Thanks, Dan. I'm too old and have been doing genealogy for too many years to be considered a newbie, but I've also been doing this long enough to appreciate someone's effort to smooth the path for others. I'm always glad to learn about new resources and search strategies and just I enjoyed about 45 minutes of harvesting birth dates for people in my database. I like FREE!   One thing you might want to add is a reference to the Google Book Search. This is, next to FamilySearch, my hands-down favorite online genealogy resource. It's accessed from the regular Google page by the "more" link at the top. The search is performed as you describe it, but the Book Search will filter out some of those millions of hits and focus your search on books, periodicals, gov't docs, pamphets, etc. The books have been scanned with character-recognition software which makes the site a virtual index to several million books. Many of the books are in the public domain and can be read entirely online or downloaded to your computer. Others give only a preview, which may contain the information you want, or just a "snippet." Even the entries that give only bibliographic information serve as the equivalent of a card catalog entry that lets you know your search term(s) appears in this particular book and usually gives a page number. NOTE: I also use it as an index tool for some of the many older books that my library owns that have no index or only a partial index. For books that allow some online reading there's another internal search field that allows you to search for further mentions of your person of interest or anything else you'd like to look for in the book. If you want to find the entire book (the real book), click on the link "find in a library" and the search will take you to that book's entry in WorldCat, the largest book catalog in the world. Put your zipcode or city and state in the field labeled for it and it will line up the libraries that own the book from the closest to the farthest from your location. Perhaps there's a copy within reasonable driving distance. Interlibrary loan is also a possibility and the WorldCat entry has all the information you need to make the request through your library. Most public libraries with genealogy collections, historical societies, etc. usually won't loan their genealogy books, but I've been able to borrow many useful books from college and university libraries or smaller libraries with no "genealogy collection." If the St. Louis County Library appears in the list of libraries that own a particular book, they may also let you borrow it through your local library. Check their catalog by clicking on the library's name in the WorldCat list to see if the book is identified as a part of the National Genealogical Society Book Loan Collection. SLCL will loan these books to anyone...no membership required.   If you want a tutorial (or several), YouTube (also owned by Google) has videos that will help you learn more about the Google Book Search. While you're on that little "more" button, check out Google Scholar and Patent Search. I've found genealogy goodies on both of these sites. By searching using the "Images" link I've also found pictures of relatives, their houses, even bridges built by people in my genealogy database. I want it all and these easily accessed special search options help me focus on more manageable chunks of Google's offerings!   Thanks again for your work in making genealogy a little easier, Dan.   Sherry Johnson ________________________________ From: "vashenan-request@rootsweb.com" <vashenan-request@rootsweb.com> To: vashenan@rootsweb.com Sent: Sat, April 16, 2011 2:01:13 AM Subject: VASHENAN Digest, Vol 6, Issue 34 Message: 1 Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:28:18 -0700 From: Dan Smith <justlivingitup@gmail.com> Subject: [VASHENAN] Looking for some feedback To: VASHENAN@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <BANLkTikefw5=_UJzzwQ5+i6j6n9ZFgX02g@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I've been sending this email to several different mail lists in order to promote my free ancestry website for beginners. This is not spam. It is only about free ancestry research. I am not profiting from this in any way. I just wanted to do something good for people. Over the years I have been on many Rootsweb mail lists. A person who I was exchanging emails with suggested I send it to a few of the lists in different states and see what happens. So that is what I am doing. Most likely you will see this email more then once if you are on many mail lists. I apologize if it annoys you. In my frustration with the so-called free ancestry websites and free sites which are so cluttered you need a GPS to find your way out, I created my own. It's a simple collection of free ancestry resources and how to use them. My wife and friends encouraged me to put this website together. I kept getting questions from people who knew I was doing ancestry research and wanted to try it themselves. They were beginners and wanted to know where to go to get information about their ancestry. So I put this website together: http://sites.google.com/site/FunSimpleFreeAncestry It contains a lot of links to websites that are already in many of the GenWeb County websites. I just put them all together with examples of how to use them. So far I have received a lot of great feedback . If you have a website and you would like to add my website as a link, then please do. Thanks, Dan Smith

Sherri gave us a lot of useful information on the google search feature. I wanted to add a couple of other things. I, too, find Google Books to be one of the most useful searches, and have turned up some very interesting information that I probably NEVER would have found any other way. I'd like to point out that this is most useful if you have an unusual surname. If you have a common one, you'll most likely have to search for individual people (like "Charity Adams") rather than just a surname, since the surname only search would return more entries than you could possibly deal with. In my example, even when I search for "Charity Adams" I still got over 1300 hits. So I might further refine it with her husband's name or a locality. Like, if I add "Indiana," I narrow it down to 43 hits, which is more manageable. Also, there is a bibliography feature in Google Books that I find really helpful. Once you find a source book that contains information you want to use, click on "Find in a Library." It will take you to a new page that lists the closest libraries to you. If you look in the upper right of that page, you'll see a link called "Cite/Export." Click on that, and you can copy a citation, choosing among 5 different styles (i.e., APA, Chicago, etc.) Click on each style to see what each citation would look like, then copy the one you like and paste it into whatever program you are using to document your genealogy. I usually do a text file with the citation and the relevant passages from the book, and then enter into my genealogy program later. Or you could enter it directly into your genealogy program. Hope that is helpful to someone. Kind Regards, Linda http://www.Stokesbury.org Kind Regards, Linda Linda Stokesbury Brennan, Lansing, MI & Natchitoches, LA Stokesbury DNA Project Administrator Researching: STOKESBURY (STUCHBURY), LAMARE, BABIN, DUNNING, OLINGER, ORR, PAINTER/BAINTER, BAUGHMAN, CLARK, HENINGER http://www.Stokesbury.org, http://www.artistsuccesskit.com http://www.familytreedna.com/public/stokesburyDNAproject On Apr 17, 2011, at 12:29 AM, Johnson Sherry wrote: Thanks, Dan. I'm too old and have been doing genealogy for too many years to be considered a newbie, but I've also been doing this long enough to appreciate someone's effort to smooth the path for others. I'm always glad to learn about new resources and search strategies and just I enjoyed about 45 minutes of harvesting birth dates for people in my database. I like FREE! One thing you might want to add is a reference to the Google Book Search. This