Minding Your Manners in Family History:
Rules of the Road for All Genealogists
The practice of genealogy or family history has some time honoured unspoken rules of decorum attached to
it. If you would like to be involved with sharing of information on any level, there are a few things you need to
know:
1.
Always offer to defray the costs for requested genealogical information, usually postage and copy
costs. It is up to the sender to decline, but it sends a strong and clear message that you are a
responsible person well aware of genealogy etiquette. You may not realize it, but some individuals
receive dozens of requests. It can be frightfully expensive and time consuming to cater to all requests.
Your good manners may pay huge dividends and may be a refreshing alternative to other thoughtless
greedy requests. Archives and county courthouses have their own rules for requesting information.
Better find out what those are before sending any requests.
2.
When you request information by e-mail don't make the reader read your mind via a few cryptic lines.
Tell them WHERE you saw their lineage listed, WHAT you are looking for, and SHARE some of your own
research on this family. Some professional or near-professional genealogists delete most e-mail
because of time constraints, so if you want them to help you better be willing to share your own
information WITH documentation in a logical manner.
3.
All genealogy you share with others (via mail or e-mail) should include the name (source) of the
original author (the one who did the actual research). If you compiled your ancestry from sources
other than your own first-hand research you need to indicate very specifically in your genealogy.
Never cross out the name of the originator and add your own name to other people's genealogy. This
is misleading and the person receiving the information cannot go back to the original author to make
inquiries.
4.
Just because you are excited about you research, don't expect others to pick up your gauntlet and
wilfully join you. They have their own directions and focus. When walking into a genealogy library,
archive, or family history centre no volunteer or employee wants, or is interested in your entire family
tree. Learn to summarize your request in a few succinct lines: "My grandfather disappeared after the
1850 census in North Carolina, what is the quickest way to find where he moved?" (Answer: Use the AIS
or Accelerated Indexing System).
5.
You might want to restrain from the compulsion to ask for "everything you have" when requesting
genealogy from a library, archive or person. Remember that experienced researchers have been in
the trenches for years, paying their dues film-by-film, document-by-document, census-line by censusline, dollar-by-dollar. In fact, many individuals pay large sums of money and employ professionals to
dig it up. For you to assume you have the right to ask and receive an entire collection is a tad
presumptuous and bad taste. If you build up a relationship of trust, good manners, and joint-sharing,
you most likely will inherit a hefty booty.
6.
On the internet: If you go to a site and find research, drop a note to the author indicating you have
been there and collected data. Bridle your inclination to run that little mouse down the web site to
copy everything without telling the author what you are doing. The author deserves to be notified
AND to be sourced in your genealogy program. To not notify the person and to add your name as the
source is a breech of good genealogy research practice, as well as a breech of ethics and copyright.
If you merge a massive amount of information from someone's work via a gedcom file or in hard copy,
you must ASK before you turn that gedcom into a web site of your own (including on Family Tree
Maker and other commercial places which foster this sort of thing). If you ignore these guidelines and
you are discovered, those coffers of genealogy research just might be closed to you in the future.
--D'Ann Stoddard
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncjohnst/begin.htm#Sharing