Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Genealogy Research Aid - BYU Script Tutorials

Most genealogy researchers encounter writing on old documents in languages that they can’t easilyscript_tutorials decipher.  We look for cheat sheets online to help us understand key genealogy phrases to help us find the records of our family but that isn’t enough to resolve our problem.

Is there a good way to learn how to read the old script?

script_tutorials_courses

Yes there is and it’s a wonderful solution.   Go to the Script Tutorials training on the BYU Center for Family History & Genealogy site and take the course related to our research.

The training is excellent.  Some of the courses are still in development and haven’t been posted yet but are on the way.

The courses show examples of early text along with interactive exercises.   The exercises can be selected from Easy to Hard.

Set aside some quite time to study the course work and if possible print a copy of some old text that you’ve found in your research.  You’ll quickly find that the previously ‘unreadable’ document suddenly becomes relatively easy to read.

I’ve witnessed people from all age groups quickly learn to read old documents thanks to the training in the tutorials.

Because they are online, it is easy to refer back to them if we can’t read a document with particularly difficult script.

Try the courses.  You’ll impress yourself with how quickly you pick up the tools and skills to read the previously unreadable text on your ‘found’ research documents.