Organizing Research, T209, “Your Portable, Sortable Research Log”
8 am, Thursday, 11 May 2017

Methodology, F310, “Clueless? Maybe Not”
8 am, Friday, 12 May 2017

Speaker BIO: Jennifer Patterson Dondero has been an avid genealogist for more than twenty-five years, and a professional genealogist since 2005. Her specialties include lineage applications, southern research, and technology.

Jennifer describes her lectures.

“Your Portable, Sortable Research Log,” (T209, 8 am, Thursday, 11 May 2017)
Finding and navigating documents related to a research subject (regardless of the goal when found) is made easier by using a research log kept as a spreadsheet. This format was my secret to finally keeping a research log consistently and using it after the research was done. If you’re struggling to keep a research log, come see the advantages of a spreadsheet-based log.

“Clueless? Maybe not,” (F310, 8 am, Friday, 12 May 2017)
Do you have a research problem you’ve worked and worked on? You’ve found documents but it seems like you’ve still gotten nowhere? That’s what I thought when I was researching David Miller several years ago. One day I decided to carefully examine all the “useless”documents, everything that mentioned David but didn’t seem to tell me anything about him.

It turned out those documents were packed full of clues! You’ve probably got tons of clues hidden in documents you’ve found – even documents that give us information for one problem can have clues for other research questions. This lecture will help you learn to recognize and use them.

Example documents used are those commonly found in southern research. They are also frequently under utilized. Come prepared to participate in “brainstorming” ideas for the next phase of research as well as interpreting clues, and recognizing false clues.

Note: Keep up with posts related to these two lectures on Jennifer’s blog, “The Occasional Genealogist” both before and after the conference. http://www.theoccasionalgenealogist.com/p/ngs-2017-raleigh.html