Identify several key areas to better support African American genealogists
1. Enhance access to specialized resources
- Curate specialized collections to address challenges, such as historical erasure and inadequate record-keeping.
- Facilitate access to restricted materials to expand research possibilities.
- Collection Building and maintenance of paid resources
2. Offer educational programs and workshops
- Conduct regular workshops on research methods and African American history
- Develop comprehensive online tutorials for genealogists.
- Offer information & data literacy instructions for critical evaluation of sources, addressing misinformation, proper documentation, etc.
- Who created this record and why?
- When was it recorded (at the time, or years later from memory)?
- What information does it actually provide, and what doesn’t it say?
3. Create supportive community spaces
- Develop a collaborative platform where individuals can share their research, challenges, and discoveries.
- Enhance connections among genealogists who research similar topics and geographical areas.
4. Outreach and Partnerships
- Connections with local genealogy groups, historical societies, and museums
- Advisory board/Trustee representative/governance participation
- Municipal partnerships (local and state record keeping)
5. Establish and create strategic planning for sustainability of service and materials
- Evaluation of services and materials
- Dedicated personnel time
6. Flexibility in adjusting one’s scope of view
- Horizontal: finding similarities and differences between events in the same/similar level
- Vertical: move across different levels (individual – institution – local – state – national) and time span (e.g., knowledge of historical migration patterns)
7. Travel and retracing steps
- Tangibility and meeting people to make connections to other genealogical records or places that contribute to family history
- Digital records may not always include all of family history so visiting places that your ancestors have lived or migrated to may provide enriching information that adds to the family narrative
- Ancestral ways of knowing may help guide you as the genealogist when you visit places that tell the story of your family’s history
- You may meet people during your travels that may provide information, insights and maps to other places or people that you can reach out to to assist you with piecing together your familial lineage