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.