25 June 2014 EE hopes your answer is "no." Today’s image demonstrates why. Not only do we need to double-check the factual details, but we also need to consider whether the “ready-made citation” actually covers all essentials. The census enumeration maps offered by one of our most-valued providers of digitized records suggests ...

23 June 2014 We love them—but can we trust them? When we're fortunate enough to find diaries or memoirs that relate to the subject of our research, we should pose at least the following questions ...

21 June 2014 Calendars! History researchers have dozens of them to contend with as their research leaps across time and space. The Nameday Calendar and the Book of Hours. The Advent Calendar. The French Revolutionary Calendar. The French Republican Calendar.

19 June 2014 Peer-review is not just a mark of excellence, it's a pathway to excellence. It's also a path with dual lanes. As researchers, we need peer review to help us identify our blind spots, remove our warts, and sharpen our ideas. As we gain expertise, we’ll also be called upon to give that peer-review to others. Are we ...

18 June 2014 Civil laws, across time, have created all sorts of legal words for the ways that property can change hands. Each term carries its own nuances, and clues often lurk within those shades of meaning. Knowing these, when we encounter them in a record, can shape the outcome of our research. ...

29 June 2014 It's a frustration we all know much too well in our census research. Whether we use an online provider of digital images or consult the old-timey microfilm, we find the needed county and state, search for our person of interest, and find nobody by that name. In fact, we find nobody with names—at least not given names. Page after page, there's nothing but initials—not just for heads of households, not just for grown males who may have preferred to be called I.J. rather than Ichabod Jehosophat, but for wives and children to boot. What's the problem? What's the fix? ...

17 June 2014 As researchers, we move from inquiry to conclusion in a four-step process. Below, we give you three of those steps. What do you think is missing? ...

16 June 2014 A while back, a new EE user posed a question we’ll paraphrase here: ‘I’m writing a biography of a nineteenth-century man. For his birth and immigration, every record has a different year. Do I combine all my sources into just one citation for each event? This would make a ridiculously long and unwieldy citation.’

15 June 2014 In records created prior to the 20th century, "consistent spellings" of a person's name seem as rare as puppy-dog feathers. When we use published records, whose transcribers or abstractors have misread the names, we seriously compound the problem. So: how do you handle those variants when you compose your narrative? Do you ...

14 June 2014 German "frakturs"—i.e., illuminated certificates of births, baptisms, and marriages—were originally commissioned by families to commemorate events and were prized as both art and family record. When using an original fraktur ...