It's time to add a technique to your search. As genealogists, we are taught to fill those search engine boxes with our ancestors' names, birth/marriage/death dates, and places. That's great. We should do that because the information we are searching for on genealogy websites is indexed or transcribed, and the search engine is programmed to find that information.
But when we search library and archive catalogs for content, we need to look beyond the individual ancestors' names and dates.
We need to have a keyword list.
So, what's on a keyword list? Think about a word or words that describe her life. Such as:
- Her religion
- Organizations she belonged to (religious, benevolent, political, auxiliaries to husband's membership group)
- Various names of locations she lived (might be several for the same place. Example: Independence, California; Owens Valley; Inyo County; Eastern Sierra)
- Schools she attended
Use keywords in the library or archival catalogs to find materials for the groups and activities she participated in. Materials in these repositories are not cataloged by the name of everyone mentioned in the record. You are much better off searching by a place. Remember, in searching for documents for her, we may need to cast a wider net beyond genealogy favorites like censuses and vital records.
Can you use keywords on genealogy websites? Yes. Ancestry.com has a field in their search engine for a keyword. Digitized newspaper and book websites use keyword searching. To help you craft better searches for digitized newspapers, check out this GenealogyBank blog article I wrote entitled Genealogy Search Engine Types & Tips: OCR vs. Indexed Databases.
Original Source:
Women's History Month 2016: Tip #5 Keyword List
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