FamilySearch: Civil Registrations, Military, SSDI and More!
It’s hard to keep up with the content constantly being added online at FamilySearch! If you (like me) spent the past month squeezing the last bit of travel an
d sun from the summer, you may have missed some great new content. Here’s a recap:
This month, over a half million indexed records and images have already shown up from Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Guatemala, Italy, New Zealand and the United States. Highlights include updates to the United States Social Security Death Index, images from the Czech Republic, Censuses, 1843–1921, collection, indexed records from the Hungary, Civil Registration, 1895–1980, collection, images from the new U.S., Indiana, Naturalization Records and Indexes, 1848-1992, collection and the Italy, Mantova, Mantova, Censuses (Comune), 1750-1900, collection, and indexed records from the U.S., Maine, State Archive Collections, 1718-1957, collection.
In August, FamilySearch.org added more than 45 million indexed records and images from BillionGraves and from Italy, the U.S., England, New Zealand, Sweden, Italy, Jamaica, Chile, Honduras and more. Notable U.S. additions are updates to the New Orleans Passenger Lists and newly-indexed war collections, including: the United States, World War II Prisoners of War of the Japanese, 1941-1945, collection, the United States, Korean War Battle Deaths, 1950-1957, collection, and the United States, Casualties of the Vietnam War, 1956-1998, collection.
A few more cool additions include:
- More than a half million images to a growing collection of Italy’s Civil Registrations;
- Nearly a million indexed Jamaican and a quarter million Chilean civil registrations;
- More than 2.5 million indexed recods from New Zealand passenger lists (1855-1973);
- Nearly a half-million indexed names from Boston passenger lists (1820-1891);
- Over 41 million indexed names added to the U.S. Public Record Index.
Search these and 3.5 billion more records at FamilySearch.org. Records are always free to search here, thanks both to the organization itself and thousands of volunteers around the world who index records. Join the effort here!
Premium Video: What’s Changed at Google
Premium content
A Change You Need to Know About in Google Search for Family History (10/27/11)
When it comes to researching online, the only thing that is constant is change! Just when you get all the search operators committed to memory Google goes and changes things. Not long ago I noticed that the Boolean operator NOT no longer seemed to be returning the expected results. However, the minus sign can be used to remove unwanted words from your search results. (Example: LINCOLN -ABRAHAM results in web pages that include the name Lincoln but NOT the name Abraham.)
The latest change is that the plus sign (+) no longer functions as a search operator that ensures a keyword is included in all search results. Now if you want to ensure a keyword is included, the keyword must be encased in quotations marks. For example: LINCOLN -ABRAHAM “OHIO”
Interestingly Google has been fairly silent on the change. Some in the Tech community suspect the move is in response to their growing focus on Google+ and the possibility of a new use for the “plus” sign. Stay tuned!Get Lisa’s Book for everything you need to know about using
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