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Category: 14 Day Challenge

14 Day Challenge #14: Research Report

14 Day Challenge #14: Research Report

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] I did it. I finished the fourteen-day challenge and I’m a better researcher for it. Every time I do a project like this, I finding myself wanting to do another one because I feel like the next time I can do it better in less time. That’s called “progress.” One of…

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14 Day Challenge #13: Report Outline

14 Day Challenge #13: Report Outline

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] I like the report-writing part of the research process. The precise thinking that it requires suits me. But I find it challenging on two levels — organizing the information in a logical way and choosing words that will make the writing tight. Separating those two activities might, theoretically, make both of…

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14 Day Challenge #11-12: Research Log

14 Day Challenge #11-12: Research Log

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] Last post, I talked about how I don’t like to plan ahead when it comes to vacations and the like and how I don’t like to plan ahead when it comes to research either. And I mentioned that I don’t think I’m going to try to change that because, actually, I…

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14 Day Challenge #9-10: Citations

14 Day Challenge #9-10: Citations

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] All of a sudden the other night Without thinking about what I was doing I realized I was sitting in front of my computer Pulling together the pieces Of information I was going to need To create a citation For the record I’d just found Before digging Into the information it…

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14 Day Challenge #8: Research Plan

14 Day Challenge #8: Research Plan

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] I don’t like planning ahead. I mean, how would I know, months in advance, that I am going to be feeling like heading out on, say, a week-long trip to who knows where, on any particular day and at any particular time? I’d like it a whole lot better if I…

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14 Day Challenge #7: Hypothesis

14 Day Challenge #7: Hypothesis

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] Let’s review. Day 1: Research Question Day 2: Objective I took a look at my tree on FamilySearch and decided to see if I could find a death date and place for Nicholas Connolly, my great-great grandfather. In the forty years that I’ve been “doing genealogy,” it never occurred to me…

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14 Day Challenge #5-6: Locality Guide

14 Day Challenge #5-6: Locality Guide

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] My research question for the 14 Day Challenge focuses on finding a death in Halifax, Yorkshire, England. I’ve never been there and, quite frankly, I couldn’t have picked the county out on an unmarked map a week ago. I could joke that it’s pretty tough to do locality-based research when you…

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14 Day Challenge #4: Analyze the Sources

14 Day Challenge #4: Analyze the Sources

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] Today’s challenge is to carefully examine the two English census records that provide the information that serves as evidence for my great-great grandfather’s death. Building a strong foundation for new research is very important, right? In the works-for-me research process that I’ve developed over the last few years, this is the…

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14 Day Challenge #3: Create a Timeline

14 Day Challenge #3: Create a Timeline

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] I love timelines. Years ago, I worked on a complex project to piece together the lives of Myrta Z. Belknap and her daughter Lucy Theodate Holmes (you’ll recognize the names if you’ve read The Devil in the White City) and I created an Access database to sort and organize the many events…

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14 Day Challenge #2: Create an Objective

14 Day Challenge #2: Create an Objective

[I’m participating in the 14 Day Mini Research Like a Pro Challenge. Thanks to Diana and Nicole at Family Locket for sharing their expertise and guiding us through the experience.] I’m on a train, snuggled into an economy sleeper, heading west from Chicago, and that gives me a lot of time to think about the ancestor I chose for this challenge — my great-great grandfather, Nicholas Connelly. Truth be told, I really need to do a bit of research to solidly…

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