Book Review: Your Stripped Bare Guide

Having earned a Ph.D., worked as a professor, and published research, I know that citing sources is essential in academic work. Having published in multiple disciplines, I have used different styles of citations and variations of those styles. Students can usually understand why direct quotations need to be cited, but do not always grasp why the facts they use in their writing must also be attributed. The methods in technical papers are explained so that they can be reproducible. For a technical discipline, citations can be used by readers to go upstream to the authoritative sources and investigate the source material for themselves. Those sources are typically published and readily accessible.

Genealogical writing is different. Using historical sources can be far more complicated. They are evidence of the past events, which support interpretations of that past. The access to an historical source may limited. A source may exist in one location with restrictions limiting its physical access, which means that readers may not be able to examine the source themselves. A source may have been destroyed or lost, leaving us with only an image or description of it. It may exist only in the private files of a researcher or in unpublished manuscripts. Primary sources may also be subjective, which introduces another layer of evaluation. Therefore, citations of historical sources need to convey to readers the information about the source and the implications about its reliability.

This is where Your Stripped Bare Guide to Citing & Using History Sources becomes invaluable. Ms. Mills wants us to understand why and how to do this effectively. Improving how we cite our sources will result in better products. As we evaluate our sources our citations present evaluation of their reliability to others. She guides us as we turn our evidence into proof.

There are sobering thoughts throughout this book. Without DNA evidence, attributing relationships between individuals in the past is built on trust in the informants. The authenticity of a tombstone image downloaded from an online cemetery website differs from that of an image we photographed on our own in-person visit to a cemetery.

All sources are not created equal, nor do all have the same weight when considered as proof. From the very start of our research, we need to not only be tracking where our sources come from but evaluating them as we collect them. We must also be wary of bad data; multiple references to it should not be mistaken for proof of its veracity. There is a good reminder to put full citations on the front page of all our notes or copies of documents.

Enjoy the guidelines for analyzing evidence. The book also includes universal templates and construction notes for our use, including templates for the daunting layered citations with an explanation of why they are important. While you might be tempted to ignore Appendix One until you need to define terms, I recommend that you review it early to make sure that you understand the language of citing and using historical sources. (The first term you look up should be “q.v.”)

Consider allowing Ms. Mills to guide you toward stronger, clearer, more reliable research!

The book can be found at: https://genealogical.com/store/your-stripped-bare-guide-to-citing-using-history-sources/

Note: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

More WWII Morning Reports in the NARA Catalog

It should not be a surprise that to anyone who has read my most recent book Finding and Using U.S. Army WWI and WWII Morning Reports: A Research Guide for Historians and Genealogists or seen my presentation about Morning Reports that I periodically check the NARA catalog. Specifically, I have been checking to see if reports later than July 1944 have been uploaded. Today I searched, and success!

As a reminder, I search from the main catalog page at https://catalog.archives.gov/ so that I can benefit from the links to the search terms in the results. To see if more Morning Report are available I search for terms such as: “Morning Reports” AND “October 1944”

This time there were results! I kept searching, and Morning Reports up to December 1944 are available. (Search terms: “Morning Reports” AND “December 1944”) I did check for any from 1945, there were no results (yet!).

Of course, I did search for my father, by name and by serial number. This time I did find a mention of him. My brother was the first to know of this find, grateful that this was not a middle-of-the-night call!

For tonight, I will share that SGT James C. McMahon appeared in a Morning Report for 13 October 1944, still in Narsarssuak, Greenland. July 1944 had left me with a cliffhanger, and this record provided data about two military organizations with which he served after the 500th AAA Gun Battalion left Greenland.

I will post about my continuing research as I use Morning Reports to reconstruct my father’s WWII service. From here, I will be busy moving forward and backward in time to track what was happening in Greenland.

Thank you to NARA! Good luck searching, and let me know how you do!

AI: Meta Prompting

If you have attended one of my AI presentations, then you know how important it is to develop prompt engineering skills to get the most out of Large Language Models (LLMs). The good news is that we do not always have to create the perfect prompt on our own!   

There is a harsh term used in my field, GIGO, which stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. When it comes to AIs, this applies to the fact that the LLM response (output) will only be as good as our prompts (input).  

A simple explanation of meta prompting is to have one Large Language Model (LLM) create a prompt for another one. Meta prompting is more involved than that because it builds a prompt with more specific instructions about the steps to take to realize the goal of the prompt. It is as if the LLM is translating what you want to do into LLM language!

The cinematic arts student at my home gave me some insights into his practical use of meta prompting. He was having an issue with an AI that generates video. It was not creating what he was describing, so he turned to ChatGPT to explain his vision and ask for a prompt to use for generating that image. ChatGPT dutifully responded with a prompt that did work with the AI video generator. The message is that when it comes to crafting prompts, we are not on our own.

While working to understand meta prompting, I thought of an example application to try before applying this skill to genealogy. I asked ChatGPT to create a prompt for me that I could use to have a research report generated for me about a topic. I also specified what and how I wanted to investigate the topic, as well as the fact that I wanted sources and in-text citations. Using the power of the AI to recognize patterns, I certainly wanted analysis to be part of generating the data in the report.

A prompt was created, but ChatGPT had some specific questions that it included in its response about the type of citation I wanted and asked if there were other constraints, such as word count or including quotes. We had a conversation to refine the prompt, starting with a 308-word prompt and concluding with the final response which was a modular, reusable 1122-word prompt.

The prompt began with: “You are an expert in …

The prompt contained sections for FOCUS & SCOPE, RESEARCH & SOURCES, STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT, STYLE & LENGTH and FINAL OUTPUT

ChatGPT’s prompt also included some interesting anti-hallucination guidance: “If there are areas where evidence is limited (for instance, few direct author comments about a particular name), clearly indicate uncertainty and base comments on reasonable inference, not fabrication.”

I decided to use the prompt in ChatGPT, and opened a new chat. I pasted in the prompt, and it responded with a request for clarification:

It offered me options, providing details, which are omitted for brevity:

• Option A — Use only 100% verifiable, well-known, widely documented sources
• Option B — Allow me to cite plausible but harder-to-verify sources
• Option C — A blended approach

Then it asked me to respond with which option it should use:

After the clarification interaction, ChatGPT told me that

It waited for my response before it began to generate the report:

The report was reasonable, and described patterns. ChatGPT offered me formats for downloading the report and other products based on the report, an executive summary and PowerPoint presentations. If I want to dig deeper, this report is valuable to me as a starting place.

Of course, the caveats still remain about not using this for school reports (unless the assignment calls for the use of AI) and not submitting it to a client. There can be tell-tale signs of an AI-generated report, as I know from a high school science fair project done by that same cinematic arts student, and documentation out on the web.

So, will you try meta prompting? Let me know how you do.

Book Review: Genealogy in Reverse

Have you ever wanted to look at the playbook that someone who specializes in finding living descendants has created? Have you wondered what resources a researcher would employ online and in the real world? Have you wanted to use such a playbook in your own reverse genealogy efforts? Within its 54 pages, Genealogy in Reverse: Finding the Living lets you have your own copy of concise notes written by Ms. Passey. She does this professionally and her impressive credentials include working as a subcontractor in the important genealogical work involved in repatriating the remains of WWII service members.

I have a cybersecurity certification in ethical hacking, and my favorite phase of the process is reconnaissance. Although DNA is not a part of the hacking methodology (yet), and the goals are different, the skills I have learned have assisted me in finding heirs and helping a museum find living descendants of a person that they planned to honor. These efforts made me curious about seeing that playbook, too.

The methodology and guidance for finding the living that are presented in the book are based on sound principles. Those principles are shared with the reader. There are instructions and screenshots for importing and exporting family trees between Ancestry.com and Legacy Family Tree Software, and how to split off a separate tree in Legacy Family Tree Software. The use of online databases and websites is part of the process, as is research at real-world locations. The value of newspapers is shown; helpful details may be tucked within their pages. Suggestions about contacting living people are also included. The final chapter contains a brief anonymized repatriation case. 

The book is intended to benefit all levels of genealogists. To make the most of the tools, methods and guidance introduced, I would recommend that a genealogist be comfortable with the individual parts of the process. It would be beneficial for a genealogist to be comfortable with using online family trees and/or a family tree software program of their choice, have a little experience with newspaper research, and a good understanding of DNA types and testing plans.

The book can be found at: https://genealogical.com/store/genealogy-in-reverse-finding-the-living/

Note: A review copy was provided by the publisher.

NCGS Fall Conference 2025

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting at, and attending, the North Carolina Genealogical Society Fall Conference 2025. The Conference was very well planned and organized at a wonderful venue with great food. As much as I appreciate the reach of virtual presentations to give presentations at many places far from where I am based, it was nice to be with a group of genealogists, learning and chatting.  

At the Conference, I presented sessions about Military Research and Artificial Intelligence (AI). When speaking about military research, I always customize my presentation to include finding military records for the location of the audience. North Carolina has great resources, both in person and online!

With a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, I am always reaching deep into the technology of AI to learn its inner workings, and to then share an understanding of how it works and how to use it. As a graduate school professor in cybersecurity, and having tested computer code used on military aircraft for years, I also have a perspective about what we should be concerned about and what can go wrong.

What was also fantastic about the Conference was that people could attend the lectures virtually. The NCGS members and technical staff streamed the presentations and recorded them for attendees to watch later. I knew everything was working when questions from online viewers came during the lectures and insightful questions via email were waiting when I returned to my hotel.

Even though my research in North Carolina is limited to a few months during WWII at Camp Davis, I did attend J. Mark Lowe’s presentation, “Creating North Carolina Local and Regional Locality Guides.” (Mark’s smile is even bigger in person!) The presentation definitely had information that I will carry forward to the places where I do research. I will never look at detailed maps the same way again.

I attended another terrific presentation about using DNA to solve maternal surnames by Kate Penney Howard. Jon Smith’s workshop about using AI for creating locality guides certainly shifted my mindset from the free form text I have been using, and his tips about using Gemini in Chrome tabs were game changers. Thankfully the presentations were recorded so that I can enjoy Diane L. Richard’s presentation about Researching Your Ancestors as Kids. (Diane and I share an educational experience: Go RPI Engineers!)

The beginning-to-intermediate artificial intelligence presentation I gave on the first morning may have provided a warm-up for Steve Little’s intermediate artificial intelligence presentation. It is always interesting to see how other genealogists are using AI tools, and how its use is gaining acceptance. Promise to keep checking your output and stay sensitive to privacy concerns!

Thank you to everyone who planned and worked on making the 2025 North Carolina Genealogical Society Annual Conference such a great experience, to the audience members who shared their time with me, and all the other instructors and attendees for a rewarding and fun time!