Genealogist or Name Collector?

Are you a genealogist or a name collector?  You say you don't know what I am talking about?  Okay, well let me explain. 

A genealogist is a person who RESEARCHES their family history.  You know, they do the research, they dig thru books, periodicals, looks at reels of microfilm and historical materials for leads & information on their ancestors.  They document each step as they dig, always careful to prove the things they find.  These people are able to provide you with where they got the information, volumn, book & page. 

A name collector is a person who believes that if it can be found on the internet and they can click on it, they can claim it.  I call it "click & claim" genealogy.   It doesn't come with sources, in fact most of the time the person has no clue what he has claimed, doesn't know the difference between a pedigree and a family group sheet, and is clueless about what to do with what he just claimed.  He just knows he knows that name and that's really all that matters to him.

Some hints you may be talking to a name collector -

• His data base has blah blah thousands of names
• He can't tell you where he got any of it from
• If he can tell you anything, its somebody's website
• If he can tell you anything its "so & so's gedcom"
• He has tons of dates but no places
• He has no idea who the people named in the notefields are
• He's never looked at a census record in his life

I'm sure that name collectors are perfectly nice people, I'd just rather not talk genealogy with them. 

Name collecting disguised as a genealogist?  Not a good thing!

Happy Researching!
Karen

Genealogist or Name Collector?

I really enjoy chatting with people about their genealogy research. When I go out on my speaking engagements - talking with the people who come to hear my talks is a really cool part of doing the talks. People inspire me - not only with new talk idea's but with research thoughts and success stories.

Inevitably I end up somewhere along the way with someone who has XXXX Thousand people in their data base & they are related back to XXXXX number of kings & queens - not that being related to kings & queens is a bad thing... we've all heard all those stories... I've even discussed them to some degree here.

My problem with this whole thing is multi-fold - let me explain -

• Documentation
• Research
• Documentation
• Research
• Documentation
• Research

As I see it there are two types of people working the genealogy circuit these days. There are those who truly do the research. They pull the records, the census, the vital records, the county histories. They know the work that goes into proving each person on the family tree. They've done it. They've done the searches, they been to the libraries, dug thru the newspapers and paid for the copies.

Then there are the name collectors - the "click & claimers*".... the ones who have no real idea of how to research or where to even begin. The ones who think that two weeks on Ancestry can provide them with everything they need to do their family history. The ones who are so gullible to believe everything they find online - without ever bothering to even prove one generation. You know the ones - their chart has the children born before the parents, in a state that didn't even exisist at the time.

Which are you?

Happy Researching!

Karen

*Click & Claim genealogy is the thought process that states if I can click on it I can claim it as my own forever & ever!