NGS 2012 Day 2: AM

Day 2 (Thursday) of the NGS conference began in a much nicer fashion than day 1: not much actual gridlock on the highway and I arrived in time for the first session, which was on BCG certification.  As this is on my 5 year plan, I thought I should get some basics.  I only stayed for the first half of the session (it ran through 2 session times), but learned a lot.  It is time to go through the manual with a fine tooth comb, up my research reports and work on friends research so that I can practice writing “client reports”.

After this, I headed to Indexes! Indexes! Indexes! How to Find People Who Don't Seem to Be There! with Elizabeth Shown Mills.  This was my first time seeing her speak and I was quite impressed by her presentation.  My favorite part was when she mentioned that “Cassell” can be indexed as “Cafell”, which I am hoping will help me with my Casell (but often spelled Cassel or Cassell) ancestors.

The best strategies she gave, in my opinion, was to use wildcards for vowels whenever possible and to consider ethnicity as a surname.  I never would have thought to look for Italian, Marco or German, Nicolas in my search, but if the person taking the information couldn’t understand or figure out the last name, they put it down like this, instead.  If you have had problems finding people in indexes (who hasn’t), I recommend purchasing this lecture CD.

I ended my morning by starting in a session, but by that 3rd hour of sitting, I had had enough, so I went to the expo to index the 1940 census and wander around.  I actually got so caught up in indexing (my favorite part was the indexer who put Long Island as a foreign country from the Bronx-indeed it sometimes seems like it is…), that I was a few minutes late to my lunch lecture.  I will write about this lecture and my afternoon sessions in the next post.

Report Assessment

Assessment has been the theme of the past few weeks of my life.  Both in my ProGen group, in one my classes at school (I got to create a rubric for a project) and at work at Starbucks (where my store got a 98:-D).  One of the most important parts of any plan, but often the most overlooked.

The most thought of forms of assessment tend to be surveys and focus groups.  The best way to assess how well something worked is by using a rubric, which gives concrete standards along a scale.

If you are like me, you often wonder whether your genealogy reports are up to the proper standards.  Even if you use reference books, articles or websites while writing them, it can still be hard to tell if you have the correct information in it.  For our March ProGen assignment, we used the BCG rubric to edit everyones research report from the prior month.

Used for genealogists applying for certification, this rubric gives standards for nearly every genealogy report you could need.  It is very simple, but you have to remember, it is very black-and-white.  There is no grey.  Either you have the indicator or you do not.

Let's look at an example.  You have written a research report for a client or yourself.  Looking at indicator "CR6", what is the quality of the sources you used?  BCG wants you to have mainly used original sources and primary information.  Did you?  If yes, then you meet the standards.  If you used some of these sources, you partially met expectations.  If your sources are derivative, with secondary information, you did not meet the standard.  If you can't even tell what type of sources you used, or didn't use any, you need to go back to your genealogy reference books and learn more about sourcing your work and the importance there-of.

I was pleased to see I had hit most of the standards and now that I have this rubric, I believe all of my reports will be meeting or exceeding standards in the future.

Do your research reports meet the BCG standards?  Is there another set of standards you use instead?