While scouring the internet for information about his ancestors, Australian Kevin Esmore came across the BYU Family Historian article “Researching Huguenot Settlers in Ireland.” Kevin wanted to connect with author Vivien Costello to further his research, and reached out to Mandy Oscarson, Scholarly Communications Specialist at Brigham Young University in an attempt to find Vivien.
This article is the 8th most-downloaded item in ScholarsArchives and has over 5,300 downloads. However, the article was published in 2007, as part of a now-defunct journal that was archived before BYU made a practice of collecting author contact information. Noting the article’s significance not just to Kevin but to the university, Mandy spent some time doing internet research of her own and eventually found that Vivien is a member of the Irish Genealogical Research Society; someone at the society connected the two. Vivien was thrilled to hear from Mandy and to connect with Kevin, whom she has since provided additional research avenues and approaches to finding his ancestors. Mandy has added Vivien’s email address to the article so Vivien can now also see the worldwide impact of her article through her Author Dashboard.
This is also a success for BYU’s repository: from her office in Utah Mandy was able to connect a researcher in Australia with one in Ireland, and the institution now has this unique story to tie to one of their most highly downloaded papers.
