Many genealogical societies publish research resources and FAQ for getting started at their websites. The two most helpful for German-Bohemians may be the German Bohemian Heritage Society (GBHS) and Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International (CGSI) websites. Explore those sites carefully and be prepared to print out a number of pages for a research notebook. Find those sites with a search using: GBHS or CGSI. A wonderful resource is Cyndi's list at: http://www.cyndislist.com/beginner.htm There are also online lessons (free) at some websites like' http://genealogy.about.com/cs/beginnerlessons/ Each site will have a lot of the same suggestions but many of them will have one or two suggestions the others do not include. When researching German-Bohemians it is very important to statt with some history of Bohemia when it was one of the Crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later dual monarchy (after 1868). Data can be confusing when the history behind the times that produced the data is not known. Uhderstand the relationships between Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia and how it changed over time. Get good maps showing your ancestral area during the period when your immigrant ancestors lived there -- not newest maps. Learn to use a Gazetteer as well as historical atlases of Bohemia or of Czechoslovakia. The German Research Companion by Shirley Riemer is a very good resource because it covers Germany as well as Austria. German-Bohemian vital records are in archives of the Czech Republic. The oldest will be in Latin, records of the 19th century are often in German and the later 19th C. and 20th C. are often in Czech Since German-Bohemians were expelled from CZ in 1945-46 and most of them ended up in Germany, there is important data in those archives regarding families of our distant cousins who are now living there. The VSFF is a group dedicated to genealogy of these families. They have an extensive website that is often cited on this mailing list. http://www.genealogienetz.de/index_en.html The pages for the German-Bohemia, also known as Sudetenland, staart at http://www.genealogienetz.de/reg/SUD/sudet_en.html Some of this website is in German, only, but the contact information for a "Betreuer" (coordinator or leader) for a certain area or the names of parishes and the years for which parish registers are available are the same in any language. The expelled Germans also formed Heimat societies and organized museums and archives of their own that deal with the families who lived in their particular area and the culture and tradition of their homeland. Their publications and websites are valuable research tools. Many of us frown at websites in foreign languages and just quit them rather than study them. Without willingness to start to pick up elementary German genealogy vocabulary from websites devoted to that or from lookups in one's own German-English dictionary it can be difficult to make progress. Dealing with sites in Czech language can also be a problem but there is help from many mailing lists when it is requested. Start to keep a vocabulary notebook right away. Google and Yahoo also offer optional translations of pages in German. Use one of them as a search engine and the hits will show brackets with [translate this page] that will translate the website when you click on that phrase. A great help can be the publications -- quarterly newsletter and yearbook -- of the CGSI and the Heimatbrief of the GBHS. The CGSI will cover specific research document types in detail in some of their publications. while the GBHS publishes more information about the culture and traditions of the German-bohemians. To subscrbe to the GBHS and CGSI newsletters, visit their websites and follow the instructions there. Find out if there is a genealogy section in your public library and explore the resources there. Learn if they have classes. Go to the LDS website: familysearch.org Explore that website thoroughly and then explore their library catalog for films dealing with Austria Bohemia or Austria Moravia . Searchs will default to Bohmen and Mahren -- the German names of those lands -- because virtually all of the films are in German. About knowing your history: Understand that when Czechoslovakia became a nation in 1918 Bohemia and Moravia ceased to exist as Austrian provinces under the Bohemian crown and the LDS library began a new catalog for Czechoslovakia without any cross-reference to Bohemia / Moravia./ Austrian Silesia. They are not cross-referenced to Bohemia or Moravia. Likewise when the Czech Republic and Slovakia became separate nations around 1993 there was another separation of data in the catalog without cross-reference to Czechoslovakia, Bohemia or Moravia. So it is necessary to use Bohmen, Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic to find everything they have. Karen