Begin with what you remember.

Begin with family members you can speak to. Explain why you want to hear their story and ask before recording or taking notes. Give them room to skip questions, add details or correct an account. You need not ask everything at once.

Questions to start with

• What was this person called when they were young? Did they have nicknames, aliases or other spellings?
• Where did they live? Were there schools, streets, shops or landmarks nearby?
• What work did they do? Which relatives or friends did they live with?
• Did they move house, leave their hometown or migrate? Approximately when?
• What letters, documents or photographs survive, and who keeps them?

Record the original words first

Note who said it, when, and how they know. Separate firsthand memories from stories passed down. ‘I heard he went to Australia in the 1930s’ must not become ‘He migrated in 1930’. Keep conflicting family memories alongside one another.

When entering the research space, choose only relevant clues you have the right to use. Private contact details, identity document numbers and other sensitive information about living people are not needed.

Narrow ‘research my whole family’ to a question that can be checked, such as someone’s birthplace, migration date or identity in an old document. A specific question helps you judge whether a record is useful.

1. List name variants. Keep original characters, aliases and known English spellings. Mark guessed transliterations as unverified rather than treating them as official names.
2. Make a short timeline. Arrange known dates, places, occupations and relatives, distinguishing family accounts from documented details.
3. Choose a record type. For migration, start with passenger or immigration records. For everyday life, try newspapers, directories and local histories. Check the collection’s geographical and date coverage.
4. Record searches with no results. Keep your search terms, scope and date. Finding nothing does not mean the person or event did not exist.

For Australian family history, start with the National Library of Australia’s family history guide, then choose records suited to the person’s experiences. Our Resources page suggests places to look next.

Compare names, dates, places, occupations and relatives together. One match is a clue; several mutually supporting details justify a closer look. Do not quietly remove conflicting ages or relatives. They may point to another person.

Keep these details with each discovery

• The record’s title, creator or institution, and date of creation.
• The web link, access date, archive reference or book edition.
• The original page number, image location or passage that lets you find it again.
• What the source actually says and what you inferred from it.

Search summaries can omit context, and optical character recognition can misread text. Check original pages where available. If you only have a catalogue entry, call it a catalogue lead rather than a verified original. Copies of the same account are not independent evidence.

Before Us reports distinguish research premises, web evidence, inferences and unverified points. AI can help find and organise clues, but important identity and family relationships still need checking against original records.