Filed under The National Archives and Discovery: A Method Guide
Where should you start looking?
A record series is a group of records created by one body for one purpose, such as war diaries for a formation. Knowing the series helps you browse neighbouring pieces when a single piece is missing or thin.
The unit or ship matters more than the surname at the start, because units narrow a search to a manageable set while surnames, in large sets, do not. Where a clue comes from a relative, note who supplied it and when. A clue supplied decades later carries different weight from one written at the time.
Making sense of what you find
Do not let the most dramatic entry in a file set the story. The routine entries, postings, pay, movements, are what hold a timeline together. What a record omits can be as informative as what it includes, but only if you know what that kind of record usually includes. Learn the form before you judge the gap. What looks like a sudden posting, promotion or move often has its explanation in a correction, a marginal note, or an entry on the next sheet.
Common traps in this record type
A record that exists but is not digitised is not a dead end, it is a different route: a catalogue reference, a copy order, or a visit, where the holder offers one. A record destroyed, a record never created, and a record held elsewhere look identical from a search screen. The catalogue description is what tells them apart.
A gap that appears in every record for the same dates probably reflects how records were kept, not a personal mystery. Check the coverage before inventing an explanation. Do not spend a session repeating a search that failed. Spend it on a different record type, a different holder, or a different filter, and note what changed.
How do you work through it step by step?
Steps that look bureaucratic, noting references, dating entries, separating lists, are the steps that keep a long research project honest. Keep your notes in the same order as the steps, so that a later reader, including yourself in six months, can retrace the work. The sequence below is a default, not a law. If a step produces a surprise, follow the surprise, and return to the sequence afterwards. If a step produces two candidates, keep both, with their filters, until a record separates them. Discarding one early feels tidy and is often wrong.
- Fix the record series first, from the research guide for the record type you need.
- Search inside that series by unit, ship or date range, with the surname as a filter inside it.
- Read the catalogue description carefully: it tells you the dates, the coverage, and whether a digitised copy exists.
- Note the full reference before you open, download or order anything.
What should you check next?
The related guides at the foot of this page link back to the pillar for this section and to the neighbouring guides, so you can move through the cluster without losing the person you started with. A timeline should end each session with a named next step, not with a vague intention to look further. Name the record, the reference, and the question. Stop when the next step is named and the references are written. That is a complete session, however short the timeline looks.
Primary sources for this guide
Claims in this guide are kept general and point to official holders, so you can check the current position with the holder itself. This guide is general educational information only. It is not personal professional advice, it does not offer a record lookup service, and it does not determine any individual's service.