In our digital age, many otherwise inaccessible historical sources and information are readily online, not just to read, but to search using keywords and names. You’ll find that they are often provided in formats (such as PDF files) which can be downloaded to a mobile device for use on the go - ideal for reading on your journey to ancestral areas.
Digital resources are an indispensable element of the genealogist’s toolkit, and even more so when access to physical archives and libraries is limited. Check out the following links, and hopefully you’ll identify sources that you can use in your research. All of these are free to access.
Books
HathiTrust hosts
millions of digitised books from libraries the world over, while
Project Gutenberg has free e-books of many classics and out-of-copyright titles.
Newspapers
Read my
previous blog posts here and here for details of some
of the essential free newspaper archives online. Don't overlook these
invaluable records of your ancestors' everyday lives.
Historical
City & Trade Directories
Scottish Post Office directories list names, addresses, and trades or occupations of
people in urban areas from the 18th century onwards.
For England
& Wales, there are similar Trade & Local Directories from the
1700s to the 1910s.
Area
histories
To learn more
about the local history of specific counties or parishes, there are the Victoria County Histories covering England, and for Scotland, the 18th- and
19th-century editions of the Statistical Accounts.
Digital
Collections
Such
resources include many images that can bring your family’s history to
life. These are just a few suggestions.
SCRAN offers
still, sound and moving images from hundreds of museums, including the Victoria
& Albert and National Galleries of Scotland. View buildings
where your ancestors lived, worked, or went to school, objects they might have
used, and views they would have looked out on. You can log into this website using your public library membership details.
The British Library's digital collections include illuminated manuscripts
and vintage books with photo-illustrations, which could easily
side-track you en route to their wide selection of online maps, or their oral
history recordings.
Ireland
Fordham University in New York City provides an extensive list of links to free
digital content from Irish libraries, archives and museums, including many
sources of use to family historians.
United States
The US Library of Congress’s vast range of subject matter, from music to maps, includes local,
social, and business history collections in different
formats. The America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion
Pictures from 1894-1915 collection is just one highlight of a fascinating
online repository.
to some essential reference tools
for family history research.
No comments:
Post a Comment