This blog post does not promote my own service! It is a discussion on the subject.
The question of paid research is something that comes up every so often by those that do genealogical research.
In this post, I will discuss the way I view the issue of paid research. I will discuss the question of conducting free research in another post.
I know best
I love conducting my research in person. No one knows my research better than I do, down to the smallest detail I live this research daily. If at any time I encounter a name of a person or a location I will recall where I have encountered it previously in my research. There is no researcher I can hire that will be able to provide me with this level of familiarity with my research.
A good researcher will take the time to learn what I already know about a specific family branch just before he starts working on this branch. It is up to me to be able to provide him with this knowledge.
This is one thing to consider and so I would rather work alongside a paid researcher on location while we both work on my research. The problem is that this makes it that much more expensive.
Language issues
I don’t always speak the language.
whether I am visiting an archive abroad where I will need to communicate with the staff in a language I do not speak or I am tackling a document in a language I don’t read – language is an issue.
It is one thing when I am sitting in the comfort of my own home and the document is available online. In these cases, I can ask friends to give me a hand and there is no time pressure.
But, on location, when I only have a few days there it is important to be efficient and I would rather have a researcher or translator sitting next to me. Such a researcher will be able to assist me both with the documents and in communicating with the archive staff.
Research plan
Assuming that I don’t have a language problem, am I familiar with the relevant sources for a specific research question and where to find them?
It might be worth carrying out a prep meeting with a professional researcher that will help me map out the documents I should order from the archive.
He doesn’t have to spend time with me day in and day out at the archive but a few hours ahead of time.
Restricted sources
We have all encountered these issues. We know that a record exists, we know where it is, but there is no way to access it as it is not available to the public.
In these cases we need to make a choice do we simply give up and move forward (personally I think that would be wrong) or do we contact a person that can access these documents and request his assistance?
Can I trust someone else?
Trust is always an issue for me.
I approached a researcher. I paid him good money. What guarantee do I have that he will do the work? Did he really look everywhere?
Well… There are no guarantees. The risk is there.
Time is money
All things considered, my time is expensive. I don’t always have the time to visit the archive in person and it is not always possible to do so cost-wise (flights, hotels, food, days off of work, a local researcher or translator).
At the end of the day I must have faith, worst case I will have to come back to the same place at a later time.
To date, I have worked with paid researchers 4 times:
- A Polish researcher just starting out that did not ask for payment (now he does) – he visited archives and copied documents for a database he constructed for his own work and every time he encountered a family name I am interested in he sent me a message. With his help, I have information about a family from a very problematic region in terms of locating documents. As he is able to remember my surnames of interest when he is contacted by people interested in the same names he puts me in contact with them. In the past year, he helped me contact 3 branches of my family (only 1 was previously known to me).
- A researcher in Poland worked with me at the Radom Archive where we spend 3 days. He taught me how to order documents, worked with me on how to use some specific document types, assisted me in locating documents concerning my family, and conducted conversations with the archive staff on my behalf.
- A researcher in Vienna (Austria) spend three hours with me, over a cup of coffee one morning and gave me a very basic explanation about documents (other than vital records) and where they can be found. Sadly, he was not very familiar with documents relevant to my personal research.
- The genealogical research service of the Central Zionist Archives. To date, I have sent them 10 research requests (4 about a year and a half ago and 6 more recently). Each research request costs 200 NIS and there is no guarantee you will get any results. In order to submit these research requests I needed to provide a great deal of information which usually takes some time to compile. The research the archive conducts is into restricted sources not available to the public. Out of the 10 requests I have made there were 2 instances where the end result left me breathless.
In my mind paid research, at times, is truly worth while.
