Just joined this site an apparently I'm not the only one looking for help with searches!

[Ursula Martin]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm so glad I was sent an email to join this site.  I'm a professional genealogist and althougth I thought I was quite good with searches it's become apparent to me that I could do much better.  I've always just typed into Google the key words that I needed to find and trawled through thousands of pages until I found what I needed.  Needless to say this is very time consuming and not good for my eyes!  I would like to add that I'm not just an Internet genealogist - I do field research as well.

 

I'm going to be cheeky (hope you don't mind) and ask how you would search for something as specific as;

Does anyone know about a poet named Thomas A Donaldson who wrote 'An Epic Poem on the disaster to the White Star liner S.S TITANIC' ? A friend of mine has an original copy along with a photo of her ancestors 'Coulter and McGowan' who worked as engineers in the dock on the Titanic. Anybody have any information

That I posted on a Facebook page?

I spent a lot of time searching for (for instance) 'Thomas A Donaldson' AND 'Titanic' AND 'Belfast'

 

I know I'm doing it all wrong!  Any pointers would be great and I'm looking forward to learning about this.

 

Sorry, gone on enough now!

 

Quite excited about 'meeting' this site :-)