With backgrounds in many areas, encompassing the practices of law, carpentry, teaching (from pre-school through most levels, including university), library work, restoration consultation, art, real estate, and investment counselling, Advisory Service members have brought different perspectives to their research into older houses. All have experience in on-site analyses of and the writing or reports about many of these houses, as well as of older ones, for contrast. Now based in southern Maine, they have sufficient reading and experience to enable them to see that area's homes in relation to those elsewhere.