In my absence from here these past few weeks, I've been focusing my energy on researching family history - both my own and MJ's. It fascinates me and it's like a giant mystery. I really enjoy connecting possible dots and seeing how events overlap, both local, familial things and also those happening on a more global or national scale.
Which leads me to what I'm thankful for today - the availability and easy access of information.
Of course, this has both a positive and a negative aspect to it. Like many tools, it's how we use it (and how we let it use us) that really gives it its value. Specifically, I'm appreciating just how easy it is for me to gather some of this information. So many public records are now available online, indexed, and searchable. Volunteers have spent countless hours transcribing old records so that they might be available to others. It's amazing how much data I've been able to add in a week that would have taken others doing this "work" months of library visits and travel. That's not to say that I won't have to do legwork. The onus now is to cite sources, to evaluate the quality and accuracy of the information at hand. But it's amazing to have these "soft" starting points. The ability to pull up census records (many now scanned so you can check for transcription errors to the databases yourself), to connect with strangers doing similar research - it is just astounding.
Today I'm thankful to have these tools at hand. I hope that I'll be able to combine them, add to them, and create something that others can build on.
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