Research Guide

The goal is to catalogue all known information to be easily searched, referenced, and retrieved to preserve knowledge and improve research capabilities at a low cost.

Repositories

• Internet Archive – Be sure to search each type of resource individual: metadata, text contents, TV news captions, radio transcripts, and Archived Websites
• Google: Search
• Google: Books
• Google: Scholar
• Google: Groups
• Newspapers
• Virginia Chronicle Digital Newspaper Archive

Search Terms

Make sure to use quotes around phrases when searching various repositories.

Old Phrases and Letters

When looking at very old documents, you’ll often find the following terms

• inst. – of this month
• ulto. – of the previous month
• pro tem – For the time being
• Messrs. – Plural of Mr., followed by a list of men.
• Mssrs. – Alternative spelling of Messrs.

In some texts, the letter “S” will sometimes look like a lower-case “f”.

Names

• Jno. – John
• Wm. – William

Cataloguing

If more than one piece of content appears in an article, book, or magazine – it’s preferred to create two separate posts.

To cite your source, add a table to the bottom of posts indicating details about what it is, who made it, when it was found, and where it can be found. Use the same common fields. Most sources will end up having roughly six fields. Here are a few example fields as an example of what can be documented:

Newspaper	The Washington Post, Washington, D. C.
Book	Virginia: Rebirth of The Old Dominion
Published	December 1, 1929
Publisher	Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York
Volume	5
Number	241
Pages	1, 3-4, 14
Column	3
Repository	Internet Archive
Retrieved	February 4, 2024
Digitized	January 1, 2024
Collection	Unity Lodge No. 146
Location	Front Royal Masonic Temple Library East Wall File Cabinet 2 Drawer 3 Folder: History
Section	Obituaries
Article	Masonic Notice
Title	Tribute of Respect
Author	John E. Doe Esq.
Details	The history of Masonic Lodges in Front Royal from 1799 to 1956.
Instructions	Library use only. Must not leave the Library.

Use the Repository value to link to the original source of where the document was found.

Notice the section at the bottom of the table says “Citation”. Ensure that all tables to have the same footer text so that they can be found and parsed easier at a later time via automation.

Dating

Ensure that each post is dated according to the date the article was published. If only the month and year is known, enter the first as the date. (ie a book that was published March 1912 will be catalogued as a post dated March 1, 1912).

The time of day makes some difference when multiple posts share the same date. The underlying software queries a database that sorts by date only. If multiple records share the same exact date and time, the order of those records can change with each record. This isn’t quite noticeable until you try to navigate pages of results, and find the same item at the end of one page, and oddly enough at the beginning of the next page.

Date	Citation Date	Post Date
May 3, 1956	May 3, 1956	May 3, 1956
May 1956	May 1956	May 1, 1956
1956	1956	January 1, 1956
Maybe 1956?	circa 1956	January 1, 1956
Somewhere between 1956 and 1970	circa 1956 to 1970	January 1, 1970
inst. 5th (published January 1956)	January 5, 1956	January 5, 1956
ulto. 3 (published January 1956)	December 3, 1955	December 3, 1955
A. L. 5956	1956	January 1, 1956