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| Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay |
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. Internet Archive boasts not only digitised books, but software, films, and music as well.
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.
United States city directories from about 1749 to circa 1990 can be searched by name as a complete collection at FamilySearch.
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.
United Kingdom
The national libraries of Scotland and Wales have excellent digital collections, many of which can be accessed at home free of charge. See my previous blogpost about them here. Unfortunately the British Library's online offering was affected by a cyber attack in 2023 and is not available at the time of writing.
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 collection "America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915" is just one highlight of a fascinating online repository.
to some essential reference tools
for family history research.
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