Thursday, September 24, 2015

Searching the NYG&B Record Collection on Findmypast

I posted Records from New York’s Largest Genealogical Organization Now Available to Search at Findmypast on Monday, 21 September, and noted that "This is a significant addition for Findmypast that makes these important New York records available to non NYGBS members. "

One of the databases of interest to me is the New York Genealogical & Biographical Record periodical collection.  The NYG&B Record is a quarterly and has been published since 1867.  The URL for this collection on Findmypast is:  http://search.findmypast.com/search-world-Records/the-new-york-genealogical-and-biographical-record.  Note that you do have to be a Findmypast subscriber to access these records (NYG&B members can now access Findmypast as part of their NYG&B subscription).

On the NYG&B Record collection search page, I entered the name of an ancestor in the search fields:



Since the collection covers 1867 to 2015, I decided to limit the search above to 1940 to 2015 by entering a publication year of "1980" and selecting "+/-40 years" in the "Give or Take" dropdown menu.  I can then use 1900 +/- 40 years to search the first half of the collection.  A searcher will have to do this for more common names.

I clicked on the blue "Search the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record" button and saw:


There are four matches in the NYG&B Record published between 1940 and 2015.  I clicked on the second match on the list, and saw a page from an article "The Crocheron Family of Staten Island."  Jacques Poillon married into that family:


There are four blue buttons above the article, for:

*  Previous page
*  Next page
*  Download Document
*  Back to Search Results

There are image tools at the bottom right of the document to:

*  Go full screen
*  Zoom into the full width of the document in the window
*  Zoom out
*  Zoom in
*  Save the page
*  Print the page

I clicked on the "Download Document" button and the screen showed the page and I could Save the page as a PDF file:


The "Save" button on the third screen does the same thing by opening another window tab.

Here is the page in the Adobe Reader program:


This system works fine.  I downlaoded the nine pages of the article, renamed the separate PDF files, and put them in my Crocheron surname file folder.

The user has to be careful in the names entered into the Search fields.  I entered "Jacque" with "Name variants" checked, and received no matches.  When I entered "Jacques" with "name variants" checked, I received the four matches above.

Note also that names may be misspelled in a document and indexed as spelled - use the name variants check box to find name spelling variants.

Findmypast provides a source box on the left side of each match page.  Here is the one for the page above:


While this is not Evidence Explained quality source citation, it does contain most of the elements required.  Here is a source citation for this article:

Charlotte Megill Hix, "The Crocheron Family of Staten Island," The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 111, Issue 1 (January 1980), pages 31-39, digital image, Findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : accessed 24 September 2015).

There is also a way to browse the NYG&B Record collection - I will describe that process in a future blog post.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/09/searching-nygbr-collection-on-findmypast.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.


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