Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again
-
Time for some more Genealogy
Fun!!
Our assignment from Randy Seaver (via Linda Stufflebean, who suggested the topic) is to:
1) What five reference books (and only 5) would you recommend to a beginning genealogy researcher to have on their bookshelf?
Here's mine:
1. My first pick is Drew Smith’s Generation by Generation (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2023). I recommend this book because of Smith’s approach in covering genealogy research, not by record group, but by methodology. Begin with yourself and work through 20th-century sources first. For a review of the book, see https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2023/04/a-new-beginning-genealogy-resource-drew.html.
*2. George Morgan, How to Do Everything with Your Genealogy (McGraw Hill, 2015). Parts of the book would be dated due to changes in online sources, but he covers the fundamentals on researching different kinds of records.
*3. Drew Smith, Organize Your Genealogy: Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher (Family Tree Books, 2016). Beginners need to start early to organize the materials they collect, both as paper documents and as digital files.
*4. Emily Anne Croom, Unpuzzling Your Past (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2010). This book is old, but the methodologies she suggests are very useful as the beginner moves into being an intermediate researcher.
5. Elizabeth Shown Mills, Your Stripped Bare Guide to Citing & Using History Sources (Genealogical Publishing Company, 2025). This is a brand-new book. It is a shorter version of her Evidence Explained volume, version 4, and might be more manageable for a beginning researcher. It has “thirteen guidelines for evidence analysis, thirteen guidelines for documentation, and fourteen templates for citing any kind of history source.” What is missing from the larger volume are the explicit examples for various kinds of genealogical sources.
The advantage of the earlier published volumes listed above (*)
is that they might be found at a reduced price on the second-hand market.
I like your choices and, like with Randy's choices, we share two options.
ReplyDeleteI thought about a book for organization, but I ended up choosing citations over it. I like your approach also.
ReplyDeleteI purposely chose books differently from Randy. This way, a newbie will get lots of choices.
DeleteThe Source is one of my all time favorite reference books. You and I chose three of the same books. :)
ReplyDeleteThe Source is my favorite, too. I read that book cover to cover when I first started. Of course, I didn't understand it all at first. I like the book better than Val Greenwood's.
DeleteHad the list been for ten books, Generation by Generation would have made it...I definitely like it and think it's another great book for those just starting out.
ReplyDelete