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The following is a chapter from:
Trace Your Roots with DNA
by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and Ann Turner
(reprinted with permission)
BROADCASTING GUIDELINES
You may not be planning as large a project as the Rose, Hull and McCarthy studies, but we hope in reading about their experiences, you've found a few ideas worth mimicking. And while the broadcasting approach is more straightforward than the reverse genealogy, keeping a few guidelines in mind can help those crumbs you sprinkle lead more testing candidates your way.
LEAVE LOTS OF TRACES
We'll discuss the best resources for getting the word out shortly, but the primary objective with the broadcasting strategy is making yourself findable, so you'll want to toss out as many crumbs as possible. And just as with advertising, there's power in repetition. A single announcement on a surname message board may net you several inquiries, but popping up from time to time will help your project gather more momentum.
FOLLOW THE RULES
Having just recommended that you post periodically, we now need to offer a qualifier to this advice: Follow the rules to the nth degree. Some board and mailing list administrators are less than receptive to DNA testing. They may not care for it personally, or they may regard messages about projects as nothing more than crudely disguised sales pitches. In a few extreme, cases, administrators have even been known to routinely delete any postings referencing DNA. Rather than do battle with such people, experienced DNA project managers have found it more effective to do all they can to accommodate them.
Make it a habit to read the rules before making your first posting to any board or list, and never include dollar amounts. For that matter, don't make any mention of money or payment, even though you may wish to do so in the interest of full disclosure. The appearance of commercialism is the most frequent reason given for posting refusals. And while repetition is important, don't wear out your welcome by simply announcing your project over and over. After the first message or two, add value to your announcements by sharing results or insights that will be of interest to the other readers.
Stick to the relevant topic, and then direct people to your Web site or e-mail address for additional details. Finally, if you want to maximize the chances of all your messages appearing, you may even wish to engage in private e-mail exchange with the administrator before making your first posting. Such consideration can go a long way to minimizing potential conflicts down the road.
DO A LITTLE HARVESTING
Just as you're leaving a trail on the Internet, others have done so before you - and frequently with their e-mail address included.
This means that if you look in likely places, such as relevant surname and locality boards, you'll be able to find contact information for people who might be interested in your project. Mind you, we're not advocating any sort of automated approach where you collect all email addresses of anyone with your surname, but we feel that sending a message or two to individuals who have posted messages on pertinent genealogical resources is reasonable.
And while most who use this tactic look for candidate specifically on boards and mailing lists, we suggest that you expand your reach by searching online lineage collections as well. Researchers have different preferences; some who like to upload pedigrees may not participate in surname boards, so you may find extra candidates this way. Also, if you're seeking particular testees - say, Irish-born Reynolds - these online trees often provide enough detail to enable you to hone in on such people.
A search in Ancestry's World Tree collection, for instance, turns up more than a quarter of a million Reynolds entries, but restricting it to those born in Ireland brings the number down to less than a thousand - many of which were submitted by a small cluster of individuals whose e-mail addresses appear along with their data. Of course, there will be considerable overlap in the entries, but these online lineage collections provide an often overlooked means of learning about fellow researchers who are interested in a given name.
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North American office: P.O. Box 160, Carmine, TX 78932-0160 USA tel/fax: Toll free 866-7-DNA-DNA |
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