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| The Llolf |
By Juliana Szucs
By now, you’ve likely heard a lot about artificial
intelligence (AI) and its many uses as well as its potential drawbacks. The
other day I happened across a YouTube video that morphed various animals and
creatures like dragons into composites of sorts. Just for fun I looked for a
way to try it for free and found a link to create one on Canva. It took me all of two minutes to
combine two of my favorite animals, a llama and a wolf, into what I guess you
could call a Llolf. It occurred to me that when we use online tools and
resources to build our family tree, we could be inadvertently doing the same
thing with our ancestors.
Many popular websites now use forms of AI to suggest new
records and ancestors. You have this person in your tree and a website like
Ancestry might suggest a match to a record or to a person in someone else’s
tree. But as with my composite Llolf, you may be combining two different
animals of the human variety. So how do we go about making sure we don’t take
our family history down the wrong path?
Does the Timeline Make Sense?
Create a timeline based on everything you know about a
person. Is the record created in the place where your ancestor lived at that
time? Are there inconsistencies? For example, did your great-great-grandmother
really give birth at age six? Is someone
somehow appearing as living in records years after he or she is known to have
died?
Research the Whole Family and Then Some
Use a whole family approach to research. Conduct lineal
research on direct ancestors as well as on siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles,
and the whole clan. Then go beyond and make a list of people beyond your family
who were associated with them: your ancestor’s FAN club (friends, associates,
and neighbors). All can be useful in identifying the correct person in the
records.
Use the Genealogical Proof Standard, or ECARC
The
Genealogical Proof Standard (or GPS) describes the standards recommended by
the Board for Certification of Genealogists for reaching a sound conclusion in
genealogical research. So, then what’s an ECARC? Just a simple mnemonic that
helps me remember the steps to making my research as solid as possible.
· E is for Exhaustive Search. Go beyond suggested
records and do manual searches to make sure there are not other candidates that
look like your ancestor on paper.
· C is to Cite Your Sources. Know the provenance
of the records you are using and—as we talked about in the recent blog post Family
History Jumpstart: Get to Know the Records—know why and how they were
created.
· A is for Analyze Your Findings. Again. we want
to make sure the timeline makes sense. Does everything in the record match up
with what you know about your ancestor?
· R is for Resolving Conflicting Evidence. If the
answer to the previous question is no, can you explain why it doesn’t match up
without rearranging the boundaries of space and time? Read the records and
examine original documents or images where they are available to ensure
everything is correct.
· C is for Writing Your Conclusion. And trust me,
this one is a biggie. I’ve been writing about family history for more than
twenty-six years now, and you can believe me when I say that if you ever want
to find a hole in a theory you’ve been holding, just write about it. The act of
putting your rationale for a conclusion into writing will show you exactly
where you need to shore up your research.
Sure, creating hybrids of animals can be fun, but in family
history research, they can cost you time and energy spent researching the wrong
family. And while their family story may be an interesting diversion, it’s
probably not nearly as fascinating to you as your own people’s stories.
