Category Archives: Advice & How-To

Update: This problem has been fixed! See FamilySearch/FHL Catalog: Ask & You Shall Receive? Searching the FamilySearch/FHL catalog earlier, I made an interesting discovery, and not a pleasant one, mainly because I thought I was losing my mind! I don’t know when this change happened, but I’m glad I caught it because it impacts the search results. At the bottom, there is now an option to select “Online” or “Family History Center.” The default is “Online,” which presents a problem—you won’t see everything in the Family History Library’s (FHL) collection. […]

If you’re like me, you anxiously await the weekly email from FamilySearch that lists all the new historical records added to their online collection. When FamilySearch recently announced the discontinuation of lending microfilms to Family History Centers, I caught mention that all films that had been lent in the past few years were now digitized. Now, I know I’ve rented my share of films and I swear I haven’t seen any of those records come through in the weekly email. I even went out and checked the Historical Record Collections—nope, […]

If you’re a genealogist on Facebook, you probably encounter lots of posts from genealogy friends or groups that you want to keep tabs on. Say someone asks a question about resources in an area of interest. You may not have an answer, but you’d love to hear what others might say. What are you to do? Check back every few days (assuming you can even find the post again)? There must be a better way!

Last summer I attended the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research. I was in Thomas Jones’s class Writing and Publishing for Genealogists. The class was well worth the money and I learned a lot about all things writing and editing in the world of genealogy. One of the best tips I got was simple—use a dictionary! For a moment I thought, “well isn’t that obvious?” Sure, I use it regularly to look up correct spellings and definitions. But as Dr. Jones went on, I realized just how useful a dictionary […]

Newspapers are great resources for genealogists. Sometimes newspapers are overlooked because they can be difficult to search and/or hard to access. The efforts by many genealogy record-providing websites, Chronicling America, and local libraries are making it easier to access newspaper collections, and because of OCR (optical character recognition) technology, searching newspapers is a bit easier. There are tons of tips I could offer related to newspaper research. I chose this one because it is often overlooked. When we use newspapers in our research, we tend to head straight to the […]

It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to do any research on my Luxembourg roots. A little over a week ago, I was able to attend a lecture entitled “Luxembourgers in Aurora,” presented by Sara Jacoby, the executive director of the Luxembourg American Cultural Society. Since my Luxembourgers settled in Aurora, Illinois, I did not want to miss this presentation, so I made arrangements to go. And since the lecture was held in Aurora, I had to get in some research time while I was there. My first stop was […]

With the help of two Amazon gift cards for Christmas, I finally purchased a white board.  While I do have some wall space in my new home office, I prefer mobile white boards so that I can move them around, and they often have a double-sided white board (some have a white board on one side and a bulletin board on the other) so you get a two-for-one deal.  I placed my order on Sunday, January 3, and it arrived safely on Friday, January 8.  My husband and I assembled […]

If you are planning to attend either the FGS 2015 Conference or the 2015 Rootstech Conference in Salt Lake City come February, you will likely want to swing around the corner and get some research in at the Family History Library.  Having visited the FHL a few times (and once during a Rootstech conference), I thought I’d share a few tips with you for getting the most out of your visit. #1 – Plan Ahead of Time This is actually two tips in one.  First, you’ll want to figure out […]