* Forwarded (from: GEN_BRITAIN) by Stephen Hayes using timEd/2 1.10.y2k.
* Originally from Roy Stockdill (8:8/2002) to All.
* Original dated: Thu Jan 01, 06:51

From: roy{at}stockdill.com ("Roy Stockdill")

Here's another of my tips for you newcomers to genealogy.

I get the feeling very few people ever use the Famly History Library 
Catalog on the LDS website, www.familysearch.org - or even know it's 
there, perhaps. Most folks, I suspect, go in and use the IGI and 
Ancestral File and leave. Yet the FHLC is possibly the most valuable 
tool on the whole site! By perusing its extensive facilities you can 
discover precisely what records have been filmed by the LDS and thus 
will be available at their Family History Centres.

Here is how to use the Catalog, with an example.....

1) Go to www.familysearch.org and when the default opening screen 
appears click on the SEARCH button. Do NOT click on the "Library" 
button on the main bar.

2) When the Search screen appears, click on FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY 
CATALOG, extreme right on the second tier of the toolbar.

3) You are presented with a screen giving the following options of 
searching by: Place; Surname; Keyword (currently temporarily 
unavailable); Title; Film/Fiche; Author; Subject; Call Number. Click 
on whichever you want to do.

Let's do a place search (usually the most popular choice) on, as an 
example, Halifax, Yorkshire. This is a good choice, since it was a 
vast parish, once the largest in England with many townships. When 
the search screen comes up, we enter "Halifax" and in the
"Part of"
box we enter "York" (not Yorkshire, since the LDS generally uses 
York to describe the county of Yorkshire) in order to distinguish 
between the Halifax we want and Halifax Novia Scotia, or any other 
Halifaxes there may be.

4) Up comes another screen which gives us three choices: 
"England, York, Halifax" plus two other places, Midgley and Sowerby, 
which are in fact townships of Halifax. So we click on the first 
choice "England, York, Halifax". This is what we get, a long 
screenful of records available for the parish of Halifax, as 
follows.....

Place  England, York, Halifax

Topics  
England, York, Halifax - Archives and libraries - Inventories,
registers, catalogs 
England, York, Halifax - Biography 
England, York, Halifax - Cemeteries 
England, York, Halifax - Cemeteries - Indexes 
England, York, Halifax - Census 
England, York, Halifax - Church history 
England, York, Halifax - Church records 
England, York, Halifax - Church records - Indexes 
England, York, Halifax - Description and travel - Guidebooks 
England, York, Halifax - Directories 
England, York, Halifax - Dwellings 
England, York, Halifax - Genealogy 
England, York, Halifax - History 
England, York, Halifax - History - Periodicals 
England, York, Halifax - Land and property 
England, York, Halifax - Maps 
England, York, Halifax - Names, Personal 
England, York, Halifax - Occupations 
England, York, Halifax - Poorhouses, poor law, etc. 
England, York, Halifax - Probate records 
England, York, Halifax - Schools 
England, York, Halifax - Societies 
England, York, Halifax - Societies - Periodicals 
England, York, Halifax - Taxation 
England, York, Halifax - Voting registers  

All of these links are clickable on and by so doing they take you to 
further screens giving a wealth of information on what the records 
contain, what dates they relate to, whether they've been published 
and, most importantly, the film numbers of the various records so 
that you can order them for viewing at an LDS FHC. It should be 
obvious from the above list that wherever you are in the world, if 
you have an FHC anywhere near you you have virtually as much access 
to the records as you would have by being in the town of Halifax 
itself or any record office where the records are kept.

The Family History Library Catalog is a wonderful tool, folks. USE IT 
and half the questions asked here would be redundant!

Roy Stockdill
Web page of the Guild of One-Name Studies:- www.one-name.org
Newbies' Guide to Genealogy & Family History:- www.genuki.org.uk/gs/Newbie.html

"It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of
people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean
advantage of them." 

- P. G. Wodehouse

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 - Origin: RootsWeb.com (8:8/2002) 

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