Using the Internet

A worldwide web

Any efforts to trace your genealogy and family history can be hugely assisted by making contacts with other members of your family, and pooling your knowledge. Today, the Internet offers a new power to do this in a manner that was inconceivable just a couple of decades ago. Through the Internet you can very quickly expand your network of family contacts not only around the country, but around the world.

Major resources online

In the field of family history and genealogy, the resources of the Internet are colossal - and grow by the day, as more and more people link into them and allow access to their research. There are some massive genealogical websites around - powerful sources of archive material, as well as of invaluable advice, and of software to help you assemble and record your family history. The following websites will give you a good start:

• www.familyrecords.gov.uk (the UK government gateway to public records and much more)
• www.sog.org.uk (the Society of Genealogists; has details of thousands of family histories submitted to it, and much more; you need membership for full access)
• www.ancestry.co.uk (a huge search tool, with access to records and links)
• www.rootsweb.com (another huge resource linked to www.ancestry.com; designed to connect people doing genealogical research)/li>
• www.familysearch.org (a colossal global resource linked to the respected International Genealogical Index compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, a.k.a. the Mormons)
• www.genuki.org.uk (UK and Ireland Genealogy site, providing a 'virtual library' of global resources and links)
• www.genesreunited.co.uk (a major UK family tree and genealogy website; good for linking with other branches of your ‘extended family’ who are also currently researching)
• www.one-name.org (website of the Guild of One-Name Studies; good for clans and more unusual family names).

Personalised Internet research

Through these Internet sites, you may well be able to contact other budding genealogists who are researching linked family trees. Alternatively, try setting up an email mailing list of those of your relatives who are interested in family history, so that family members can share and contribute information, and copy each other in. Another option is to set up your own dedicated family history website. Relevant online newsgroups and message boards can spread the net wider.

Family History Societies

The Internet may also show you that there is a Family History Society in the locality where your family originated; see the website of the Federation of Family History Societies (www.ffhs.org.uk); or the Scottish Association of Family History Societies (www.safhs.org.uk).

Lucky in name

One thing you learn quickly from researching on the Internet: it really helps to have an unusual surname. Things are not so easy for the Smiths, Browns, Jones and Masons - but middle names, as well as dates of birth and death and place-names, can quickly narrow the field when conducting searches.