4 August 2014 Or to put it another way: a kirchenbüch is a klokkerbøk is a church book. Regardless of the country in which we do research, our citations to church books have ...

2 August 2014 Solutions to the toughest research problems almost always call for an integration of sources. Because no one type of document can be relied upon to state a needed answer in plain words, researchers typically have to correlate bits and shreds of evidence from a myriad of records. A common reason why this effort fails, in rural areas, is a supposition that ...

31 July 2014 "Because, under the English Common Law, a freeman might marry a neife, or a villein a freewoman—the issue ... would follow the condition of the father, but the marriage was lawful. ... But the spurious issue of a neife, though by a free father, would be a villein." Hmhh. This doesn't sound like language in the good ol' U.S.A. of 1842! ...

29 July 2014 Here at EE, we hear this question often. How much do we have to look at before we can say we've done "thorough" or "reasonably exhaustive" research? If we've found direct evidence to answer our research question, is that enough? Do we really have to have three sources that all agree? ...

27 July 2014 When you seek an answer to a research question, do you head for sources that are the easiest to use or give the quickest answers? (What might we call that? The sin of immediate gratification?) When you ...

25 July 2014 Many libraries maintain card files and vertical files on a variety of subjects—particularly local libraries. These compiled works can be cited in much the same manner as manuscript materials. We may have ...

23 July 2014 Slaveowners and the enslaved are both featured in a massive project undertaken by the University College London. Legacies of British Slave-ownership, according to its creators, "is the umbrella for ...

21 July 2014 Today's image is a land map depicting part of early St. Clair County, Illinois. When you looked at it, did you say, My stars! What happened to Illinois? !! Historical researchers who use land records tend to mentally divide ...

19 July 2014 "Proof" is a loaded word. Different fields define it in radically different ways. Some even argue that proof cannot exist in historical research because none of us can say with certainty what happened in the past. All we can do ...

17 July 2014 Four basic rules should guide our notetaking when we do historical research. Just four. If you can remember these, you can avoid all kind of needless heartache, dead ends, and charges of plagiarism.