Filed under What Is Really Free Online? A Method Guide
Where should you start looking?
Transcriptions, free or paid, are readings of a record, not the record itself. Check any transcription that matters against the original image or the holder's catalogue entry, especially for names, numbers and dates.
Before you search, decide what would count as a match for this person, and write that standard down, so a near match cannot quietly become a match. Check the filters in the order the record itself uses them: the catalogue structure, not your own curiosity, decides what a search can find. One dated fact from a record outweighs three plausible details from a story, and the timeline should show which is which.
Working through it in order
Do not skip the step that checks the filters. It feels redundant when the filters seem obvious, and it is the step that catches wrong persons. Before the first step, gather every clue you already hold into one place. Steps taken with scattered clues produce scattered results. A step is finished when its finding is written down with a reference, not when the record has been read. Reading without writing is not research, it is browsing.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Start from the official holder catalogue or site for the record you need. |
| 2 | Note whether what is free is an index, a transcription, or a digitised copy. |
| 3 | Check a transcription against the digitised copy or the catalogue entry before relying on it. |
| 4 | Plan paid steps, such as copy orders, only after the free finding aids have fixed the reference. |
Making sense of what you find
Entries in pencil, entries in ink, and entries stamped later are not the same kind of evidence. The medium often tells you when an entry was made. A rank shown without a date is a snapshot, not a career. Find the date it belonged to before you use it to place the person anywhere.
Read the file backwards as well as forwards. A later sheet often explains an earlier entry that looked, at first reading, like an error. Do not carry a final rank, a final trade, or a final unit backwards through a career. Every entry belongs to its own date, and the career is the sequence, not the endpoint.
Where this kind of research usually stalls
A unit, ship or camp that cannot be fixed from the clues available is a reason to gather one more clue, not a reason to guess the most likely candidate. If a name appears with different initials in different records, treat initials as a filter to test, not as proof of two people or of one. If every search returns the same wrong person, stop searching and re-examine the filters. Repeating a search with the same filters will repeat the same result.
What should you check next?
From here, the productive move is usually sideways, into a different record set for the same dates, rather than forwards into the next date. If you feel the urge to keep reading guides rather than opening records, stop. Guides orient research; records advance it, and orientation without records is drift.
Let the dates decide the direction. The next record should cover the dates the timeline is weakest on, not the dates it already covers well. If only one thing survives this session, let it be a referenced fact, not a vivid impression.
Primary sources for this guide
This guide keeps its claims general and points to the official holders, so the holder itself is the place to check the current position. It is general educational information only, not personal professional advice, and it offers no record lookup service and no determination of any individual's service.