Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Genealogists Still Like Books, Right?

Seems the focus these days is always on databases, but we also need tools to help us locate items which haven't been transformed into searchable data. When I talk about my Live Roots project to groups, everyone "oohs" and "ahhs" at the way it can locate data, but they're often shocked it's just as capable of locating digitized AND printed books.

This morning, I updated the Live Roots Catalog with the latest books available from a variety of providers (including free online books). This meta-catalog is the source behind the "Resource Results" in the Live Roots Search Engine (also available at Genealogy Today as "Resource Search"), and currently has over 232,000 entries.

What makes this search engine interesting for genealogists and research librarians, is that it's a single catalog which emphasizes the overlap between publishers in the results. What also surprises most visitors... only 25% of the listings are fee-based! And, the system gets updated daily with new entries.

Here's a partial listing of the publishers included:
The +API notation on some of the listing above indicates that you can also perform a real-time search of the publisher's web site. Likewise, you can perform real-time searches of WorldCat, Amazon.com, Abebooks, eBay and the Family History Library Catalog. And all without retyping your search query!

I'm always looking for additional publishers to include; if I've missed any please let me know.

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