Well, now that I've familiarized myself with the Camden 28, it's time to really start digging into the nitty gritty of the project. There is much work to be done, and a good portion of what I'm researching is located in online databases - some of which I'm familiar with, some of which I'm not. I'm a bit lucky, because I actually have some experience using Ancestry.com in the recent past, having looked for my father's birth mother and family and successfully tracking them down! I was happy to be informed by Dr. Nickerson that Loyola students have free access to Ancestry.com, as well as numerous other similar databases. Tracking a "long lost" family member down was quite an experience in itself, but it also taught me how to dig around and sift through the VAST amount of information on the site and come out with what I was looking for...
...not that I'm an expert with it. I've found that just about anything I've ever gotten good at in life has come from completely stumbling my way through it long enough to realize what NOT to do, and slowly figuring out more subtle ways of navigating through whatever it is I'm trying to conquer. This is no different, and furthermore, that's really what this internship is about: learning through experience. Census records can be overwhelming, and making sure you have the right Paul Couming from Boston in the 1970 census record can easily take up an hour or so of your day!
By a stroke of luck, I happened to have a separate history course last week that met with Jane Currie, Loyola's own reference librarian who specializes in history research. After the class, we spoke briefly about Loyola's online databases and she gave me some insightful advice as to how to navigate some aspects of the library site that I've never utilized in the past. Chiefly, she showed me LewisNexus Academic, an online search tool for newspaper articles after 1980, which will be helpful in an obituary search I'm making for John Grady, who passed away in 2002. Other newspaper databases available on the site will aid me in any additional information I might chance upon for the biographies, and some preliminary searches have revealed some potentially promising results. I'm sure I'll be in contact with Ms. Curry throughout my research, as there's much to learn in regards to the online databases, and she really knows her stuff!
