Getting Books - 3 Parts and Counting

  

FamilySearch Library
Link is here

Titled another way, this post might have been "identify it, find it, and bring it home." Carrie Cartwright Bergquist says "I'm a paper person." Personally, I'm more of a "download bits person." Either way, a lot of what happens is the same. This is part of a continuing series on finding that "special book or document."

In the meantime, here's a "hot tip." Any documents found from this series can also be searched for from our local Ocean Shores FamilySearch Center. It's got many online databases that are simply not available within a two-day trip from Western Washington.

Part 1 - Finding Books about a Small Town History

 

Many of us have roots in what are, or were small towns, this is a story about finding books in one such place.

In previous posts, various Internet sources of old genealogical books have been noted here. The use of Worldcat and other sources to find old paper books has also been discussed here.

Part 2 - Checking the Top Genealogy Library Catalogs

A while back, a post, here, discussed the best genealogical repositories beyond our nearby libraries. Now, we're going to investigate what you can get from "the nation's best." To come up with this list, FamilyTree Magazine's ranking was considered, along with that from FamilySearch. In addition to this post, the "Genealogy's Star" blog has a good post on the subject which emphasizes actually GETTING the relevant item.

• Anyway, the list below has the following characteristics considered
• They are part of worldcat dot org. One worldcat trick that is handy for genealogical searching on worldcat is to make the "best libraries" also your "favorites." 
• They have an online catalog
• There is a way for a nonresident to borrow materials without going there in person

Finding that Oddball Family History Book

In previous posts, various Internet sources of old genealogical books have been noted here. The use of Worldcat and other sources to find old paper books has also been discussed here. Sometimes these appear by simple luck, as discovering a previously unknown relative in one of those cheesy family history books.

A major resource exists that was touched upon in the review of Cradled in Sweden. That post was here. However, Amazon has far more power to uncover those oddball family history books than you might imagine.

Google is All About Books (and a few other things)

We started out with a single page on using Google for genealogy. That included a video and may be found here. Then we branched out and discussed using Google Books for genealogy. Now, we have what might be a continuing series on Genealogy and Google Books. Hence, this introduction which serves as a road map.

The first thing to recognize is that Google Books is only one of many sources of books online. Our post, here, discusses Google Books and compares it with some other major sources on online genealogy books. 

How To Find & Use Google Books For Genealogy Research

The following material has been abbreviated and edited from the original posting on Lisa Lisson’s blog ‘Are You My Cousin?’ Michael Dindinger thought people might benefit from another perspective and added detail to our original Genealogy Research Using Google Books.

Genealogy researchers love books. Lisa is no different, but know what she (and many others of us) love more? Free Books! It's time to start exploring Google Books!

Secrets of Printing from Google Books

You would think it would be pretty simple to print from Google Books. Simply right click on the page and then "print." Well, it really isn't that simple. Google, probably to better safeguard the various sources that allowed them to digitize books, doesn't print the page a researcher wants without a few tricks. Luckily, those tricks are not overly difficult and most anybody's computer will have the necessary capabilities.

Online Genealogy Resources Continue to Increase

DPLA Website - HERE

A special report by Michael Dindinger
Of course, the large online genealogy family tree programs continue to add content, but perhaps you are not as tuned in to the fact that many genealogically valuable records are being regularly added to what most would not consider to be "genealogy oriented" websites. This category includes websites such as Archive.org, the Digital Public Library of America or DP.la and many others.

Searching Books for Family History

Four major places (and there are many more, including Worldcat) you can search for genealogy books of interest at home FOR FREE include:

• Google Books - our series about Google Books starts here
• FamilySearch - Michael Dindinger often mentions FamilySearch in his Family History Learning Moments
• Archive dot org - our page about the Internet Archive is here
• HeritageQuest (home use requires a library card or subscription - see places here - including Timberland Libraries)

Genealogy Research Using Google Books

I'm a big fan of Google Books. With a Google account, you can save Google ebooks to your library. The screenshot, above, shows what's currently in my own Google library. It is really pretty simple to use Google Books and you don't even to have a free account unless you want to keep stuff in the Google "cloud." Best of all, none of this takes up any storage space.

Internet Archive for Genealogy

archive.org is a site that has got literally many millions of items in it. Lots of these are of interest for genealogy research purposes. In another post, we saw how worldcat.org can be used to find out where books are located nearby.