Something for the weekend

Here in the UK we are entering into a bank holiday weekend, the second this month. It seems rain has been forecast, this is to be expected. So, if you are stuck indoors this weekend, here are few things to occupy your time.

You could take a look at Project Gutenberg, a database of free books. Unless, your ancestors were highly noted, you probably won’t find anything which mentions them directly – although it’s always possible – but it is still a good place to find historical and geographical information.

Pay a visit to Wikipedia to find free images or maps. The maps seem to be mostly from the US, but other areas are covered too. The images cover a wide range of themes including some posters from World War 2.

Make specialised searches of Google. Not all the options will be of use to family historians, but many will, especially the translated and book searches. Once you have done that, find out how you make your ordinary searches more productive.

Finally, why not add some content to the National Archives wiki, a collaborative effort to provide information which isn’t currently in the archives.

Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are!

A couple of useful freebies

When people begin to trace their family history, often the first purchase or download they make is a software package to record and track their finds. However, there is one other piece of essential software you will need, a .pdf reader. PDF stand for ‘portable document format’, and it can be used on a range of platforms without the overall appearance of the document changing. What is more, it is also widely used to display information on genealogy sites, so it is essential that you have a copy on your computer. Don’t worry, this is not something you need to part with any cash for, you can obtain a copy for free by simply going to this page.

Once you have installed that, head over to Google Books, where you will find copies of many useful reference works, biographies, topographies and other useful material. This is a good place to go to find works that may contain background information about the places your ancestors lived, or the jobs they did, or even them themselves. Some of the books are only available in extract form, others are full books which can be saved or download for free.