E-mail: Barb@ZRoots.com
©Copyright 2008 by Barbara Renick

Links to most of the sites mentioned in this lecture are at: www.zroots.com/links.htm

1. Telnet (old, ugly, difficult to use)
2. E-mail (still a vital Internet tool for genealogists)
3. World Wide Web (a.k.a. the Web) (newest, most colorful, easiest to use portion)

Web browser software did for the Internet what word processing did for typing—it was a revolution. The World Wide Web and browser software:

1. Bring a world of resources to our fingertips anywhere we have Internet access.
2. The resources are available 24/7 (unlike classic resources in libraries, archives, and courthouses).

Once the Internet evolved to include the Web (by December 1994), search engines began to help us find what we needed among the multiplying resource files on the Web. Internet search engines have continued to improve and evolve.

There are three navigation methods for the Web (accessed via your Web browser software):

1. Type the URL (electronic address—every Web site has one) into the address box in your browser program.
2. Click on links (embedded in Web pages) to go find more somewhere else
   1. On another part of that same Web page
   2. One another Web page at that same Web site
   3. On another Web site anywhere in the world
3. Use an Internet search tool
   1. Search engines
   2. Directories

You need to recognize what the parts of a URL mean. Why? Because you need to know what to do when you type a URL into the address box in your browser and get an error message saying that Web page can not be found.

Example of a Web page’s full URL: http://www.zroots.com/links.htm

1. http:/ tells your computer to look on the World Wide Web portion of the Internet
2. /www.zroots.com tells your computer to look at the ZRoots.com Web site. The name of a Web site is called its domain name.
3. /links.htm tells your computer to look for a Web page at that site named links.htm (the .htm portion of the file name tells you it was written for the Web).

Most browsers let you leave off the http:// part of an Internet address.

Any Web site can have any number of Web pages. You just need to acquire/rent enough space on the host computer where your Web site resides. Any Web page can be any number of viewing screens in length. Watch the scroll bars on the side of your browser window as an indication of how much of that Web page you are currently viewing.

When you get a page not found error message:

1. Check the spelling of the URL you typed.
2. Check the capitalization (or lack thereof) of what you typed.
3. Try using a shorter version of the URL (chopped back to just the domain name).

There are only two types of resources to be found on the Internet:

1. Files (the whole World Wide Web is made up of nothing but computer files)
2. People (as in librarians, archivists, and other genealogists you contact via e-mail, blogs, etc.)

What is truly amazing is the variety of tools those two resources provide for genealogists online.

Find the URLs of sites you would like to visit via:

1. Word of mouth
2. Different types of printed publications
   1. Geographic: the East TN Historical Society’s Tennessee Ancestors
   2. Genealogical computing: COMPU.GEN from the Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego
   3. Surname: Sharp Points from the Sharp Families of America
   4. Special interest: the Wandering Volhynians publication
   5. Internet oriented: Internet Genealogy magazine
3. Free E-mail publications
   1. Electronic newsletters (a.k.a. e-zines): Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter (free basic version and paid plus version at www.eogn.com)
   2. Newsgroups (not as many for genealogists as mail lists) (Google>More>Groups)
   3. Mail Lists
      1. NOT available now but at one time there were more than 200,000+ mail lists at www.familysearch.org in Share (unfortunately not archived!)
      2. More than 30,000+ at http://lists.rootsweb.com most are archived and searchable
   4. Message Boards
      1. GenForum at Genealogy.com
      2. RootsWeb/Ancestry.com Message Boards (under the Community tab at Ancestry.com)

To learn more about these types of free e-mail publications for genealogists go to www.cyndislist.com and use the Google search tool to find the categories for newsletters, newsgroups, mail lists, or message boards.

How to spot links on Web pages:

Some Web sites are trickier to navigate than others. For example, the WorldGenWeb Project site has a map of the world with tiny printed instructions under the map explaining, "Click on the map above to see Regions." When you do so you see another Web page with a map of the countries in that region—only clicking on the countries on this map does nothing. This second Web page requires you to click on underlined text links to go to the country level. Web pages are designed by humans and, therefore, not always clear or consistent.

Directories: A directory contains lists of links to Web sites arranged in categories and sub-categories. You browse your way through these topic levels then click on a link and go to the link’s Web site anywhere in the world. Each listed Web site has been evaluated and categorized by a human being. Directories are therefore limited in size and content. Examples: Cyndi’s List and Linkpendium USA.

Two ways to search Cyndi’s List:

1. browse by category to subcategory to lists of links
2. use the site specific search tool provided by Google

NOTE: Cyndi’s links take you to the main page of a Web site—not to the specific Web page at that site with your search term.

Search Engines: Each Web site found is indexed by a robotic computer program. The depth of that index depends on the parameters written into that program. When you query a search engine, it searches its index for your search terms (exactly as you have specified them). You must then browse the resulting list of matches (and links) to see if any of them provide the information you want. Examples: Google.com and About.com.

TIP: Use your browser’s Find on Page feature (found under Edit on the menu bar toward the top of your browser window or invoked with a Ctrl + F shortcut combination) to find a person’s name, a place name, or a portion of a word or phrase on just the current Web page displayed. This feature works particularly well to find entries for a desired county on an IGI search results list or census search results list when those search tools only give you the option to narrow your search by state and country.

TIP: When you find Web sites that might be helpful to you in the future, be sure to bookmark them (add them to your Favorites or Favorite Places list) in your browser.

Four Good and Free Genealogy Sites for Internet Beginners (all accessible from the Links page at ZRoots.com):

1. Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet (especially good for genealogy topics)
2. Linkpendium (especially good for places & surnames)
3. FamilySearch Internet and FamilySearch Labs (http://labs.familysearch.org/)
4. The USGenWeb and WorldGenWeb Projects

Three Types of Search Engines:

1. Site specific (like the one at Cyndi’s List)
2. Internet search engines (like Google.com)
3. Meta search engines (like WebCrawler) that search multiple search engines each time your tell them to go search.

Search Engines DO NOT search the Web. They search an index of Web sites found by their robotic indexing programs. Each search engine’s indexer finds different sites. They also index the sites found to different depths and in different ways. These indexing programs are blind to (kept from indexing) proprietary material online (like genealogy databases).

Some surnames pose problems for your typical Internet search engine: DUCK, RICE, LORD

Google’s Advanced Search makes it easy to modify your searches to eliminate many of the unwanted matches (likes RECIPES and GRAINS for a MALLARD surname search). Google even has a translate feature for many of the Web sites it finds in other languages. Just remember this is a mechanical computer translation. It is a free service, but not necessarily accurate. See the center column of the Links page at ZRoots.com for more online translation tools.

Ways to search at Google.com:

REMEMBER: Every search engine is different from every other search engine:

Murphy’s Law for Genealogy Web Searching: A search with a search engine either turns up thousands of possible matches or none at all…when you know there must be something somewhere out there about your subject or name. Therefore, you must use different tools at different sites to improve your search results.