To use a familiar comparison, The Family History Guide is something like an iceberg: about 90% of its content is hidden (although certainly not under water). There are menus, pictures, and instructions to guide you—and when you get farther into the site, you discover that there are links to thousands of articles and videos, right where you need them. This is the personalized part: you decide what you want to read and watch, to build your learning experience.

That brings us to our three keywords—inform, inspire, and unlock.

Inform

When we think of articles and videos, usually the first thing that comes to mind is being informed. We are looking for information that will help us to find and understand our ancestors. one of the keys here is “gating,” or making sure that we control the flow of information so it’s not too heavy or too light. The Family History Guide helps with that, as it presents just one or two articles or videos per step, to avoid overload. (Except of course for the Vault, where the “information firehose” is always on …)

Even with gated information, the art of “skimming” should not be overlooked. With the limited time we have, finding the nuggets we need now becomes highly beneficial. This could be compared to either drowning in an ocean of information, or swimming along on top, from one island of knowledge to the next.

Inspire

This second keyword is often overlooked. Often we get so caught up in sifting through information that we forget to be uplifted. Family history by nature is inspiring, so as we browse through the articles and videos in The Family History Guide, we should have an eye open to what could and should inspire us. Examples could be ancestor stories, photographs that invite us into another time and place, and key learnings from people who are solving research problems like the ones we often face.

To catch this bug of inspiration, we need to take the time to reflect on the information that catches our attention. Meaningful, mental pictures of people, times, and places can go a long way towards inspiring us on our family history journeys. Sometimes inspiration is the difference between us stopping short, or actually reaching our goals and destinations.

Unlock

Now comes perhaps the most magical part in all of this. Armed with information and inspiration, let me suggest three valuable things we can unlock for our family history:

• Connections between pieces of information. Finding connections is an acquired skill, but it is definitely doable. Here’s where it’s especially important to reflecting on what we are learning, so we can begin to see those inevitable connections between events and people.
• Research strategies. Yes, there are fundamental research strategies for family history that are important to know. Project 4 in The Family History Guide has helpful links to articles and videos about them. But being prepared with your information connections and inspiration can sometimes point you to the strategy that will be most helpful for the problem you are currently trying to solve.
• Records and ancestors. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, is finding records that verify the events that happened in our ancestors’ lives, and how we can find more ancestors “hiding” in our family trees.

We wish you success as you seek to be informed and inspired, so you can unlock the doors of family history discovery ahead of you.