Thursday, May 26, 2011

Indexing Larger Books for Genealogists

Among the thousands of small documents in my collection, are several dozen larger volumes, that I'll probably never have the resources to fully digitize and transcribe. I have, however, begun providing access to the names included in these books.

Many of these books include biographical sketches, which is what attracted me to purchase them in the first place. Some of the books include a name index, others do not. Most of the ones which had an index have already been posted on the site.

Anyone can search theses free indexes, but only Genealogy Today Subscription Data subscribers may request the individual sketches be posted online. This approach makes these resources available to genealogists, without the need for full digitization. You may also find some of the books in public domain repositories like Google Books and the Internet Archive.*

As for books without an index, like Who's Who in America 1899 - 1900, I am in the process of manually indexing them, and posting incremental information on a weekly basis. While the books are being indexed in alphabetical order (as they are printed), I will be accepting requests to "skip ahead."

Here's a list of other books currently being indexed:
The indexes for these larger books can be located in the Subscription Data area, and are highlighted with a "Free Index" designation next to the title. They are NOT included in the site-wide Surname search at this time. More larger books will be added in the future.

*Why index a book that's already online for free? Having a fielded, first/last name index and search, is much more efficient and accurate than the full-text searches Google Books provides, and the Internet Archive doesn't (easily) offer searches.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Genealogy News - Monthly Edition (April 2011)

Catch up on the top stories mentioned in The Genealogy News service throughout the month by reading the Monthly Edition! Visit our News Center at http://news.genealogytoday.com/ to download the PDF for April 2011.