Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Data Mining for Genealogy Data (Part 4)



Rootsweb.com also has 45 databases (including the WorldConnect database submitted by researchers, which I described in Part 2 of this series) that comprise vital records, the Social Security Death Index, and many others.

You can input a given name and surname in the search form at the top of the main Rootsweb page that says "Search Rootsweb.com."

If you put in say "Isaac" for a given name and "Seaver" for a surname, and click Search, you get a list of entries in 3 Rootsweb databases.

If you input no given name and "seaver" in the surname field, and click Search, you get entries in 26 of 45 Rootsweb databases, including vital records. Note that these are only entries in Rootsweb databases - Rootsweb does not have the complete census records, or other records, only records submitted to Rootsweb.

Note that you can use the asterisk (*) as a wild card in the name fields in case you want to cover alternate name spellings in the databases. This will probably increase the number of hits. If you have too many hits to search, then you could input different spellings of the given name or surname.

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