Filed under Photographs and Personal Papers: A Method Guide
What should you look for first?
Sharing a family photograph depends on who holds rights in it and on the privacy of living people pictured. This guide does not give legal advice; check rights and privacy before publishing, especially where living people appear.
Search for the person you can prove, not the person you hope to find. The provable person has a number, a unit and a date range; the hoped-for person has only a story. Check the filters in the order the record itself uses them: the catalogue structure, not your own curiosity, decides what a search can find.
A step by step way through
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. If a step produces nothing, record that nothing. A documented negative result is part of the research, and it stops the same step being repeated blindly. Do not start with the record that interests you most. Start with the record that anchors the timeline, and let interest follow the anchor. If the same step keeps producing the same wrong person, the filters are wrong, not the record set. Stop and re-fix the person before repeating the step.
- Describe the item itself first: what it shows, what it says, and what marks it carries.
- Date the item from its own clues, uniform, badge, format or handwriting, before attaching it to a person.
- Use the dated item to frame a record search, unit, place or date, rather than as a substitute for one.
- Note the item reference and where it is held, so the next researcher can find it.
How to read this kind of entry
Read the file backwards as well as forwards. A later sheet often explains an earlier entry that looked, at first reading, like an error. Look for what the entry does not say, as well as what it says. A missing expected entry, a blank column, or a skipped date is itself a finding. 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.
Where this kind of research usually stalls
If the trail ends at a particular holder, the next step is to ask that holder where the record went, not to search the same catalogue harder. A unit that moved, a ship that was renamed, and a camp that closed all break simple name searches. Follow dates and people, not names alone.
- An undated photograph with no caption.
- A badge shared by several units.
- A diary with few or no dates.
- A letter naming a place but no unit.
What should you check next?
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. Use the pillar guide for this section as a map, and the neighbouring guides as the detail for the exact point you have reached. Keep the person, the number and the dates together, and the rest of the chain follows.
Primary sources for this guide
Everything here is kept general and tied to official holders, so check the current position with the holder for your own case. The guide is educational information only: it is not personal professional advice, it is not a lookup service, and it settles nothing about any one person's service.