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Brunswick Community Library
605 Brunswick Road, Eagle Mills, New York 12180
Phone 518-279-4023 · Fax 518-279-0527

Genealogy On the Internet

The first principle to Internet genealogy is that your family tree is not on the Internet (yet). However, several other things are: your cousins, some vital records, some graveyard/cemetery records, and yes, some family trees. The trick is to find what you want, if it's available, where it's available...

FAQs
Many internet-related groups have lists of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), together with frequently given answers.

Side note: internet jargon can be daunting at first. ("What's a FAQ?")
• The Jargon File - http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/ - a bit technical, but authoritative
• Acronym Search - http://www.acronymsearch.com/ - plug in an acronym (computer messages tend to be full of 'em) and get back the acronym's definition

GENERAL WEB SITES
ROOTSWEB - http://www.rootsweb.com/
• The RootsWeb project has two missions:

"1.To make large volumes of data available to the online genealogical community at minimal cost.
 2.To provide support services to online genealogical activities such as USENET newsgroup moderation, mailing list maintenance, surname list generation, etc."

Rootsweb has a number of interesting projects, including the GenWebs, the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (http://istg.rootsweb.com/), the Social Security Death Index (http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/) and the Roots Surname List (http://rsl.rootsweb.com/), where you can find others researching the same surname.

US GenWeb - http://www.usgenweb.org/ and World GenWeb - http://www.worldgenweb.org/
• Organized groups of genealogy sites for various countries, states, provinces, counties, and even some municipalities
• Rensselaer County GenWeb can be found at http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyrensse/
Cyndi's List - http://www.cyndislist.com/
• One of the most extensive collections of genealogical links on the World Wide Web.
The UK & Ireland Genealogical Information Service (GENUKI) - http://www.genuki.org.uk/
• A lot of links for the UK (England, Scotland, Wales) and Ireland, including a good introduction to genealogy

WORLDCONNECT - http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/ - "Our mission is simple - to provide a resource which can connect the family trees of everyone in the world." It consists of member-submitted family trees, which means that they are of varying accuracy. One can probably find Adam and Eve in some of these trees, and Greek and Nordic gods as well. However, you will also find carefully-researched trees, which may include someone near and dear to you. Caveat emptor

PAY SITES - http://www.ancestry.com/ and http://www.genealogy.com/ - tend to be USA-centric. Some of the data they offer is available elsewhere for free. The advantage to these sites is that they have the data all in one place for a fairly reasonable fee. Both offer free trials; both require a credit card for a free trial.

LDS ONLINE
LDS Church Family History Resources
http://www.familysearch.org/
FAQ for familysearch.org
• One of the missions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS, Mormons) is promoting genealogy. The first site is their general site, and explains some of their genealogy resources. The second site is their online site for searching, among other things, the International Genealogical Index (IGI) and Ancestral File (AF). IGI has two parts - controlled extractions, which come from vital records, and records of Temple ordinances. AF consists, by and large, of member-submitted pedigrees and should be used with caution. You can also search indexes of the 1880 United States census, and the 1881 United Kingdom and Canada censuses.
• You can find Personal Ancestral File, a free genealogy program (and a pretty good one, considering the price) by following the 'Order Genealogical Resources' link.

SEARCH ENGINES
The library has a page with a number of general internet search engines listed. I won't duplicate the effort here, except to say that the current best is arguably Google.

USENET
Usenet is the bulletin board and discussion forum of the Internet. People come from all over and ask questions; people come from all over and answer questions. Frequently someone who asks questions in one area will be an expert in another.
Google Groups - http://groups.google.com
• Access to Usenet from anywhere you have access to the World Wide Web (including Brunswick Library!)

soc.genealogy.* hierarchy
'Ethnic' and national groups; computer and methods groups
soc.culture.* hierarchy
Not specifically genealogy, but you can get information about culture, and frequently find a native speaker who might do a translation

If you're interested in finding out more about Usenet, come into the library and talk to Joe.

MAILING LISTS
Similar to Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists exist for geographic areas, surnames, occupations... just about anything people have a genealogical interest in. Many usenet newsgroups are 'gateway'ed to mailing lists, which means that messages sent to the mailing list are echoed on the newsgroup, and newsgroup posts go to the mailing list.
• John Fuller's list of mailing lists
• Cyndi's List of Mailing Lists
• User Mailing Lists Hosted by Rootsweb - Rootsweb hosts many genealogical mailing lists.

TRANSLATION
Systran - http://www.systransoft.com
Free Translation - www.freetranslation.com
Babelfish - http://babelfish.altavista.com/
• These three are more 'transliterators' than translators. They convert input word-for-word, rather than idiomatically, so can miss nuances. However, they will give you the gist of a passage so you can decide what to do with it.
FranceGenWeb Free Translation Service - http://francegenweb.org/traduction/index.htm
• The FranceGenWeb offers translations of genealogical documents by volunteers. It used to be available in English, but no longer appears to be. However, if you understand a bit of French and are willing to poke around, you may be able to find a volunteer to translate a document for you.

(A FEW) ARCHIVES

LIBRARIES
Libraries and librarians are your friend. You can look in online catalogs to see what's available, and the library can probably request it for you. And if you know a specific citation, we can request just a page or an article.
In the area...
Upper Hudson Library System
• Use the catalog for Upper Hudson member libraries - including Brunswick.
Capital District Library Council
Southern Adirondack Library System
Schenectady County Public Library
And beyond...
New York State Libary
Library of Congress

SOCIETIES
New England Historical and Genealogical Society
• Early New England settlers
Society of Genealogists in London
Guild of One-Name Studies
The American - Canadian Genealogical Society
• for individuals of French-Canadian origin

SOFTWARE
This is a big category, but briefly:
• Above you see mention of Personal Ancestral File (PAF), which is available for free. Go to http://www.ldscatalog.com/, enter "PAF" in the search box, and look for "Personal Ancestral File 5"
• Another free program (although it has a paid deluxe version) is Legacy (http://legacyfamilytree.com/)
• For the Mac, Reunion (http://www.leisterpro.com/) seems to be one of the more-recommended programs.

If you're interested in finding out more about genealogy software, come into the library and talk to Joe.

JOE'S BOOKMARKS - for what it's worth
Bookmarks

©2003 by Joe Makowiec