The growing availability of full-text books and journals on the Internet has made vast amounts of valuable genealogical information available at the touch of a button. The Genealogist's Virtual Library is a new volume that directs readers to the sites on the web that contain the full text of books.

Commercials for the largest subscription database indicate that the process of genealogy is simple—you just “plug in” what you know, and the database does the rest! Those ads might sell subscriptions, but they are misleading. Getting beyond that “low-hanging fruit” is not so easy; collecting the records and data needed to delineate a family tree accurately requires time, organization, and informed searching. Records are available from many places, and finding them is never a “one-stop shopping” experience. So how does the new researcher identify which resources meet his or her specific research needs? And how can libraries and librarians best help this new generation of genealogists? Genealogy: A Practical Guide for Librarians offers help on several levels: First, librarians can use this book to learn what resources, both print and online, their library should offer their patron base. This means not only what monographs to purchase and subscription databases to maintain, but what websites to highlight at the library’s webpage, what to include in their online tutorials, what adult education programming is appropriate. Critical assessments of print and online resources are given, including the strengths and weaknesses that librarians need to help patrons understand them. Second, both librarians and researchers can find here an in-depth discussion of the research process itself, including the best steps for a beginning researcher and search strategies for the experienced one. And third, anyone can use this book to become better informed about the phenomenon of genealogy itself and about the latest standards for online searching and research. The book includes practical advice for every public-service librarian and offers all researchers, from novice level to experienced, a clearly delineated context for the popular subject of family history research.

Covering trends, issues and case studies, this collection presents 34 new essays by library professionals actively engaged in helping patrons with genealogy research across the United States. Topics include strategies for finding military and court records, mapping family migration and settlement, creating and accessing local digital services, and developing materials and instruction for patrons. Forewordist D. Joshua Taylor, host of Genealogy Roadshow and president of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, notes: "The increasing popularity of the topic requires that any librarian who encounters genealogical customers remain on the forefront of new developments in the field."

In the modern era, every family and local community can cultivate its own history, endowing living people with meanings inherited from the people of the past, by means of today’s computer-based information and communication technologies. A new profession is emerging, family historians, serving the wider public by assisting in collection and analysis of fascinating data, by teaching talented amateur historians, and by producing complete narratives. Essential are the skills and technologies required to preserve and connect photos, movies, videos, diaries, memoirs, correspondence, artefacts and even architecture such as homes. Online genealogical services are well established sources of official government records, but usually not for recent decades, and not covering the valuable records of legal, medical, and religious organizations. Information can be shared and interpreted by family members through oral history interviews, social media, and online private archives such as wikis and shared file depositories. This book explores a wide variety of online information sources and achieves coherence by documenting and interpreting the history of a particular extended American family on the basis of 9 decades of movies and videos, 17 decades of photographs, and centuries of documents. Starting now, any family may begin to preserve their current experiences for the historians of the future, but this will require social as well as technical innovations. This book is the essential resource, providing the fundamental principles, effective methods, and fascinating questions required to make our past live again.

A directory of the best genealogy and history sites on the web.

Lists sites of archives, libraries, institutions, genealogical and historical societies, and family associations around the world.