Tips & Quips for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills arrived a while back and I’ve finally had some time to look at it.

It’s a small volume that is easily portable and makes Evidence Explained look like monstrous tome . My unmanicured hand easily covers Tips & Quips which is the only reason my hand is not shown in the picture.

Short, pithy, and to the point, the quotes are not intended to be thorough treatments of any subject. The clever witticisms, one-liners, and short paragraphs serve to remind genealogists of potential pitfalls and temptations to avoid. The book can be read starting just about anywhere (except for the last two pages), even in random order. Reading through a page or two may easily send the reader back to their files to check on a problem the book brought back to mind or send them to a reference book to flesh out an idea resurrected by a short quip on an unrelated topic.

Or it may cause you to write some notes of your own in the book, particularly if it’s being read in a place and at a time when your genealogical materials are out of hand.  That may even be the best time to read it.

There’s even one particularly pithy quote from yours truly on page 30:

Don’t demand greater accuracy from records than you are capable of yourself.

You’ll have to get the book to view the rest.