Picture this. You’re at dinner with some friends. Maybe you’re on a date. The food is good. The conversation lively. There are laughs and fun and time passes way too quickly. You don’t want the evening to end. None of you do. So someone asks, “Where do we go next?”

But at that point the energy dies because no one knows exactly where to go or what establishments are open, whether or not to get dessert or grab a hot chocolate, or call even to call it quits. Everyone flounders with bad ideas about your next destination. Potentially, you might end up at some late-night coffee shop, the same one you went to last week. And the week before. In the end, you fall into the same routine. You don’t like it, but you don’t know what other options are available.

Have you ever had an experience similar to the one I described?

In my time as a librarian and archivist, I’ve had a number of less-experienced researchers who’ve expressed similar ideas to me about their research habits. “Where do I go next?” they ask all too frequently. They’ve had fun researching their ancestors. They have even found an interesting document or two. But soon enough they’ve exhausted their research on Ancestry and Family Search. In their heads, they know more might be out there, but where? Other researchers, professional genealogists, librarians, and archivists have given them hints, told them to check out an archive, an historical society, or some other repository, but they’re still note quite sure where to search next. In the end, they go back to FamilySearch or Ancestry and look at the same databases for the same results they found in the past.

To be fair, the scenario I just presented to you implies that I’m going to give you advice on where to physically go next. I’m not. To be fair, we don’t have time to cover all the different Choose Your Own Adventure options that are available in this short blog post. But I am going to discuss a skill I try to instill in students the first time they visit an archive. This skill is at the core of all research and it’s one I find students consistently struggle with.

It's the skill of asking questions about a text. Asking basic questions about the text can greatly increase our chances of finding more information. These questions include: Who created this document? Who was it created for? What year was it created? Is it real or true? What information does it give me? Are there any other organizations mentioned in the document? 

This isn't an exhaustive list nor is it meant to be a defining list of questions people should ask about a text. No, these questions are meant to help build the habit of asking questions in general.

In my experience, asking good questions leads to good answers and then to even more questions. I saw this process play out with a history class a week or so ago. Let me tell you about it. 

Meet Sing-Ung Zung. He was the first international student to graduate from Millsaps College. Doesn't he look distinguished in his senior photograph from the 1908 Bobashela (Millsaps College’s yearbook)?

Recently a professor asked if he could bring his class to the archives and search for more information about Sing-Ung Zung. The history class already knew a little about him from the Bobashela entry. Personally, I didn't know anything about him. Because of my ignorance and because of my desire to be well prepared, I looked at various records in the archives to try and learn more about Millsaps College's first international student. Unfortunately, my search came up empty. I searched under the terms "international students" and "foreign students" and more. I searched the archive's name index. I tried various other strategies as well, all to no avail. Then other tasks at work bogged me down and slowed my preparation.

By the day of the class, I realized I hadn’t done the basic task I should have performed in the first place. I should have gone to the 1908 Bobashela entry, the one the professor had told me had been the genesis for the class's interest in the subject. The same entry pictured above. I opened the yearbook and I read the text. While I read the passage I asked basic questions about the paragraph I read. Surprisingly, even in an entry with so few words, I found a lot of clues on where to go next. 

So I ask you now to read the text and ask questions. Let them spring up from the written description of Mr. Zung and see if there are any clues on where you would search next. 

Did you find anything to help engage in the search? The students did. They started with what I thought were the two most obvious questions. Does the archive have registration and admissions information? Their reasoning was this: if Mr. Zung was graduating, then he had to be admitted and register for the college. Great question, right?

The technical answer their question is no, the archives don't have registration and admission records. But the registrar's office and office of records does. So the students would need to contact the records office for that kind of information. Either way, they win. They win because they succeeded in prolonging their search and found another research opportunity. Then I asked them to try again.

This time they asked the second easiest question. And this question was easy for them because some of the students had prior knowledge. Does the archive have access to the Collegian? Please note the paragraph about Mr. Zung states he was a contributor to the Collegian. Some of the students knew the Collegian was an early student publication, and this prior knowledge led them to ask whether or not the archives has access to the publication. The College archives does have access to the Collegian, but some of the students knew that prior to class and had searched the Collegian digitally. This digital search led them to a stand still. Why a stand still? Because their search yielded some information, but not as much as they'd have liked, they disappointed. They felt as if they had exhausted every avenue to find information about Mr. Zung. 

I asked them to try again, to ask more questions. I could sense they didn't want to, but I encouraged them and they followed my lead.

If you feel like you could use some practice asking questions about a text, please read the entry about Mr. Zung in the photo above. Are there any other questions to ask? Do you see them? Take a minute and find more clues about Mr. Zung from what you read. Think, "if I was Mr. Zung's descendant, what would I want to know?" Then write them down. (To be fair, I'm not going to tell you what questions I asked. I will, however, give examples of the questions the class asked that helped us find other records to search, regardless of whether we found information on Mr. Zung or not. The idea here is to learn to ask a number of questions that can help researchers find alternative routes to new information.)

Did the group of students finally ask other questions? And if so, what? They did. In fact, it turned into a deluge of questions, but I had to prompt them first. I asked them, “What do you do for fun while on campus? What do you do here that people might remember you for?” And for them it clicked.  They reread the passage and asked--what is the Galloway Literary Society? Who was Galloway and why was the society named after him? Does Galloway have anything to do with the church down the street from us here in Jackson, Mississippi? Wasn't Galloway one of the founders of the College? Does the archives have records on either Galloway or the Literary Society? If so, do the speeches or writing of Sing-Ung Zung reside there? Where is Soochow China and if Mr. Zung is from there, which port of entry did he most likely enter when he came to the U.S.? Which Christian church did he belong to and what was his connection to the church?

The more questions the group asked, the more excited they got, and then they instinctively knew where to go next. In some cases the next steps included physically going elsewhere. Like the records office to ask about Sing-Ung Zung’s registration data. In other cases it was virtual repositories such as Ancestry or Newspapers.com to see if A) he did go to Vanderbilt after Millsaps and B) what was his port of entry? But it also led to questions about what other records reside in the Millsaps College Archives. Does the College have records from the Galloway Literary Society? Does the College have records on Galloway?

The archives does have records from the Galloway Society and of Charles Betts Galloway, one of the founders of Millsaps College. Our short discussion about asking questions led us to find entries in the finding aids for the Galloway Society and we pulled some boxes relating to the organization. The students rifled through folders and boxes and records and enjoyed the research. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to delve into every question we came up with. An hour of class time just isn’t enough to look into every mystery presented to us. Some of us even found more information about Mr. Zung. However, learning to ask a few questions about the little information presented gave us a variety of options on where to go next.

I hope the students keep up their search for Mr. Zung. (I know I did, albeit away from the class.) More importantly, I hope they remember to ask good questions about the information they find. Because it’s those questions that will keep us from settling into the same unfulfilling routine over and over again and let us know exactly where to go next. 

Photos courtesy of The Bobashela, Millsaps College Archives, Millsaps College, Jackson Mississippi.