Short answer: We dug for it. Research demands that assistant curator Sihya Smith and I read, assess, think critically and weigh our information carefully. Even then, we find errors or so-called facts that conflict with one another. Recently, I began digging into the political biography of the late Congressman John Elliott Rankin. Our go-to information usually resides in the dissertation or book, âTupelo: The Evolution of a Community,â by Vaughn L. Grisham, Jr. We depend on this particular telling of the Tupelo story basically because it is a piece of academic research and writing. Academics are held to a higher standard. They must read, take notes, depend on primary sources â meaning sources that come directly from the person or place being cited, think critically, and check their sources many times. Other readers, usually experts in the field, read the paper or book before publication and point out errors or omissions. This makes the tome more accurate.