| Numerous articles are available within FamilySearch Wiki to help you get started in family history. The following links are to articles about general research topics.
Principles of Family History Research
- Identify What You Know
- Decide What You Want to Learn
- Select Records to Search
- Obtain and Search the Records
- Use the Information
If you are wondering where to get started in your family history research, the following articles will help you with this decision.
How to Guess Where to Start
There are several articles in FamilySearch Wiki that explain how to correlate, corroborate, interpret, and evaluate research, records, and information to determine their relevance, authenticity, reliability, and accuracy, and how to deal with contradictory evidence.
Organization and Documentation
Organizing and documenting your research is a key concept for both beginners and seasoned family history researchers. File organization is important in computers, but for genealogy and family history research work it is absolutely imperative. Creating links between files (such as source documents that have been scanned, research logs, analysis forms, and records managers) can help in keeping the sources available for quick view while studying and analyzing a research problem. Many types of organizing methods exist, so researchers can adopt and then adapt them to personal styles.