Going to the Next Level

Going to the Next Level

“Going to the Next Level” means you have covered topics suggested in “Getting Started” and are actively engaged in using your new-found knowledge to build a good foundation as a family history researcher.

In this next stage of educational offerings, you will be challenged to learn more skills to help you identify and collect information on your ancestry, and also to evaluate it. Your individual progress as a family history researcher will be unique depending on how you personalize your learning program. Additionally, each researcher will be dealing with different access and availability to online and repository records affected by: municipal and governmental laws, different time periods, geography, ethnicity, and more.

NGS’s pathways Getting Started, Going to the Next Level, and Building Advanced Skills are flexible so each researcher may review the suggestions and follow them exactly, or move between the lists to build genealogical skills—choosing where you need to learn more to personalize your learning plan. In this suggested list, you will note we emphasize learning more about source documentation and the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS)1. Both critical elements for family history research.

Going to the Next Level

  1. CGS: Guide to Documentation and Source Citation (NGS online course)
  2. Mastering Genealogical Documentation
  3. Building Citations While Writing” by Michael Hait in NGS Magazine.
  4. The Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) Is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy” a lecture by David E. Rencher
  5. Foundations in Family History 102 (NGS online course)
  6. CGS: Genetic Genealogy—Autosomal DNA (NGS online course)
  7. Genetic Genealogy Journey: Introduction to Autosomal DNA Tools” by Debbie Parker Wayne in NGS Magazine.
  8. CGS: Introduction to the Civil War (NGS online course)
  9. Hidden Treasures on FamilySearch” by Robert Raymond in NGS Magazine.
  10. Foundations in Family History 103 (NGS online course)
  11. NGS Book Loan Collection – Twenty thousand genealogy-related books we will lend to you through ILL.
  12. Creating A Winning Family History 
  13. The Genealogical Proof Standard in Practice” by Melissa Johnson in NGS Monthly.
  14. Getting the Most from Case Histories in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly” by Thomas W. Jones in NGS Magazine
  15. Attend the annual NGS Family History Conference where you can choose from dozens of lectures.
1Board for Certification of Genealogists. Genealogy Standards 50th Anniversary Edition. (Washington, D.C.: Ancestry, 2014) 1-2.