Expert’s Choice
As the world’s largest free genealogical website, FamilySearch ( familysearch.org) can be quite daunting. It’s all too easy to dive straight in and start searching the database, which indexes billions of historical records. But there’s so much more within the site that will give you the confidence to create strong roots for your tree, and you’ll be amazed what you can find using alternative approaches.
For example, the FamilySearch Research Wiki is an invaluable guide that lists websites, provides research strategies, and suggests records and resources to help you find ancestors from all over the world. You can search the FamilySearch catalogue of genealogical materials (including books, online materials, microfilm, microfiche and publications) made available online by the FamilySearch Library and in affiliate libraries such as the Society of Genealogists. It’s a great way of finding sources and resources for the locations where your ancestors lived.
Many of the records are indexed through the catalogue, but there are also lots of images of records that aren’t yet indexed which FamilySearch lets you browse from home. Thousands of the compiled family histories and local histories from the FamilySearch Library and other genealogical libraries and collections are available to download and view as PDFs from home, and the Society of Genealogists is planning to contribute to that collection in due course.
In addition, the FamilySearch Family Tree encourages everyone to contribute family history knowledge by linking genealogical information to historical records in one enormous cited tree. However, you can also search a huge number of contributed genealogies compiled by individuals that perhaps aren’t as well-sourced or well-cited, but which may still be worth looking at.
w nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/start-here
The National Archives at Kew is continually reviewing, tweaking and streamlining its website with the aim that new visitors can quickly find what they’re after. The ‘Help with your research’ section, like its National Records of Scotland counterpart, boasts a large number of quick-start guides to an A-to-Z of sources and subjects. Obviously many won’t interest beginners, and many more won’t interest the average genealogist, but the rest offer a straightforward route to understanding TNA’s collections. This ‘Start here’ page is a friendly way in, detailing what the archive has and doesn’t have, as well as what’s online and what’s not.