Monday, August 17, 2009

A reluctant "accumulator" tries baby-steps towards being a full-fledged researcher

Over at the Olive Tree Genealogy blog, there was an interesting post about the impossibility of doing thorough genealogical research using only online sources. In the comments, someone drew the distinction between "accumulators" and "researchers"; the former are those who are interested in genealogy, but only enough to gather what's easily available online, while the latter are those who will put in the effort required to visit actual repositories and find the information only available there.

I have, unfortunately, generally been one of the former. Not because I, like those the post's author disapproves of, think that everything is on the internet or, more likely, think that I'm entitled to have everything I want be on the internet, but because I'm too. darn. busy.

I know, all of you are, too. Seriously, do you regularly take time off work to go find records, or are the repositories by you open on the weekends?

Since I finished my job, and my internship, and am not going back to work until after we've moved my sister into college, I had the time today to go visit the Brooklyn County Courthouse and look up some probate records I'd been wanting to find.

Stay tuned to see how it went!

1 comment:

Diana Ritchie said...

Hi Katie ~
I just plan my vacations around research! Seriously - I don't live near where any of my ancestors lived. Fortunately for me some of them are from Colorado and my family likes to vacation there. I would love to be a more serious researcher - but haven't won the lottery yet, so I just do what I can.