Think Outside of the Box!

What I learned today.

Today while researching a post on one of the Genealogy! Just Ask pages, I was reminded of how important it is to “think out side of the box”. Sometimes I think the reason a complete stranger to a database has more success than the owner of the tree is they have no known knowledge of the family. No knowledge of how they spelled the name, or where they lived. No knowledge of even who they married or a list of children. They are using the skills and tricks they know for online researching or knowledge of onsite searching that may help the researcher.

It’s a great reminder to me when I can’t find what I need to start from what I know and work back.

So many new collections, website updates, new discoveries are added every day. Many times we think we have searched all there is to search when in reality the searching is never ending.

I was reading on a newspaper site how many new images are added each day. Newspaperarchive.com has 2.05 billion articles and grows each day. Newspapers.com has 158, 378, 373 pages, and grows every day. Genealogybank.com added 9 million records in July. The chances of maybe finding a new clue if you will re-research is possible with all the new information added daily.

A for instance, Missouri has a right of privacy for deaths. https://s1.sos.mo.gov/records/archives/archivesdb/deathcertificates/ you see the certificates go through 1965. In January or so the deaths for 1966 will be added. On FamilySearch most researchers search by the search windows, missing so much information. Many of the collections are only partially indexed. The researcher just assumes who they are looking for is not there. When in reality they are, it is just a partially indexed collection. Here is an example:

It states there are 188,222 indexed names, when you click on the collection