This morning, a former colleague and friend emailed me to ask for tips for searching his family's history. He explained that he had recently returned to his country of origin to visit some relatives and came across some interesting photos of his dad's aunts and uncles. Though he asked his family about the photos, he wasn't able to gather enough details to put together a picture of who these relatives were and where they had come from. He told me that he and his immediate family don’t know much about their ancestors, beyond his great-grandparents. He's planning on consulting archives in his country of origin on his next visit.

Serendipitously, this afternoon, I attended a genealogy drop-in at the Nepean Centrepointe Branch of the Ottawa Public Library. Held in person every second Tuesday, these sessions offer help to individual researching their family history. Specialists from the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch and the Ottawa Public Library are on hand to answer questions, discuss research strategies and point participants to resources available to assist with searching one's family roots.

Based on my own experience over the past four months, my session today and a little additional research, I would offer these suggestions to my friend.

One of the best ways to begin a family history project is to talk to family members and friends who have already undertaken such a project. Their experience could save you time, money and frustration. If possible, meet with them face-to-face and have them show you what techniques they use to search for information about their ancestors. Just watching someone search through a database can make it easier for you to do your own search, as you will already have some familiarity with the tool. Family members may be able to share information they have already gathered during their own attempts to research their ancestors.

Consult professionals at your public library, local archives, genealogy societies, national libraries and archives (such as Library and Archives Canada), and local, regional and national museums. Ask what resources they have available, both those that are online and those that must be consulted in person. My experience is that such professionals are keen to help.

Pull together the information you know, beginning with yourself, and moving backwards through time. Add your parents' details: full names, place and date of birth, place and date of marriage, place and date of death (if applicable). Then do the same for your grandparents.

Parents are a great place to start. Ask them questions about themselves, their siblings (your aunts and uncles), their parents (your grandparents), their parents' siblings (your great aunts and uncles), their grandparents, etc. They may have an incomplete picture of their extended family, but capture what they do know. Other family members, such as aunts, uncles, cousins and even older siblings, may help you fill in some of the blanks. Consider setting aside time each week to pose a variety of questions to your family members. Questions can help trigger memories. And your family members are likely to recall details of their childhood or stories they heard in their youth between each conversation.

Create a document where you note the sources you've consulted and what searches you've done. This could be organized by person (for Great-Grandfather James, I've looked here, here and here) or by resource (within FamilySearch, I've looked for James and Eliza). Decide on a naming convention for files and a folder structure that will allow you to easily find information that you've saved.

On its page How to begin your genealogy research, Library and Archives Canada makes these suggestions for recording complete source information for a record:

Digital records may be available through Library and Archives Canada's Collection Search or via Héritage, "a 10-year initiative to digitize and make accessible online some of Canada’s most popular archival collections encompassing roughly 40 million pages of primary-source documents." (I learned about Héritage while writing tonight's post.)

As you find relevant records—such as birth, marriage and death certificates or registrations, photos, old letters, citizenship and naturalization documents, military records—bookmark, download, copy or digitize them, noting the content, the people to whom the record pertains, and the source. In the early days of saving records, I tended to start my filename with a date, followed by the name of the person(s) referenced in the record. Over time, I realized that it made more sense to start my filename with the name of the individual(s) implicated, as it made it easier to sort by filename and thereby group all records pertaining to one person. I also started noting the source of the record at the end of the filename.

For information accessed online, build hyperlinks to the original data from your master document (the place where you gather your information). This makes it much easier to find information again. It's not uncommon to find a birth registration for an individual in one database and their death registration in another. Creating hyperlinks to online databases makes it easier to go back to specific reference sources in the future, particularly when you (inevitably) find conflicting information about your ancestors.

Start at your local library, including attending a session such as the one I participated in today, to find resources that are available for free. I recommend Library and Archives Canada (particularly its A to Z tools and guides and its Census Search) and, for those in the Ottawa area, the Ottawa Public Library (particularly its genealogy resources). For those not in the Ottawa area, I recommend that you check with your local library, including asking what old newspapers they have access to. I also recommend FamilySearch, which is free to use with the creation of an account. And, as one of the genealogists with the Ontario Genealogical Society Ottawa Branch said today, Google is a fine place to start a search about your family history. Once you've exhausted the free resources, you can consider subscribing to paid genealogical services.

Not all of these resources will be applicable to my friend searching for records in another country. However, a quick Google search of the country name plus the word "archives" turned up many leads for archival information. Perhaps the best tip I can offer is this: just get started and enjoy the journey.