Monday, 20 July 2020

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 2



In this lesson, find out how to identify which record office, archive or library you need to visit in order to move your research forward.  If you missed Lesson 1, you can catch up here.

      Do your homework by reading background material on the place and time your ancestors lived in, and find out what types of records they may have generated: consider court documents, rental rolls for tenants, electoral registers, and school records, for instance.

      Use the websites of archives in your ancestors’ city, county or country to learn what kinds of records they hold, and what information those contain.  Specific subject guides are often available to download and study.

      Search online catalogues.  Some apply just to individual archives and are found on their websites, while others such as The National Archives’ cover the country as a whole – check out their guide for mining the catalogues

      Be aware that as well as official government records, archives are held by charitable, religious, business, private, and academic organisations.  If you know that your ancestor worked in a specific profession, for example shipbuilding or medicine, you should consider investigating what relevant archives exist.

      Contact the archive(s) you plan to visit if you’re not sure what records will help you.  Staff have an excellent working knowledge of their resources and can advise you on how to get the most out of them.

      Make sure that the documents you want to see will be available at the time of your visit.  Some are stored off-site and require advance notice to be produced for searching – you should see indicators of this in catalogue entries.  Records undergoing conservation might also be out of circulation, but staff will be able to check this for you.

The next mini-class will focus on practical
 preparations to make for your research trip.

If you've a question about this lesson, just
post it in the comments below.

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