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Good note taking is an essential part of your research. If you spend a whole day in an archive, you could be wasting your time if you do not bother to record the exact searches you did, which indexes you looked at, the references of the documents you examined, what information these documents contained, and the names of any books you took copies from. You will find that the next time you go to the archives you will more than likely end up redoing searches you have already conducted simply because you cannot be sure whether you have done them or not.

‘Good note taking is an essential part of your research. Record the exact searches you did, which indexes you looked at, the document catalogue references and the information those documents contained.’

You should establish a way of recording the parish register, civil registration and probate searches you have completed so that you know exactly which parishes, years and quarters you have looked at in case you need to extend these searches at a later date. Decide on a note-taking system that works for you. Most people use abbreviations for the terms that are repeated often throughout their work. You will probably find the abbreviations used in many family trees (see Chapter 2) are handy to learn. However, consistency in the way you write your notes is important so as not to confuse yourself. For example, if you start using ‘b.’ to indicate ‘born’, you should then decide on another abbreviation for ‘baptized’ and ‘buried’ – don’t use ‘b.’ for all three as you will soon get confused!

Some people prefer to take a laptop with them to the archives so they can type their notes straight into electronic form. But there will be occasions when a laptop will not be allowed in certain areas of an archive, so be prepared for this. You should always have a set of notes, whether written or electronic, which you can take into the archives with you to work from. Keep hold of your research plans and ensure you record how much of it you achieved so that you know how much you need to do on your next visit. Date your notes so that you can keep a chronological track of your progress and can work from the most recent set of notes, and record the name of the archive you visited to avoid confusion, just in case two archives use a similar referencing system for their documents.

When you are taking notes it is important to record the source of absolutely everything, whether it is a person, an archive, a website or a book. When writing document references be sure to include the exact page and folio numbers where you found the correct entry so that you can find it again easily if you need to, even the line on which it was written. If you consult a document that turns out to be of no use, make a note of this so that you do not go back to it again.

Secondary sources also contain valuable information for family historians, so when you take a photocopy from a book or write out a paragraph from it, record its full title, the author’s name, the publisher and year of publication, which should be found on the inside cover, as well as the relevant page numbers. Recording the year of publication for books will be surprisingly useful to your research. You may find a fascinating paragraph in a local history book describing the house your ancestors used to live in, but if you don’t bother to look at when the book was published you won’t be able to put that description into its own historical context. Many history books were published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a lot of which are still in our libraries today, and their descriptions of events and places will differ from those of more recent authors.

‘It is important to distinguish between evidence and analysis in your notes, otherwise mistakes will start to creep into your work.’

It is important that your notes distinguish between what is evidence and what is analysis. When you return to your notes at a later time, perhaps to type them up or to remind yourself what you found on your last visit to the archives, you need to be able to rely on them. Therefore, if you transcribe a passage from an original document, put that paragraph in speech marks so you know that was what was written word-for-word. If there are any phrases you are unsure of put them in square brackets, because assuming the meaning of a few words could alter the entire context of a piece of text. Anything you have scribbled down as presumption, analysis or ideas should be labelled clearly as being so, because these opinions may change as you find more documents. You want to avoid confusing fact with ideas, otherwise mistakes will start to creep into your work.