Locating Black Information Lives: “Scoping” the Literature on African American Genealogical Research

The genealogical path for African Americans is a distinct and intimate journey in the discovery of self-using personal artifacts, archives, and biological data. We view those that practice genealogy as information seekers utilizing information communities to uncover familial narratives and the ancestral line. As a part of a larger project, Uncovering Black Lives, we are comprehensively exploring the literature on African American genealogical researchers across disciplines. To accomplish this, we conducted a five round literature search using EBSCO Host, ProQuest, and Web of Science making iterative shifts in the search terms and fields to gather relevant materials. This paper details the scoping literature review as method for determining the size and nature of an under-researched multidisciplinary topic. Our process is explicated in first demonstrating the scoping process through research platform and database choice and searching, next we perform a pilot analysis by taking three disciplines (Sociology, Library and Information Science, and Familial Artifacts) looking at keywords, research methods, and publishing over time. Our initial analysis suggests a distinct gap in the literature across disciplines on African American Genealogy research, qualitative approaches including (orality, Black feminisms, and ethnography) are utilized, and research on African American familial artifacts is rare. Our hope is to move forward with a more comprehensive review and utilize results in support of determining approaches for a larger project.