Reflections

     Being a librarian in a research library for the last seven years, I've had a fair bit of experience with databases in my profession.  Ancestry, FamilySearch, Heritage Quest, and other genealogy databases are used by our patrons on a daily basis, so I much know the best ways of navigating them to explain them to our researchers.  I wanted to try out a variety of new databases to see if any of them could benefit our patrons, and see how they would apply to a genealogical setting.


     The variety of databases that were searched in this class was interesting.  I almost always found something that related to genealogy, even if it was a stretch for a true researcher.  The court cases were my favorite to search, followed by DNA information.  A researcher could find a lot of information in those areas if they knew where and how to look. 


    While I knew most of the search strategies covered in this class from taking other database classes, the teacher covered them in a different way than other teachers that I enjoyed.  It's always beneficial to learn a new way of imparting information, so that when you go to teach other that information, you can tailor your learning strategy to them.  I especially liked making my project a blog so that it was easy to keep up with and easy to read.  Reading others' blogs was informative as well.


   Overall, I believe that this was a worthwhile class in database searching.  It allowed a good and comprehensive look into a variety of databases, and covered search tactics and filtering to ensure a result list that is comprehensive and relevant.

Statistical database

I searched the Pew Research Center for statistics about genealogists and found a very interesting statistic in a report about public library users. 

 I found an article that mentioned genealogy in libraries specifically:

 

 

Access historical documents or archives or genealogical records: 25% of Americans ages 16 and older used their library in the past year to do so. African-Americans are more likely than others to have done this: 29% used the library this way, compared with 23% of whites and 19% of Hispanics.

 

Zickuhr, Kathryn, et al. Libraries, Patrons, and e-Books
Part 4: How People used the Library in the Past Year. Pew Internet: Pew Research Center, 2012. Retrieved from: http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/06/22/part-4-how-people-used-the-library-in-the-past-year/

 

Searchwise, this database was the hardest yet to use, in my opinion.  There was no thesaurus, the topics to browse at the top were very general and easy to get lost in, and no limiters on the search page.

 

Contentwise, this was the only mention of genealogy that I could find other than research done on online hobbyists from 2007.  Not very helpful to a researcher, so I don't think this database would have much relevant information for one of our genealogical patrons.

Image Searching

 

I Googled “genealogy” and chose one of the results on the first page.  There are many options for pictures regarding genealogy, including slides from powerpoints that provide helpful research data.  There are also lots of amusing comics about genealogy.

Lee, Vic. Pardon My Planet. 2008. King Features Syndicate. Retrieved from Google Image Search, https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&authuser=0&ei=kwA5VpOQMYax-wHMmL2YAQ&ved=0CBUQqi4oAQ

 

I searched in the Immigration collection of the Library of Congress American Memory project for the term “Genealogy” and found a great picture of a sod house in Loup County, Nebraska.  Many of the collections would be helpful for genealogists in this database, because they nearly all have a historical slant to them, and there are family trees of American presidents, pictures of letters, and other historical documents that would be of interest to a researcher.

I chose this image because a large number of pioneers lived in houses such as these, and it’s interesting to think that one of your ancestors might have lived in one.

 Nebraska State Historical Society, [Digital ID, e.g., nbhips 12036] . Retrieved from The Library of Congress American Memories Project,  http://memory.loc.gov/

Searchwise, I like Google images better.  It's easy to see a large number of images quickly, and to quickly search alternate keywords for better options.  Genealogy researchers enjoy looking at comics and old photographs, and I've had many patrons find pictures of their ancestors that they were unaware existed.

Contentwise, you have to be careful about Google image search.  It can devolve into inappropriate images amazingly quickly.  The Library of Congress's website has images which were selected and uploaded, so it's safe for anyone to search, and the accuracy and veracity of the images has been (hopefully) authenticated.  Anyone on Google can put anything they want on their pictures, even claim pictures of complete strangers as their ancestors, so you have to be extra careful in verifying any information you find on that search engine.

Social Search Engine

I used Socialmention.com to search for the term “genealogy” and got 104 hits.  Many of them were pictures of specific peoples’ ancestors or documents about them, but I did find a long story about a person’s ancestors that was linked on the website Reddit.  Not sure how helpful this would be to a genealogy researcher, except that you could see what updated information was available on a subject or see if anyone else was searching for your ancestor.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Genealogy/comments/3rdqkl/relatives_on_the_wildstein_list/?

 

 

 

Searchingwise, it's more like a Google search than a database search.  There aren't really any limiters, no thesaurus, and it just updates realtime mentions of the selected term.

 

Contentwise, the results would be hit-or-miss, mostly miss.  It's possible you could find a good mention, like the one listed above, but I believe this database would mostly be helpful for researchers of popular culture and trending news items, although Reddit does seem to have a fairly active genealogy group.



DIALOG

DIALOG

I searched for the topic of genealogy and family history in the educational category, and using it to teach history.  Without limiters, I retrieved 84 results. I added one limiter: teaching methods as a subject.  Using this limiter I narrowed it down to 30 results.

 

Since I’ve already searched ERIC Databases, I believe I’ve found these articles before, so it is a good article to use as a reference.

 

Searching other categories brings up a wealth of different information.  There are newspaper articles, magazine articles, scholarly papers, and other documents available through this site.  Wading through all the hits can take a lot of time, however.  I did find articles with lists of books about  genealogy for kids, articles on why DNA is important in genealogy, and other topical and relevant articles.  I think that the more specific your search, the better your results in this database because of the amount of information available.

 

The searching itself was similar to other databases: Boolean searching, a pop-up thesaurus, limiters and filters on the side of the page.  One nice aspect of this database is the ability to choose a category before the search actually begins, narrowing down the amount of databases that are searched.  Another nice thing about this database is that it highlights the terms that you have searched, letting you find them quickly and easily in the snippet of the hits and allowing you to judge if the hit is what you need without actually selecting the result and reading through an abstract.  This could be a good resource for genealogists as long as they are not general about their searching; the more search terms the better, but there is enough information involved that almost anything could find some results.

 

LexisNexis

LexisNexis
 Using the LexisNexis search box, I did a search for my topic.  I searched for a simple keyword “genealogy” and received 987 hits.  The second hit was from 1996, so I decided to limit the amount of years covered in my search.  I also decided to add (family history) as a search term, so my search looked like this:

Genealogy OR (family history)

I also limited the hits to options from October 1, 2014 through October 12, 2015.  This time there were over 1000 hits.  Adding the OR option added a lot of hits, even though I severely limited the years of recall.  On the left were a list of limiters as well, and I used that to choose an option of only looking at “Magazines and Journals,” which limited my hits to 20.

The fifth article, Genealogy with Janice, has a number of cute games that you can play with kids to teach them about genealogy.  It’s something that a patron might search.


I then limited to only court cases and searched about genealogy and DNA.  I found an interesting court case. 

The illegitimate child of a woman was suing the two legitimate children for a share of the mother’s, grandfather’s, and grandmother’s estates.  The two legitimate children filed an objection that the illegitimate child was not provably a child of the mother and some evidence was erroneously entered into the case.  Various witnesses came forward to testify that the mother was, indeed, pregnant as a teenager before her marriage, and the child was raised elsewhere.  The objection was overruled.

I don’t think that the LexisNexis database would be very helpful for any of my patrons.  Genealogy researchers are less interested in newspaper articles and more interested in documents that prove their research.  The exception to this may be the court cases; the case on the illegitimate son was interesting, and would send a genealogical search in a new direction for sure!  Depending on how far back the court cases are documented on the site, they could be very helpful for an experienced genealogist looking for information on a hard-to-find relative!

Searchwise, LexisNexis was fairly standard.  It utilizes Boolean searching, limiters, and a thesaurus to aid searchers, and has a limited number of databases that it covers.  A reporter looking for old newspaper articles, a paralegal searching for court cases, and a business-person looking for operating information for a business would find the database very useful.

 

WorldCat

I began my search on WorldCat by looking for books with "beginner" and "genealogy" as search terms, and only books published in the years 2013-2015.

I retrieved 18 results, and the second and third were very good for a beginner genealogist, covering both online and print sources:

But there were only 18 results, and I knew I could do better.  So I went back to the search screen and modified my search terms slightly.

By changing that one term slightly, my recall jumped to 177.  The only problem is, the books that were found were not relevant to my search other than the first and fourth.  It was too broad.

This is why it is important to do multiple searches on a database.  If I'd done the second search first, I would have been satisfied with my incomplete results, not realizing that a better search was available with more relevant results.  I went back to the first search and chose title number 2.

It gives all the information that you need to find the book and to decide if the book contains the information that you need.

At the top it has a quick reference for some information about the book, and the very first link is a list of libraries that own the item, starting with those from your home state (or at least the home state of the organization that you are getting access through).

 Towards the bottom of the page there is a list of subjects that you can click on to search for more results using the terms you need.  Almost like a thesaurus, it you think about it.

I learned that there aren't very many books published in the last two years on beginning genealogy.  But the older books work fine, because many of the search strategies translate well through databases and in the physical world.  Since I looked for a thesaurus, I also realized that there is a button marked "Subjects" that will help you find subject keywords to search.

WorldCat is one of my favorite databases to search.  I can look for items that are common or rare, see what libraries have the resources that I need, and determine if it is likely that they send them through InterLibrary Loan.  I can determine if there is a resource on a subject for a patron, because if there is such a thing, it's likely that there is a record for it on WorldCat.  I use it almost every day in my job, and I'm always learning something new about it.

PUBMED

This time, for the medical database PUBMED's search, I decided to search for articles about how genetic tests can impact genealogy research.  I had to search a few times to get the results I wanted.  I typed in “Genealogy” as my first term, and the search box offered me the term “Genetic Genealogy.”  

This brought up almost 43,000 hits, and the first few were not promising.  I then added the word “Ancestry” to the search field.  That cut down the number of hits to 122.  The first five were still not exactly what I was looking for, so I added the search terms “family” and “history.”  This gave me 13 hits, and the first five, and especially the second one, were exactly what I was looking for on the database.  My final search strategy was - ("genetics"[Subheading] OR "genetics"[All Fields] OR "genetics"[MeSH Terms]) AND ancestry[All Fields] AND ("genealogy and heraldry"[MeSH Terms] OR ("genealogy"[All Fields] AND "heraldry"[All Fields]) OR "genealogy and heraldry"[All Fields] OR "genealogy"[All Fields]) AND ("family"[MeSH Terms] OR "family"[All Fields]) AND ("history"[Subheading] OR "history"[All Fields] OR "history"[MeSH Terms]).  I clicked on the second article, [Genetic aspects of genealogy], then looked at the options for similar articles on the right side of the screen.  I clicked "See More" under the first five listed.

Clicking this brought up 263 results, and some were exactly what I was looking for.

The farther along you look in the list, the more relevant hits there are, interspersed with the more specific hits about places or family names.

There are many articles on this database regarding genetics, although most of them are incredibly technical in nature.  A layperson like a genealogy patron at my library would probably not find most of the articles on this website helpful.

The database is very interesting to search.  It automatically gives thesaurus options based on the words that you type; it lists these options under the search space for a researcher to choose if desired.  It has a number of filters, including a limiter for time (last five years, last ten years) and article types.    There are more specific databases that a searcher can use as well, so a searcher can perform a general search or only look through one of the many available databases.  It also shows you the specific details of your search, with the Boolean operators delineated clearly, so that you can see exactly what you are searching for and make any necessary changes to accurately search for results.  It gives a history of the searches you have made and the items you have viewed, so that you can keep track of the direction in which your searching has taken you.  

This database has a lot of very useful information on it, but none really relevant to the type of information that I usually search for my patrons at the library.  Most of my patrons are looking for very general information regarding genetics, and giving them any of the articles found on this website would simply confuse them.  The database would be very helpful to medical professionals.

ERIC

I felt that the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database would be the better choice for this search, following through on the search I performed last week.  To see the difference between a natural vocabulary search and a controlled vocabulary search, I started with a few terms that worked on the last search, except that I replaced “genealogy” with “family history,” because to me that seems more generic, and more like what a patron would use. 

37 hits.  Although the first one was close, I didn’t really get anything that I could use for my first three results: 

So I checked the thesaurus to see if there were any similar vocabulary terms that would improve my results list.  The first search term came up immediately: 

“Teach” didn’t come up as a term, either, but it provided an alternative: 

History was a valid term, so I kept that one.

My new search looked like this: 

And my first three results out of 46: 

Still not really what I was looking for.  Interestingly enough, I did find a few good results at the bottom of my search list, and a few that redirected me to JSTOR (my last database), and so I’d already seen them.  I wondered what would happen if I removed “instruction” from my search terms, but that didn’t work well, either.  I removed “instruction” and changed “history” to “history instruction” and got what I was looking for.  I had fewer hits, but they were more relevant to my searching: 

The third article is exactly the sort of information that I was aiming for in this search: a way to use genealogy and local history to teach students that history isn’t a dry, soulless list of dates and names.  It was lived by our ancestors, and without it happening, we wouldn’t be here today. 

I like the idea of controlled terms in theory, but I don't think that they are as easy to use as natural language, and I think it stumps a number of people who try to use the databases we offer at the library.  Patrons are used to natural language searching like on Google, and when databases don't bring up what they need after a natural language search, they just assume the databases don't have the information and go back to Google.

JSTOR Database

For my first search, I performed a very basic search.  I simply typed “genealogy” in the search field with no limiters.  I wanted to discern what type of content the JSTOR search database contained, so that I could limit my search to a more specific topic inside genealogy. 

What I learned: Content.  It brought up 49,937 results, based on psychology and soft sciences, with articles about genealogy and morals, Neitzsche, and irony.  Now that I’ve ascertained the type of information that this database contains, I know that I want to focus on genealogy and history.  I did a few more searches, filtering out terms with Nietzsche (who apparently wrote an article about the genealogy of morality), and found an article on using genealogy to teach history.  It gives some good tips on getting children engaged in a genealogy search, and ways to integrate that into a lesson in history that is interesting and dramatic for kids.

What I learned: Searching.  JSTOR uses the typical Boolean searching applications, so using the Boolean symbols and wildcards I crafted a search that returned the articles I needed.

Reflection: JSTOR is a database with articles on historical and psychological topics.  The database is fairly comprehensive inside of those parameters.  It would not help with actual genealogy research, but it does have tips for utilizing genealogy in a larger capacity in life, such as using it to teach history.

The top five retrieved items were: 

My name is Sarah Ross, and I'm a student in Texas Woman's University's Library Science Master's Program.  This is a blog to document database searches for my Online Database search class.  I'll be focusing on the various aspects of Genealogy for my searches.  I work in the genealogy department of the Midland County Public Library, and I hope to find more resources for our genealogy patrons.