Sunday, January 29, 2012

Week 4 - Free Offline Genealogy Tools - 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy Week #4

Week 4 – Free Offline Genealogy Tools: For which free offline genealogy tool are you most grateful? How did you find this tool and how has it benefited your genealogy? Describe to others how to access this tool and spread the genealogy love.

For a completely free tool, I'd have to say the library. I'd also have to admit that I don't use it nearly enough! For my Irish research, several people referred me to the O'Kief, Coshe Mang, Slieve Lougher and the Upper Blackwater in Ireland series. This is a huge collection of Irish records compiled by Albert E. Casey covering parts of County Cork and County Kerry. The closest library to me with this collection is a couple of hours away, but I finally got the chance to take a look at them when I was in town for a concert. I was able to use the indices for the volumes to look up the references to my Creedon/Creeden surname in the short time we had there. I didn't find anything I could tie to my Creeden ancestry, but I wouldn't have even had the chance to look without the free access provided by the library.

The newsletters published by local genealogy societies are another tool I'm grateful for. I suppose these aren't technically free since you have to join the society to receive them, but they are provided as one of the services to members. These newsletters are printed out the old fashioned way on paper and for the societies I belong to, they aren't available online. The newsletters often include local records and histories that aren't available anywhere else. It would be great if the newsletters and the Casey volumes were digitized and available online, for so far that hasn't happened!

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

No comments:

Post a Comment