I think we all have something that makes us want to know where we came from. Some just take it further than a comparison of facial features in the family photo album. I think the surge is due to the internet making the process much easier or faster. Now you can access a data base by subscribing to Ancestry or a similar site. Now while it makes it easier and faster it also means that the lazy researcher with poor skills or lack of diligence to make sure that they have the right info are prone to accepting wrong info and then pass it on with authority as fact when they are wrong. The future will be interesting as we leave paper records. As we will be finding just many years a hard drive can hold info? If mistaken we could loose a massive amount of info given the capacity of hard drives.

I think the topic of your term paper is very interesting. Not every researcher will feel the same way so taking a bit of a vote here is an excellent idea.