Thursday, January 13, 2011

National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) Index Now Online

I just read the blog post NGSQ Index Now FREE and AVAILABLE to the Public on the Upfront with NGS written on 12 January by Diane L. Richard.  The post includes:

"Since 1912, the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) has published material concerning all regions of the nation and all ethnic groups including compiled genealogies, case studies, essays on new methodology and little-known resources, critical reviews of current books, and previously unpublished source materials.

"Articles show how to cope with name changes, burned courthouses, illegitimacies, and other stumbling blocks; how to interpret records that do not mean what they seem to say; how to distinguish among individuals of the same name; how to identify origins of immigrant ancestors; how to research a variety of ethnic groups; how to find a way through the maze of records at the National Archives; how to conduct research in specific states; and how to compile solid genealogies.

"Previously, only NGS members could access the index to search the collection by author or title or browse editions by year. Now ANYONE can search the National Genealogical Society Quarterly Index for FREE, just click here!"
 
The web page is shown below:
 
 
The user can search for an Author Name or for an Article title, or check one of the "Article Category" boxes and hit the "Submit" button.  For instance:
 
*  Putting "Mills" in the "Author Name" field yields 84 matches
 
*  Putting "Tennessee" in the "Article Title" field yields 29 matches.
 
*  The "Bible Records" category has 799 matches.
 
*  The "African-American Features" category has 11 matches.
 
Alternatively, the user can select a year in the "Browse by Year Indexed" field and see all of the articles for a selected year. 
 
There are 99 years of peer-reviewed genealogical articles in this index - now FREE at http://members.ngsgenealogy.org/NGSQSearch/search.cfm.  Have you searched for your surname, or your locality, lately? 
 
This is an excellent resource for researchers to find specific articles on surnames, localities or research techniques.  If you find an article of interest, many local and regional genealogical libraries have the print copies.  Or you can purchase a back issue of the NGSQ. Contact store@ngsgenealogy.org to check if it is available. Cost is $12 members/$15 non-members which includes shipping.
If you are an NGS member, the issues since 1983 are available at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/members_only.
 
I am very pleased to see this index online.  Every society with a research-oriented publication should put their Tables of contents online so that search engines can find articles.  It's a win-win - at a minimum, the society may sell an issue or gain a member.  The searcher gets help with his or her research.

1 comment:

Martin said...

The search engine isn't very good. There is no family name search. As you yourself point out there are 799 bible records online. Since you can't search a surname you are forced to browse all 799. Likewise, if the surname or place name is not in the title, you won't find the article.

It's not much of a muchness.