Follow Friday - "Climbing the Spiral Staircase: Learning Genealogy"

I read a wonderful blog post written by Harold Henderson, who is a professional genealogist from Indiana.  He is a wonderful writer who has the ability to take a complicated subject and break it down into easy to understand bites.  He did this superbly with his post on Archives.com website called, "Climbing the Spiral Staircase: Learning Genealogy."

As we gain experience we learn that what we thought was true before may not actually be true afterall.  He said,

"the learning process is like climbing a spiral staircase. It is not that we learn wrong things and have to unlearn them, but our previous knowledge is refined. As we make the next turn up the staircase, we can look down and see our former vantage point and its partial truth within a larger perspective."

I love this image of the spiral staircase and how we learn.  By climbing around, we are able to still see where we've been but also where we're going.

He goes on to describe 4 practical tips to help you search and analyze what you find:

1. Seek independent backup for every clue.
2. Don't be a selective skeptic.
3. Don't be an evidence snob.
4. Don't stop learning.

Check out his article to read his great examples for each of the previous tips!



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