July 2025 is coming to a close so it’s time for the last of this month’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenges with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.

1)  What five reference books (and only 5) would you recommend to a beginning researcher to have on their bookshelf?

Here are my five choices:

The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy, 4th Edition by Val Greenwood, Genealogical Publishing company, 2017

Organize Your Genealogy: Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher by Drew Smith, Family Tree Books, 2016

Genealogy Standards, Second Edition Revised, Board for Certification of Genealogists, 2019

Evidence Explained, Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, Fourth Edition, by Elizabeth Shown Mills, Genealogical Publishing Company, 2024

Telling Her Story by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, Scattered Leaves Press, 2024

Greenwood’s book will give a beginner a solid foundation in understanding how to go about researching their family tree. Beginners also quickly realize that they need some way to organize all the information being collected, hence Smith’s book.

Understanding what is good methodology and what is not (and will lead to errors or worse in the family tree) is addressed in the BCG guide. Mills is, of course, the authority on all things needing citation and, for those who want to quickly move from name collecting to filling out the lives of their ancestors, Telling Her Story is a fabulous reference whether writing about women or male ancestors. Carmack’s book is a wildcard I threw in as a friend just shared it with me.

Those are my five picks with a bit of reasoning as to why I chose these books.

Thank you, Randy, for this week’s challenge.