Now we make daily trips to stores to pick up anything we want. That old-fashioned word, patience, doesn't exist in most things we do today, but to be successful in genealogy, it must be dusted off and used. Even with the instant access of the Internet and all of the genealogy resources available, the real information comes through careful reading, examining, and searching. Even in the best researched and best documented works there are still gaps and questions unanswered. There isn't an instant source for family data.
Patience is necessary when waiting for responses.
When we send queries for publication, there is a time lag before the query is printed, a time lag while folks find time to read them, and yet another timelag before someone may have a few moments to respond. This takes patience. For years some things were simply not available. Abstractors are working hard across the country to make data easier to access, but there is still time involved in finding and reading data. Some people have researched their entire lives and not found a critcal piece of data.