What do you collect? Is it unique to you, or is your collection generic? What do I mean by generic?

I have the complete collection of Jack Higgins books as well as the Alistair MacLean books, as a collection they're certainly not unique, lots of people will have done the same thing. Most of them were acquired second hand, so there is no money in the collection should I ever decide to sell it. But it does say something about the kind of person I am.

But unique collections - they're the kinds of things that may end up being donated to a museum, or having a museum opened by someone to showcase the different pieces. Of course there will be very private collections owned by some of the larger families, churches and institutions that will never see the light of day. But really we're not talking about those things, we are talking about a person's passion.

Genealogical research is like that too. A passion to find the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is our lives. Slotting the data into place so that it makes sense - finally. It would be like having a collection of something with one of the major pieces missing. A glaring hole, you just HAVE to fill.

Of course, trying to find that last piece is often the most frustrating. So keep a detailed log / note of where you have looked and what you looked for. Remember to try variations in everything including spelling and date of birth. And try taking a few years off too as sometimes they conveniently forgot how old they really were. That way you don't need to go back over the same ground freeing up time to check new sources of information as they come to you.