Friday, July 14, 2006

Name Searches at Rootsweb

While browsing the Rootsweb site today, I saw two Search engines that I had not seen (or missed!) before:

Rootsweb has a "Meta Search" of all Rootsweb databases hidden on their "Index of all Search Engines and Databases" link here. This can be used to find persons with a specific given name and specific surname in 45 Rootsweb databases. The 45 databases include the vital records, SSDI, the user-submitted databases (including WorldConnect), but not the Homepages or Freepages accounts or the USGenWeb or WorldGenWeb pages.

Rootsweb also has a "beta" Message Board archive search here. If you put in any combination of names or keywords, it will find all messages on the Ancestry/Rootsweb message boards with those names included. In other words, if you put in "isaac seaver" it will find all messages with those names in the message, not necessarily persons named Isaac Seaver. This is extremely useful, since there are now 29 million messages on these boards.

Rootsweb continues to be one of the best sites for finding data submitted by other researchers, and is one of the first places I go to start research on a new subject.

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