Thought I'd pass on this excellent article. He does a better job than I do of pointing out the pitfalls of web genealogy. Audrey EASY GENEALOGY VIA THE INTERNET -- BE CAREFUL by Gordon Johnson, Aberdeen, Scotland <Kinman@ifb.co.uk> It seems at first sight heartening to read of tales of people finding their family links through WorldConnect and other Internet resources. What worries me is when people say that by this means they found their ancestry right back to the 1500s or 1400s. I shudder at this assumption that what you find on the Internet will be accurate. Most of it is posted by amateurs who have done their research to the best of their ability, but do not necessarily use the standards of proof that professional genealogists and dedicated amateurs would apply. It is a sad fact that very few genealogies ever lead back into the 1500s or 1400s on the basis of provable fact. The few which do are always of royal or noble family descent, and even there the evidence for some of their genealogical links is tenuous. May I make the point that you can never research your family properly by simply copying someone else's results. You are accepting work done by some whose standards may be very sloppy, and so the genealogy may be completely wrong! I am able to say this based on many years as a professional librarian helping people with their research, my later years as a professional researcher, and my involvement in newsgroups and genealogy lists. There is simply no substitute for doing the research properly. If you obtain someone else's research results, establish what sources were used and what level of proof was used in making links. It doesn't matter whether a professional or an amateur is doing the research; what matters are the standards being applied. Many amateurs do a grand job and I happily applaud their work; others make assumptions and guesses due to lack of knowledge, and come up with wrong conclusions. A simple example: An amateur researching his/her Scottish ancestry may use Scots Origins or FamilySearch.org to search for an ancestor, find in both only one possible solution, and decide that this is the answer. What the researcher should realize is that both sources are indexes primarily to Church of Scotland registers, and do not include Roman Catholic, Baptist, Free Church, Congregational, Secession and Relief churches, and the fact that there are many missing or damaged registers resulting in register entries being missing. Being unaware of essential background facts, errors are made and are perpetuated when a wrong genealogy is posted on the Internet and faithfully accepted without question by innocent newcomers. The above is sent not to denigrate, but to allow newcomers to view what they find on the Internet with a clearer vision.