Elizabeth,

In my opinion, there are two streams flowing in genealogy.... serious
researchers who are becomming ever more careful about documenting their facts and
casual researchers who are content to download what they find on the internet
without casting a critical eye over the content. The internet is a wonderful and
powerful tool, and I wouldn't be without it, but I think we need to continue
to educate the casual searcher by continually emphasizing the documentation of
sources. Ideally a source would come with the citation attached, much as
census pages from Heritage Quest appear when downloaded.

Probably every researcher will say in some form or another that indexes are
the most important tool. More and more good indexes are being made available in
either print or electronic format and that is wonderful. Two types of indexes
I particularly appreciate are cemetery indexes and every-name newspaper
indexes. I find newspapers to be a wonderful source of personal information, not
just obituaries but the social news and personal mentions.

Hope this is responsive to what you wanted to learn, or at least it may spark
comment.
Connie Moretti in California

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