Collective approach to family history societies

[Tom Thorpe]

The proposal

I am gauging interest amongst colleagues about collectively approaching family history research societies/websites to place notices/adverts asking people to contact us if they are researching their relatives’ Great War service in the Army units that we are also researching or have expertise in.

I hope that by this mechanism we could access privately held diaries, photographs and letters that we may not have come across by conventional research means.

In exchange, we would give people information about the unit their relative served with and what they did (assuming we have the information).

The advantage of us approaching these organisations collectively would be to offer the family history organisations a useful service for their constituents and hopefully reduce the time and effort we could spend researching.

Obviously, we need to be careful in the way we position our services/expertise, as we do not want to create a huge unmanageable demand or be regarded as a general research service.

Anybody who approached us for ‘general history’ would be directed to resources such as the PRO or Great War Family Research.

I would suggest that people should be advised contact us only if they have a full name and/or other details.

We would need to manage peoples’ expectations about what we can provide and be clear about what we intend to do with any materials we may gain access to. From this perspective I think it is important that people who volunteer should be confident of their knowledge of a particular unit rather than having a general interest in it.

I see this exercise as a mutual exchange of information and helping researchers further their own efforts as well as our interests.

How it could work

I propose the system works entirely by email. A web-based hotmail email address would be established as the contact point with two or more people checking the emails on a regular basis.

This email address would be placed in relevant notices/adverts.

A list of participants in the scheme would be created listing email address and areas of expertise/interest.

Relevant emails would be forwarded from the website to the appropriate person for them to follow up and investigate or reply saying there is nothing that can be done.

Where a query comes in outside our areas of expertise we send a standard reply apologising that we are unable to answer that query maybe suggesting alternative approaches such as contacting Great War Family Research.

This is an experiment and there is no knowing what will be generated but I think it is worth piloting.

Next steps

Below are four points I would appreciate people’s feedback on:

(1) What do people think of this idea – is it practical and has anyone tried in the past?

(2) Those who are interested email me via the site or post on this thread the units you have knowledge or and are researching and your email contact details and I shall pull a list together.

(3) Volunteers who:

-would be interested sharing the email address administration and forwarding relevant emails to people/replying to people

-would help me draft up a terms of reference for the group and the wording of approaches to family history societies

(4) What family history societies and research sites should be approached?

[steve chilton]

Tom,

An excellent idea to advertise the forum/site with genealogy organisations. I have been researching my family tree for some years and only discovered this forum a few months ago.

Would it not be easier to direct people to the forum itself so that we then get more members and the questions and answers would be open for all to view instead of directing people to an e-mail address, although I dont post much myself I thoroughly enjoy reading the threads and have learnt a tremendous amount from them.

Overall though, a cracking idea.

Steve Chilton