Look it up in the Dictionary


As a young student in elementary school, we had to use a dictionary to look up how to spell a word.  It never made sense to me to “look it up” because all words were listed in alphabetical order; so to “look it up” you had to have a basic idea of how to spell the word to begin with and if I knew how to spell the word, then I wouldn’t need to look it up!

Genealogy is similar; you have to know specific foundational information to “look it up”.  To research, you have to know a time-frame and a location. Without a small time-frame and specific location, a person could be looking and searching forever in a million different places.  Computers have made these types of searchers easier, but if the search engines don’t find anything, then you really need to narrow your searches down to a particular time frame and a specific location.

So, to “look it up” sounds easier than it really is; similarly in genealogy to “look it up” means you have some knowledge of time and place.

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