Now you can save the links to your favorite websites in Dropbox. It’s another great way to use Dropbox for genealogy! Here’s how….
Big news: Dropbox recently announced that you can now save web page URLs to Dropbox on the web or on your PC. It’s as simple as drag and drop!
Here’s a link to a quick-read article all about it, and it includes a super short video showing you the feature in action:
Think how handy this would be for tracking genealogy website sources! Those bookmarks we create in our web browsers can get pretty cluttered. A Dropbox folder dedicated just to your genealogy would be a great place to store URLS for those websites you find yourself consulting a lot: a Rootsweb site, the Genealogy Gems blog, JewishGen, and even specific pages within those sites for articles you love.
If you’re a Dropbox user, why not try saving this article URL to your Dropbox? The article we link to above has a video in which they show the drag-and-drop in a web browser, but it works just as well when you click on the URL and drag it onto the Windows Explorer icon on your computer’s task bar. When Windows Explorer pops open, just “drop” onto the Dropbox folder! And if you’re on a Mac, try the equivalent.
I use Dropbox every day. Below I have some great resources for you including an article on the types of items a genealogist could use Dropbox to save and share with other researchers.
The 40 millionth record has been added to WorldCat, the enormous multi-library catalog that helps people find library materials all over the world.
Even cooler, that 40 millionth record was harvested to WorldCat through the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. This gateway allows for “unique, open-access digital content” to be brought into WorldCat, according to owner OCLC. “Once there…collections are more visible and discoverable to end users who search WorldCat as well as Google and other popular websites.”
If you haven’t used WorldCat for genealogy, you may be missing out on a lot. Like published history books (regional, county, local, ethnic, religious and more). And published family histories (search by the surname as a subject). The holdings of the enormous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah are now included in WorldCat, too (click here to read a blog post on that).
The idea that digital archives are integrating into WorldCat–hence becoming more searchable for us–is fantastic. What kinds of digitized materials might be cataloged here? Well, the Arizona Memory Project is the digital archive that provided that 40 millionth WorldCat record. The Arizona Memory Project “provide(s) online access to the wealth of primary sources in Arizona libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions including government documents, photographs, maps and objects that chronicle Arizona’s past and present.” Good stuff!
Remember to also search ArchiveGrid, WorldCat’s sister search interface for archival materials, for original family history documents.
Genealogy records are about to expand online. It’s still about 9 months away, but in the time it takes to bring a new descendant into the world the National Archives will be delivering the 1940 US Population Schedules to the public. There are a couple of guys who have been on the forefront of this event: none other than Steve Morse and Joel Weintraub. (You’ll remember hearing from Joel from his past appearance on the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast.)
Of course family historians are chomping at the bit to dig into the 1940 census even though there won’t be an index when it’s first released. However, the guys have put out a press release about what you can do now to get ready to search:
“It will not be name indexed, so it will be necessary to do an address search in order to find families. Address searching involves knowing the ED (enumeration district) in which the address is located.. The National Archives (NARA) earlier this year indicated they had plans to make available in 2011 the 1940 ED maps of cities and counties, and ED descriptions, but their recent move to consider having a 3rd party host all the images may have appreciably set back this timetable.
The only website that currently has location tools for the 1940 census is the Steve Morse One Step site. There are several such tools there, and it could be overwhelming to figure out which tool to use when. There is a tutorial that attempts to clarify it and an extensive FAQ.
We are announcing the opening of another educational utility to help people learn about the different 1940 locational search tools on the One Step site, and information about the 1940 census itself. It is in the form of a quiz, and should help many, many genealogists quickly learn how to search an unindexed census by location. The new utility is called “How to Access the 1940 Census in One Step“. Not only is it informative, we hope it is entertaining.”
Entertaining it is – at least to those of us passionate about family history! Now you can get started preparing to get the most out of the 1940 population schedules right away.
There’s another way to prep for the big release. Learn more about the 1940 enumeration process by watching the National Archives YouTube channel’s four short videos created by the US Census Bureau prior to 1940. These films were used to train enumerators on their general duties and responsibilities, as well as the correct procedures for filling out the 1940 census.
Though family historian tend to focus on the population schedule, there were several different schedules created and the films describe the main ones including the population, agriculture, and housing schedules. (Learn more about the various census schedules by listening to Family History: Genealogy Made EasyEpisode 10 featuring Curt Witcher.)
You’ll also learn more about the background of the census and the reasons behind the questions that were asked. And it’s the reasons behind the questions that shed even more light on what the priorities were back at that time and clues as to what life was like.
The films also cover the duties of the enumerators, highlighting the three major principles they were instructed to follow: accuracy, complete coverage, and confidential answers.
Elevenses with Lisa LIVE show exclusively for Premium Members. These 5 search hacks are going to move you into the category of genealogy search ninja! Premium Members can join me for the live show and join in the chat. Or watch the video replay afterward at your convenience.
1. Quickly find free stuff on the big genealogy websites
You probably have a subscription to one or more of the big genealogy websites like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com or Fold3.com. The fastest way to find out what’s new at these websites is to visit these specific pages, and bookmark them on your web browser.
Click “Last Updated” to sort all the collections starting with the most recently updated. Use the filters to narrow down to only the types of collections you’re interested in (record type, location date or any combination.)
Bookmark webpages on your web browser bar:
Right-click on the browser bar and select Add Folder.
Name the folder something like Gen Sites.
Navigate to the first website.
In the browser bar, click the icon and URL.
Drag and drop it on to a blank area of the browser bar.
Continue to go to websites and add them to the folder.
Right-click on any item in the folder or on the browser bookmark bar you want to delete or rename. (It can be helpful to shorten the site names.)
When you want to check a site, simply click the folder and click the website.
Ancestry’s Recently Added and Updated Collections on Ancestry page does a nice job of differentiating between New and Update. Since collections may be regularly updated, it’s nice to spot the ones that are brand new.
The dropdown menu at the top of the page is set to United States by default. However, you can use it to view the new content for other countries as well.
Findmypast is primarily focused on records from the United Kingdom, although they do have some records from other countries including the United States. While they do have a “What’s New?” page, it’s not a list directly from their catalog. Instead, it’s a compilation of their weekly Friday blog post on new and updated records starting with the most recently published. This means you’d have to click through and read each post. Here’s a search hack to work around this.
Go to Google.com.
Type in the keyword(s) for what you want, followed by a space.
On the results page, click Tools. A filter menu will pop up. Click the Any Time drop-down and select the desired timeframe such as the past month or past year, or a custom range of 2020 through 2023.
Press Enter on your keyboard and your results will narrow down only to matching results from that timeframe.
This website, owned by Ancestry, has a primary focus on military records, although you will find other records as well.
You can find the most recent content additions by going to the search page and selecting a country and other descriptions of types of records that interest you. Then on the results page, click the Sort: Relevance button and select Sort: Newest First. You can narrow the list down further by clicking the Any Time button and selecting increments up to the last year.
2. How to Search a Specific Website
Use site search to dig into websites:
that don’t have a search feature,
that have a search feature that’s not great,
or to double-check that you found everything at that site.
Essentially, you can use Google search as a custom search engine for a specific website.
For example, USGenWeb is a free genealogy website that has been around for a long time and has a vast number of pages and content. There isn’t a search box on the home page, but you can click Search & Site Map in the menu. However, you’ll notice that their search engine is powered by a third party called FreeFind which has been around since 1998. Because it’s free and a third party, the search field is definitely not secure. Since that’s the case, you might as well use the largest and most powerful search engine in the world, Google, to search to run your search instead. Google’s site search is the way to do that.
A note about websites like USGenWeb: Make sure that you are searching the correct website.
Notice the URL for the USGenWeb website:https://usgenweb.org/index.html. Click the desired state on the map on the home page. Now, look at the URL again.
Notice that it’s actually a different website. Each state has the two-letter state abbreviation at the beginning of the URL. Use the state address when conducting a site search.
Example Search: If I wanted to find all mentions of a surname in the state, my site search would look like this:
Hulse site:http://ingenweb.org/
You can use the Google search operators listed in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox to be even more specific about what you want to find.
3. How to Search Websites from within RootsMagic
As genealogists, we spend a lot of time in our genealogy software programs. The one I use, and it’s one of the most popular, is RootsMagic. So, it would be really convenient to be able to run searches at genealogy websites where I have a subscription, or in search engines like Google which will scour the entire internet. Well, you can so let me show you how to do that in RootsMagic.
Select the individual you want to research.
Click SEARCH in the menu.
Click the WebSearch
Edit the person as needed.
To select which websites to search, click the Provider
Check the box “show results in external web browser” for more flexibility and to get the URL for Web Tags (which you can add on the Person profile page.)
The main part of the WebSearch screen is a web browser window that displays your results.
The left and right arrows at the top of the page display allowing you to go back and forth between web pages.
Add WebTag adds a link to the current website to the card of the person on whom you’re searching. To open your results in your regular web browser instead, click the Use External Browser checkbox. (Note that this disables the Add WebTag button.)
For websites that require logging in (such as FamilySearch, Ancestry and Findmypast) the initial result will be a log in page on the website. Once you log in, the search results should appear.
How to Manage Search Providers in RootsMagic
You can add and edit providers.
Click SEARCH in the menu.
Click Edit Providers (at the bottom of the search box, above the list of people.)
Under the Standard Search Providers you’ll see not just genealogy websites, but also search engines like Google and Bing.
Click the Custom Search Providers
Click the Add
Type in the name of the provider.
In your web browser, go to the provider’s home page.
Use the search engine to search for John Doe 1700-1800.
Copy the URL (Ctrl + C) of the search results page.
Paste the URL (Ctrl + V) into the Search Results URL field in RootsMagic.
Click the OK button which will close the box.
You will now find the provider you just added at the bottom of the Provider list.
If there are any providers listed that you don’t want to show up in the list of providers, uncheck the box for that provider in Manage Search Providers.
Tips:
You can always resize your windows to fit side by side.
Right-click links in RootsMagic to open in a new browser tab at any time.
If you want searches to be conducted immediately without editing the person’s information, check the box for AutoSearch.
Click PEOPLE in the menu to return to that person’s profile in your tree.
4. Browsing Offline Websites
In order for Google to be able to deliver websites as search results, it has to visit them. It has bots that “crawl” the website. When it does, it keeps a copy known as a cached version. Google keeps cached version of all websites.
Occasionally websites are down, or they go offline temporarily for a variety of reasons. This search trick will give you a way to browse the website until it comes back online.
The Cache: search operator can be used in the Google search field followed by the URL of the webpage you are trying to access. Here’s an example of a search query that will let you browse the Genealogy Gems website if we are temporarily offline:
Cache:https://lisalouisecooke.com
It’s slow for browsing a website because you need to run a cache search for each page. But it’s great if you already have the link (such as a link to a video and show notes in our newsletter – just right-click on the red button and copy the link). It’s very handy if a link you have is broken and you want to see it again and perhaps try and track down a working link (as in the case where they have moved the page.)
5. How to Search with Photos and Images
How to Upload an Image to Google Image Search (Reverse Search):
Navigate to and select the digitized photo you saved to your computer.
Google will attempt to find that exact image, or the closest visually. Currently, Google can identify basic elements in the photo and better-known subjects.
Adjust the frame to crop or click dots to focus on search certain elements in the image.
Click the Find Image Source button at the top to dig further.
How to Search an Online Photo with Google Images (Reverse Search)
Right-click on a PC (Control-Click on a Mac) on the image on the web page.
In the pop-up menu select Copy Image Address.
Got to Google Images.
Click the camera icon in the search field.
Paste the image URL that you copied to your computer clipboard (on a PC use Control V on your keyboard.)
Click the Search by Image button to run your search.
To celebrate my article in the new issue of Family Tree Magazine (co-authored with Genealogy Gems Contributing Editor Sunny Morton), I’m running a series of posts on teamwork tips and technology tools for collaborative research. This post covers one of my favorite free sharing tools: Dropbox.
A cloud storage service like Dropbox or iCloud is a dream come true for genealogy researchers who want to collaborate from across the living room or across the world. It’s also great for accessing your own research from multiple devices without ever having to copy it over: your home computer, laptop, tablet/iPad, smart phone.
Basically, Dropbox looks like any other file folder you keep on your computer. Open the folder, retrieve and save files to it like any other folder. But this folder lives online as well, so more than one person or computer (with approved access) can access it. You can save documents, images and other files in real-time. And it’s free!
What can you share on Dropbox?
Research sources. Photographs, documents, audio files of interviews, materials from books, etc. Basically any source material you can think of that can be preserved digitally!
Your to-do lists. Whether working alone or as a team, it’s important to have–and use!–a to-do list. The list should track specific tasks, like ordering an ancestor”s death certificate or searching for an obituary. For the article in Family Tree Magazine, the editors created a brand new Research Planner and Log: a comment-enabled PDF that lets you keep track of tasks, including when they’re done. This is a great document to use in Dropbox!
Research notes and writing. Think timelines, biographical sketches, drafts of writing projects, GEDCOM files (the universal file type for family tree data) and any other files related to getting the research done.
Links. Keep a file with your favorite links embedded in it, including links to digital books, vital records and other resources. You can simply copy and paste links into a word-processing file called “Links.” Include notes before or after each link, like “great local history blog for Marietta, Ohio.”
For more on using Dropbox and other collaborative tools on your tablet, check out my bookTurn Your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse, available as an e-book or in print.
I also hope you’ll check out our article “Teaming Up” in the December 2013 issue of Family Tree Magazine. You’ll find more technology and teamwork tips, including more on Dropbox for genealogists.
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series of posts on teamwork tips and technology tools for collaborative research. This post covers one of my favorite free sharing tools: Dropbox.
For more on using Dropbox and other collaborative tools on your tablet, check out my book