Genealogy
Using Online and Local Genealogy Resources to
Build a Family History
Both the interest in genealogy and the resources available are growing rapidly. Historical family photos and documents provide research clues and help bring color to family history facts that are collected.
Sense of identity and place drive many of us to develop a strong interest in family history. In the past, developing a family tree often meant contacting distant relatives and trips to other parts of the country or world to visit local libraries, town halls, cemeteries, churches, and other repositories of documents. One of the primary reasons many Genealogical Societies were established was to assist in hard copy research for out-of-town information requests.
Aided by the ongoing and accelerating transfer of genealogical information to online and searchable databases, genealogy research is becoming both easier and more productive.
Three Approaches to Genealogy Research
Now, a meaningful amount of online research can be done for many families in one of three ways.
► Subscription Search Services - The growing interest in genealogy and the challenges presented by the volume of information have encouraged the development of services that use automated methods of gathering and filtering information to build, store, and share a family history.
► Paid Research - The number of independent genealogy researchers is growing to accommodate the growing interest in genealogy. These independent researchers are often the choice of those who have particularly challenging research requests, but do not have the time or expertise to conduct their own research.
► Conduct Your Own Research - The growing volume of information available in searchable databases presents both an opportunity and a challenge to anyone attempting to conduct their own research.
Subscribing to a Genealogy Research Service
The main advantage of subscription based genealogy sites is to take advantage of their search expertise and proprietary software to leverage information you provide to obtain the widest automated search possible. The primary focus of many of these services is automate the search of genealogy information as more information is added to accessible online databases. These services have developed a strong expertise in using software to search the maximum number of available international, national, and regional databases, and to identify links that may not be obvious to an independent researcher. As information is gathered, filtered, and confirmed as relevant, this new information is then leveraged into additional searches by cross referencing and proprietary software that focuses on likely geographic regions, date ranges, spelling variations, and the like.
As additional database information is gathered, the subscriber can add commentary, photos, stories, and other forms of color to the information. Additionally, the information can be stored at the service provider and shared with other family members online in a pleasing format.
Most such services provide a free trial period to convince you that their service will yield genealogy information for your family. After the free trial period, the services typically offer a variety of monthly, quarterly, and annual pricing packages.
Two of the best known and most commonly used of these services are
Ancestry.com
and OneGreatFamily.
