The race is not to the swift. . .

but to the best sourced and most credible!

 

Ten thousand names in your personal database verses every fact sourced and documented!  What is best?  What describes and best documents the individuals who are listed in the database?  Anyone can come up with a name; but can you restructure a life?  Are you researching “names” or “people”?

I enjoy learning about each person.  I like collecting everything and anything I can about each individual because that is what teaches me about that person and about their life.  It is impossible to understand a book by just reading a few pages here and there, likewise a person, who is much more complex, is difficult to understand by just gathering a few documents.  In fact, you are never done collecting documents and sources on a person because new sources continue to become available from online sources or from family sources.

The most accurate way to reconstruct a person’s life is by continually gathering everything available.  Even the most mundane and insignificant source may be valuable in one way or another at some future point. 

The real question to ask is:

am I gathering names or am I reconstructing lives?


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