Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tuesday's Tip - Use FamilySearch Research Wiki to Find Online Record Collections

This week's Tuesday's Tip is:  Use the FamilySearch Research Wiki to find online record collections for each U.S. state.

The FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page) is an online knowledge vault about genealogical resources.  Anyone can use it at any time, and anyone (registered) can contribute to it.  You can access the Research Wiki from the Search page (https://familysearch.org/search) or the Live Help page (https://familysearch.org/ask/).

From the Research Wiki page, you can search for a topic - country, state, county, methodology, specific database, etc.  Each U.S. State has a wiki page chock full of information about how to perform genealogical  research in that state.  For instance, here is the Massachusetts wiki page:


Right in the middle of that screen is a button with a green background with a link to "Massachusetts Online Records."  Clicking that button takes you to the listing of online records specifically for Massachusetts (four screens below, no overlap):





As you can see, the major topics include Vital Records, Archives, Biographies, Cemeteries, Immigration Records, Land Records, Military Records, Naturalizations, Newspapers, Obituaries, Probate Records, State Census, and Tax Records.

The links provided are to many online record repositories - FamilySearch, Ancestry, Archives, WorldVitalRecords, Fold3, Massachusetts Secretary of State, etc.  The collections on commercial sites are denoted with ($).

The list for each state is updated regularly by volunteers.  The last up date for Massachusetts was 10 June 2013.

These state online record lists are very useful, and reflect the effort made by many volunteers to provide research help to the genealogical world.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/06/tuesdays-tip-use-familysearch-research.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

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