I am always intrigued by the authoritative responses given to enquirers by Anne Burgess, so knowledgeable, I often wonder at her sources and more importantly how costly and accessible. Could I ask that she divulge and perhaps list some of the more relevant sites for use by subscribers? The obvious most desirable choices are freebee sources but are they reliable? Perhaps Anne would care to share her knowledge in a more general way for the advantage of us less informed readers, thank you. Jim Eaton

On 26/02/2013 10:19, Jim Eaton wrote: > I am always intrigued by the authoritative responses given to enquirers by Anne Burgess, so knowledgeable, I often wonder at her sources and more importantly how costly and accessible. Could I ask that she divulge and perhaps list some of the more relevant sites for use by subscribers? The obvious most desirable choices are freebee sources but are they reliable? > > Perhaps Anne would care to share her knowledge in a more general way for the advantage of us less informed readers, thank you. Perhaps she might - in my experience Anne is very generous with her help. But why do you assume that her sources are websites? I'm sure Anne will not object to me saying that she and I belong to a generation who learned (and continue to learn) much of what we know from the printed word. There is a lot more information available in printed books than ever appeared in any digestible form on the Internet. And I don't think that is ever going to change significantly. Many of my sources (I labour in a neighbouring part of the vineyard to Anne) are in the hundreds of printed books which line the walls of my study. Many of these have been scanned and OCRed and can be found (often for free) on some website or other. But the important difference is that I have read them, or otherwise made myself familiar with their contents. And having absorbed the information in one such source, I then naturally compare and link it with others I have known, thus often ending up with a whole that is sometimes significantly more than the sum of its parts. All this takes time, and thought, and consideration. If you hope you can replicate such wisdom by a simple click of the mouse then I fear you are in for a disappointment. Gavin Bell

On 26/02/2013 10:19, Jim Eaton wrote: > ... > > Perhaps Anne would care to share her knowledge in a more general way for the advantage of us less informed readers, thank you. For a slightly more light-hearted reponse to Jim's query, can I quote the story of the Engineer who (a good many years ago) was called in to deal with a malfunctioning machine. He observed it carefully for 5 minutes, from various viewpoints, and then applied a small squirt of oil to a remote corner of the mechanism, immediately curing the fault. In due course, he submitted his account, for the sum of £20. The owners of the machine, reflecting that he had only been there for 5 minutes, and that the sum requested represented more than the weekly wage of most of their employees, asked for a detailed breakdown of his charges. He obliged, as follows: to Oil 1 penny to Knowing Where to Put It £19-19-11 TOTAL £20-0-0 "Knowing Where to Put It" is not something that can be easily bottled. Gavin Bell

> I am always intrigued by the authoritative responses given to > enquirers by Anne Burgess, so > knowledgeable, I often wonder at her sources and more > importantly how costly and accessible. > Could I ask that she divulge and perhaps list some of the more > relevant sites for use by > subscribers? The obvious most desirable choices are freebee > sources but are they reliable? > > Perhaps Anne would care to share her knowledge in a more > general way for the advantage of us > less informed readers, > thank you. Thank you, Jim. I take it you are thinking of my assorted pontifications on this list, so I'll home in on the main sources I would use when doing that. I have to stress that I would always urge people not to believe anything I, or more especially anyone else, says online, but to go and check the original sources, as I always do (or intend to - there are quite a lot I have not yet got round to checking!). I have found some really bad examples of plain wrong information when following up family trees I have found online - people attached to the wrong parents, children born 3 months apart to the same mother, fathers begetting children from the grave, women giving birth at the age of 50+, and so on. Also, what is available online is not the whole story when I am looking more deeply at my own family. You can assemble the bones online, but to put on the flesh you need to look for other sources not, or not yet, available online. There is just so much out there waiting to be discovered. I'm a regular, if not as frequent as I would like, visitor to archives, libraries and family history centres all over Scotland, and to the archives at Kew. I also have an extensive library. I have always loved books (my mother used to say that I have the same effect on paper that a magnet has on iron filings) and have either inherited from the father or acquired for myself most of the Victorian books on places and topics that interest me. I have the Statistical Accounts, various Gazetteers, pre-1855 MI books, the works of A J Warden and Andrew Jervise, a clutch of parish histories and shelves of 20th century maps When answering a query on the List I do tend to use one or two web sites which I can use free and of which I have enough experience to know whether the information can be trusted and if not, how relaible or unreliable it is. I use the International Genealogical Index at www.familysearch.org, taking care to note whether the information is from the indexing programme (more reliable) or the contributions (less reliable) or submitted trees (unreliable). In my own reaserch, I use these results as a pointer, and always check the original source of the information. I use www.freecen.org.uk for census transcriptions, other than 1881. FreeCEN is double-keyed by volunteers, so I believe it to be more reliable than certain other transcriptions. Its coverage, however, is very incomplete; it has, for example, only the 1841 census for Angus, so far, though some other counties are better covered. For 1881, I have a set of the CD-ROMs produced by the Latter-Day Saints. Again, it is always my intention to check the originals of everything I have gleaned from a transcription. I also use Scotland's People www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. By successively narrowing searches, it is often possible to come up with a date of death or marriage without actually having to pay anything. Occasionally I do succumb to the temptation to buy a few credits if it is likely to be a long time before I can get to the Scotland's People Centre and I need to get round a barrier by looking up one certificate, or if I want a will. Otherwise for BMDs and census that's not available on FreeCEN I wait until I can get to the Scotland's People Centre. For place names, I make regular use of the wonderful collection of digital maps on the web site of the National Library of Scotland. I have a deep-rooted prejudice against Ancestry. I absolutely hate the way that followng a link on an apparently unrelated web site so often lands me on the page where Ancestry demands money before letting me access the information. I wouldn't mind if they were honest and upfront at the outset that it's Ancestry. Therefore I do not use Ancestry at all for research in Scotland, though I have been known to use access to it in a library or research centre to follow an occasional lead to foreign parts. Does this help? Anne