- A lot of genealogy research is going out and discovering records
about your ancestors. So if you're just going to the same couple of
websites over and over, you're missing out on a lot of records pertaining to your ancestors. So today, we're going to
talk about seven websites that you should put into your
genealogy research rotation, and even better, all
seven of them are free. Let's start off with Internet Archive. You might already know Internet Archive as the home of the Wayback Machine, that really cool site where you can put in the URL of a website and
find an old version of it, which is really handy
when websites disappear from the internet. But Internet Archive also has
a completely different section of their website where
they have countless amounts of digitized materials. So what might you find
on Internet Archive? Well, if it can be digitized,
you might find it there. I have found yearbooks, city directories county histories, family histories, all sorts of annual reports
for government agencies which are surprisingly good
resources for your research. When you go into Internet Archive, sure, you wanna put in
your ancestors' name but also think about topics,
think about locations, organizations that your
ancestor belonged to, churches that he or she attended. Don't focus on just the name, broaden your searches a little bit. The second website on the list the website of the State
Archive, State Library, and State Historical Society for those states where
your ancestor lived. I know that that's more than one website, but I'm grouping them together because in many states, these
different functions overlap. For example, in a lot of states the State Historical Society
functions as the State Archive. So you're going have to do a little bit of research to see what agencies exist in the states that you're interested in. At a minimum, the website
for these organizations have online catalogs
for their collections, which can help you track down where different record groups are. But more and more State
Libraries, State Archives and State Historical Societies are adding more digital
materials to their websites. Photograph collections, digital
copies of original records, military records are especially popular to pop up on these websites
and even vital records. Two absolutely outstanding websites are the Library of Virginia, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. And if you go explore their websites, if you don't have ancestors there you're going to wish that you did. Now the third website that you want to add to your research routine is the website of the state and the
local genealogy societies where your ancestors lived. They have that local or
that regional expertise, they know where the records are. But sometimes we don't
go to their websites because we aren't a member. You might be surprised what you will find on a lot of genealogy society websites even if you aren't a member. For example, the Indiana
Genealogical Society has a ton of records that
are available to everyone not just exclusively to members. But even if that genealogy society doesn't have a lot of records
for non-members to look at, they almost always have
some sort of research guide to help you along with your research. It might be a listing
of historic churches, locations of cemeteries information on where
different records are held. So even if you aren't a
member of a genealogy society, go check out their websites. Number four on our list is the Digital Public
Library of America or DPLA. DPLA is an organization comprised of thousands of libraries, archives and museums across the United States. And the DPLA website acts
as kind of like a portal into their digital holdings. As of the time of this recording, DPLA has links to more than
44 million digital items. And when I say digital items,
those could be digital images text files, audio, or video files. You can find things like
digitized photographs, family Bibles, yearbooks,
maps, original records. It is astounding, what
you can find on DPLA. Now just like with Internet Archive, sure you can do a search
for your ancestors' name, but also think more
broadly, think by subject. Where did your ancestor live? What church did he or she attend? What schools did they go to? What fraternal organizations
did they belong to? Thinking about it by subject, that's really going to help you find some really great treasures. Number five on our list
is such a cool site, and it's called Linkpendium. As the namely implies, it is
all about genealogy links. Linkpendium was developed and is maintained by
Brian and Karen Leverich. They were the founders
and creators of RootsWeb, which was one of the
earliest genealogy websites. Linkpendium is a curated list
of more 10 million genealogy and historical websites across
the United States and the UK, as well as family and surname websites. There are two parts to Linkpendium. One part is a search engine
of those 10 million websites that I just mentioned. It's almost like Google
specifically for genealogy. You can do a search for
your ancestors' name, and it will search across
those 10 million websites. Another way that you can use Linkpendium is to browse it by location, and I love to use Linkpendium this way. There are sections for individual states, and then broken down by counties, and then once you get into a county then it's broken down by category. I have found so many hidden
gems of websites this way. Speaking of finding hidden gems, that brings us up to website number six, and that is WorldCat. WorldCat is short for world catalog, and that's exactly what it does. WorldCat is put together by OCLC, which is a consortium of
libraries from around the world. And WorldCat acts as a
way to search the catalogs of those OCLC member libraries. You might be thinking, why would I wanna look at a
bunch of library catalogs? Well, think about a lot of the materials that we use in our genealogy. We're not using a lot of New
York Times best sellers here. The really good stuff
for our family history are things that are either one of a kind, or there are just a few of them. And these materials don't
always end up in libraries where you would think to look. Sure, your family might have
lived their entire lives in Perry County, Ohio, but
if the family Bible ended up with that one branch of the family that went out to Colorado, you might not think to
look in that library or that archive out in
Colorado for your family Bible. Using something like WorldCat can help us track down
some of these items. The key to success with WorldCat, like we've seen with other websites that we've talked about today
is to think about subjects. So again, thinking about the location where your ancestors lived,
thinking about their churches, thinking about their
fraternal organizations, even things like their
occupation or their ethnicity. Now, before we get into
website number seven, if this video has given you you any ideas of more places to look for your genealogy, why don't you go ahead
and hit that like button? I sure would appreciate it, thanks. All right, we are up
to website number seven and that is the
FamilySearch Research Wiki. A lot of people have FamilySearch as one of their go-to websites, but not everybody knows
about this special section of FamilySearch and that
is the Research Wiki. It is literally the first place that I go, when my research takes
me to a new location or takes me into a topic that
I'm not very familiar with. When my research takes me into a new state or even a new county, I know that I can go into the
FamilySearch Research Wiki and discover when major records
started being kept there. I can discover when that
can county was formed, and what counties it was formed from. I can find links to all
sorts of relevant websites and collections. Not doing research in the US, no problem, the FamilySearch Research Wiki has pages for locations around the world and it isn't just
locations, it's also topics. Need to brush up on using the Dawes Rolls? Check out the Wiki. Need a Latin genealogical word list? Check out the Wiki. Literally, no matter where
your research takes you, or what topics you're having to cover, check out the FamilySearch Research Wiki. Something else to check
out in your genealogy is one of the videos popping
up on your screen right now. Happy researching.
