Please come to the Heritage Hunting Chat tonight at Heritage Scrap at 9:00 pm Eastern time and 6:00 pm Pacific time! We will be discussing Internet Research Tips and Tricks and announcing the winner from last week's challenge! Everyone is welcome! Anyone can join in at any time!
The challenge for the upcoming week is to document through a scrapbook page (digital or paper) or another form of craft project, a special 'internet cousin' or other contact that you've made through the internet, or to use something you have found through an internet contact. Please post your digital layout or photo of your project in the Heritage Hunting Project gallery at Heritage Scrap before the chat next Tuesday, June 30. If at least 50% of your project uses products from the Heritage Scrap Shoppe, you will be entered into the drawing for a special prize to be announced later in the week.
Internet Research Tips and Tricks
Last week we discussed some of the pitfalls of using the internet in our family history research. This week will look at some of the more helpful ways to use online resources.
Beginning Genealogy Sites
Even though you may be long past the ‘beginning’ stages of your research, the beginner’s sites are constantly updated with new techniques, helps, and hints. Professional genealogists and historians usually provide these sites so every piece of information available is valuable at any stage of your search. Rechecking sites like these will sometimes get you off of a ‘plateau’ or give you help overcoming a ‘brick wall’. Some examples of these sites are:
Dear Myrtle
Allen County Public Library
About.com: Genealogy
RootsWeb Guide to Tracing Family Trees
Lists of Links
Some sites don’t give you any actual ‘data’ to add to your tree but instead focus on giving you resources in which to find data. Sometimes browsing through these sites may give you a clue as to where to look for something that you can’t quite pinpoint through regular search engines. These types of sites will send you in new directions in finding basic information about your ancestors but also help you find information to enhance the basic data with additional historical, local, or general background stories. Some examples of these sites are:
Cyndi’s List
Free Genealogy Links
A Barrel of Genealogy Links
The Olden Times Genealogy & Local History
Mailing Lists and Message Boards
The basic difference between these two tools is the way you query and receive messages. When you join a mailing list, you will receive a copy of every email sent to the list thus seeing each query and response. You can also send email through the list to ask your questions or offer your input. A message board is a site on the net where you can post your query and browse through other queries and responses. Many times the two are connected so that you will receive an email each time something is posted to the corresponding message board.
Mailing lists and message boards are not only good for finding specific information about specific ancestors, but also for making valuable contact with other researchers. By posting a query about a particular family line or a certain person in your tree, you may get responses from one or more other researchers who are involved with the same person or family. Many, many ‘internet cousins’, family groups and even friendships develop from these online meetings. Information, family legends and stories, and even photos that are not available anywhere else in the world to you may become available through such contacts.
RootsWeb.com is by far the most extensive and widely used site for mailing lists and message boards. They are available per surname, per location (from international country down to the county or village level), and per specialty (religious denomination, wars, type of data, etc.). Each board and list is moderated and will not allow any attachments so they are usually very safe and secure. Most lists and corresponding boards are linked so that you can get info from both right to your email account. And, RootsWeb provides safe ways of contacting other posters ‘off-list’ for the exchange of private information.Other sites with mailing lists and/or message boards include:
My Heritage
Genealogy.com
Ancestry.com
Genealogy Place
Next week and in the weeks to follow, we will be looking at specific types of information and sources such as birth records, census records, and death records. We will also explore new and creative ways to display such info in our scrapbooks and craft projects.
(PS - Dear Myrtle, Cyndi's List and RootsWeb logos are copyright images used here only for reference to their respective sites.)
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