> are effectively
> tables of data and do not contain extraneous text. Has the time come (or
> is almost
> here) when there is no real need to create "sentences" to wrap around data
> values.

<snip>
what should a client report look like in a computer literate society.

Peter, you raise interesting points that deserve considering. However, your
last question/comment raises a different issue that blurs the line between
the work we do on our own families and the work we typically do for clients.

The research report that professional genealogists prepare for clients is a
totally different critter from a genealogical software printout, although a
gen-software printout might be appended in some cases. Typically this
exception occurs when we doing very extensive, ongoing research for a client
on a whole-family project for which the client specifically wants us to
maintain a database--and, perhaps, eventually write the family history. Most
clients, however, would not want us using their research hours to create
databases that homogenize the research they paid for.

A client report is a *research* report. As that name implies, it is a report
of the *research* we have done in that particular assignment. It begins with
a description of the project and the client's request, a summary of the
background information on which the search was based, and an itemization of
the repositories and record groups searched, including materials searched
with negative results. The findings we report are not tables of data we have
stripped from the context of the records in which they appear. They are not
bits of information (so-called "facts") isolated from that context and
strung together in a narrative that blurs the line between what the records
actually say and how we have interpreted it. Our findings do include
interpretation of wording and events, descriptions of flaws in the records,
evaluations of sources, and analyses of the whole body of material we have
accumulated in that particular research assignment, as well as an analysis
of how the new findings (or negative evidence, if that be the case)
illuminates, develops, or contradicts what was known prior to the
research--together with concrete suggestions for where and how the research
should proceed from this point

Within this framework, client reports have their variances--depending upon,
say, whether the client is wanting to know the history of the family or
whether the client is an attorney who needs evidence and interpretations of
that evidence for a court case. In either (or any) case, the output of
genealogical database software is, with rare exception, only a supplement to
the client report--if it is created at all.

Elizabeth

------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Track 4, Advanced Research Methodology & Evidence Analysis
Samford University Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research

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