Are you a member of the Sussex county library? Their system has heritage quest and county residents can use it free on line. http://www.sussexcountylibrary.org/ They have the Complete set of U.S. Federal Census records from 1790-1930 and over 25,000 family and local histories. You can also search books-collection supposedly has 25,000 family histories, and there is Civil War information. As for Ancestry.com-most of their data bases are free so you can search without being a member. other data bases you have to join to access (personally I have been a member for a long time -only one I pay for now-and found the free data the best-I just never seem to find anything in the ones I pay for-go figure). I don't see a need to join genealogy.com. There are so many people on the web who will do free look-ups at libraries and share info in their books, and lots of websites where the info is freely shared on line. Just my humble opinion. Linda -----Original Message----- From: Helen Graves [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 2:03 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NJSUSSEX-L] Ancestry vs. Heritage Quest, vs. Genealogy.com libraries on line Re: access to Minisink history books and CDs on-line via paid subscriptions Ancestry.com vs. Heritage Quest Ancestry.com vs. genealogy.com I do not have access to Heritage Quest, so I do not know if they offer access to history books, published family histories, or CDs. Do they? If so, what is the annual cost... and how does it compare to Ancestry.com? The cost to subscribe to Ancestry.com's history and family history section is $79.95/year. It is also offered by the quarter if you want it for only 3 months. Ancestry.com vs. genealogy.com I checked out the books and CD's accessible by a subscription to ancestry.com vs. genealogy.com library section. It seems ancestry.com offers more references for Minisink research than genealogy.com does. Comparing titles of books and CDs, the lists are not the same, so you might find specific titles available only on genealogy.com, which might make it very worthwhile. My primary question to the list is ... how does Heritage Quest compare to Ancestry.com ?? as I have no access to Heritage Quest to compare them. Helen Graves in a quandry over subscribing to Ancestry.com for $79.95 or to Heritage Quest via a $35 library card