All in a day’s work!

Research, Research, Research!

As I sit at my desk looking at the extraordinary questions before me, I usually pick upon the more difficult to deal with first and work through the “to do” list. One at a time and somehow on today’s path I start thinking about an aged Gold Key comic where the characters competed with one another by collecting string into a large ball. Added to this, and now smiling to myself, I recall a friend when encountered with an extraordinary question, countered the request with “How long is a piece of string?”

String is interesting and just like the questions before me one never knows how long it will take to find the end, or the answers. Perhaps that ball of string is the knowledge we ourselves have wound over the years? On the other hand that ball of string can be made of infinite varieties. It might be coarse or smooth, durable or brittle. Perhaps it is made of wool, and suddenly we drift to the knitting of socks for soldiers! It is by unraveling that ball of string, collecting the evidence, that we find our answers. Sometimes with these research questions we have to unravel the bits and pieces one strand at a time.

What exactly is the question? In what context is it being asked? Where did the event take place? Who are the participants? Was anything else happening in the area at the same time? Is there an Archives or Museum that could help? Is the answer available online or in a book? Am I sure of the resource’s reliability? Through experience do I already have the answer? How are the stories, these bits of string, intertwined?

One has to realize too that, despite this age of instant information, answers from history are not always easy to find. Expectations for answers have, in today’s technological age, been yearned for ASAP. If that bit of string (AKA – and in this instance a – question) is short perhaps finding the answer will be equally as short. It is while unraveling that ball of string and taking the time to analyze the information before us that we may find our answers. Certainly we will add to our experience and knowledge base on this journey – that can only help us in our future encounters with similar requests. However, just because we come to the end of the line, the end piece does not necessarily mean we will have found an answer. It may well have taken us a long while to unravel. Though we may have followed a trail – the line in the woods that brings us to a field of discovery – it could also be a frayed end, a fork in the road with so many new directions to turn that we may have to find another ball of string – another resource.

While we hope for smooth sailing in our attempts to unravel the past, we must be prepared for the unexpected, the joys and follies of unrolling that large ball of evidence (string) and then of course having to re-roll it!. Being committed to historical accuracy is a worthy quest and despite, in today’s age, with so much information and knowledge readily at hand we best be sure of that ball of string – as no doubt someone out there has a competing string ball resplendent with their knowledge of the past, one that they have wound and one we hope they are willing to unravel with others.

And so this ball of string is going to unwind for a bit having just rolled in from far distant shores with new thoughts – new threads in abundance.