Created by Julie Goucher – Feb 2020 Using Wordclouds.com

This morning I received the following question:

Julie, I recently joined the Guild of One-Name Studies having listened to your online lecture with the Society of Genealogists. I want to take part in the readalong, but I am not sure what Pharos course I should do first?

 Thanks for your question. Historically there was two courses offered by Pharos, the Introduction to One-Name Studies course and the Advanced One-Name Studies course. When I took over teaching the Introduction course, I began keeping a note of questions that I was asked by students, some with a great deal of frequency. Those notes eventually found themselves turned into the Practicalities of a ONS course which ran for the first time in March.

In a perfect world, the Practicalities course would follow the Introduction course, and in the main that does happen, but it is not an issue for students to take the practical course first. The course outline shows that the Introduction course is focused on the foundations of a study, whereas the Practicalities course has the focus on the practical elements of a study, but there is a bit of overlap between the courses, because elements of the beginnings of a study do overlap.

That said, over the last almost four years I have taught students whose studies have been up and running for a number of years, as some want to revisit elements of their studies and expand their knowledge. Some students have been focused on other matters and want to refresh their knowledge etc. In much the same way as there is no right or wrong way to work on a study, there is no right or wrong way to take the One-Name Studies courses, they are seeking to provide layered learning.

It is not just the formal learning of the courses, the networking between students is actually lovely to see develop and that very much follows the ethos of the Guild, members helping members. I am consider myself very lucky in that I get to interact with members of the Guild and genealogists, teach what I find absolutely fascinating and to spread the word about surnames.

I hope that helps and I will see you on the Readalong. I have a number of posts to share here in the coming days, so I have pinned the Readalong post to the front page of anglersrest.net In the meantime, do read the numerous surname posts HERE, and the course descriptions of the Pharos courses, the links appear on the right hand side of the this site or on the Pharos website.