Alan
E. Mann, AG
alan.familyhistory@gmail.com
Accredited
Genealogist
BYU 2008 Annual Family History and Genealogy
conference www.alanmann.com/articles
Tuesday, 29 July 2008 2:45-3:45
pm
Tips for using the Internet
more effectively
Basics
Some
of the basics I would like to cover include tabbed browsing, toolbars and
favorites, browser extensions, and optimizing screen real estate (the amount of
the screen that can be devoted to the Internet page). Screen real estate or
viewing area is affected by your toolbar layout as well by resolution and
taskbar settings.
You
generally view the Internet using a web browser. You can choose which web
browser you want to use. Internet Explorer by MicroSoft comes on most PCs,
while MACs come with Safari. There is a Safari version for PCs. There is also
FireFox, Opera, and a variety of other web browsers, each with unique features,
options, and ways of presenting web pages. You can download another browser and
try it out. If you like it, just set it as your default browser (an option when
you first start the browser). You can have more than one browser and choose
which to use by clicking on the appropriate icon whenever you go to the
Internet (although one will be set as the default).
Tabbed
browsing can save you time. Internet Explorer implemented this in IE 7. Tabs
allow you to view more than one web site in a single browser window. This
conserves resources, allows you to preserve items for later viewing, avoids
shifting focus, and opens other options.
Extensions
enhance the capabilities of your browser. I use FireFox, and find extensions
TabMixPlus, Map+, IE Tab, Email This, PicLens, FoxPose, and FireFTP to be helpful.
For example, Email This allows me to email any web page using a web-based email
(Gmail or Yahoo!) and Map+ will call up a map of any placename or address I
highlight on any webpage. To see extensions, click on Tools at the top of your
browser and pick Add-ons (or manage Add-ons).
You
may want to consider importing another’s favorites. The Family History Library
maintains a list of “favorite” websites for use on the Library’s computers, and
has made this list available in the library to export for personal use. The
self-extracting zip file and the instructions for importing are available in
the library. The FHL favorites will be offered soon through http://wiki.familysearch.org.
Here
are several other basic recommendations:
- Set your resolution as
high as your preference and eyesight will allow (right click on desktop,
pick properties, then settings).
- Consider using “auto hide”
taskbar (right click on taskbar, properties)
- Consider changing the web
browser toolbars to “icon only” to save space.
- Consolidate toolbars by
putting more than one on a line, and eliminate any you don’t use.
- Remove icons you don’t use
from the toolbar (and add those you need).
- You can set which toolbars
display by right-clicking on the toolbars and selecting or deselecting
toolbars.
- USE your links bar! You
CAN add folders to the links bar. Drag and drop the “e” from the address
bar to the links bar to add favorites.
- When you need a little
more viewing area, hit F11 (F11 again to revert).
Searching
I often tell people the Internet is the richest source of genealogical
information available today. The amount, scope, and availability of data are
staggering, even incomprehensible. It is virtually certain that there is valid
information about your ancestors on the Internet that you don’t have.
Information that you would probably want if you only knew it was there. So how can you find it? With a lot of
searching.
Generally,
a genealogist’s Internet searching has two phases.
- First, you must find the
website that may have the desired information.
- Then, you search that
website for the desired information.
Finding the
Website
There
are many ways to find a website. The most common is that someone else tells you
about it. You can increase the likelihood of this happening by participating in
society meetings (like this one), talking to other genealogists (phone, mail,
email, online), or participating in online discussion groups or mailing lists.
Another
common way is to use a directory site. The best known example is Cyndi’s List (www.cyndislist.com), but perhaps a
better genealogy website directory is www.linkpendium.com. A different
approach is to use the list of “favorite” web sites developed by the Family
History Library (NOTE: this should soon be available on wiki.familysearch.org).
You can get more from a directory site by learning how it is organized and by
reading the help screens and general information. It is almost always possible
to search
a directory site.
When
the above three methods haven’t yielded results, many genealogists turn to
search engines. While “search engine” can be correctly used in several
different ways, the most common usage is a web tool used to find web pages on a
specific topic. It is important to understand what a search engine is, what it
includes, and how to best use it. The answers to these questions are the
subject of my presentation at this conference on Thursday at 1:30 (or see
syllabus or my web site).
Searching the
Website
Many
sites have a lot of databases with a search that looks through and presents
results from all of the different databases. These are metasearches because
they search many databases, although metaseach is normally used to describe a
search of many sites rather than just many databases on a single site.
USGenWeb. The simplest would be the
USGenWeb Archive. Here, there are hundreds of thousands of files representing
extracts, transcriptions, abstracts, and indexes to many millions of names. The
site search engine allows you to search all of their files at once or all of
the files for any one state. However, the search options are extremely limited.
Basically, you can search for any word in any of the files selected, but you
cannot specify whether the word is a name, place, relationship, or something
else. This is called a freeform, general, or unfielded search. While it does
offer the advantage of searching many things at once, it doesn’t give much
flexibility to limit or narrow the search results.
Ancestry. This is a site with many
different databases. They have made a default search that searches across those
databases—census, wills, family history books, obituaries, and more. You
usually search by name, but can add country, state or province, year range,
keyword, or record type. You can also specify whether to use soundex or exact
spelling. The search template does not change when you specify a record type.
But if you select a record type from the list at the right, the search template
changes. You will then probably only be able to specify name and keyword. You
also will get a list of databases so that you can further restrict your search.
The general policy for Ancestry is to search the database for the items
specified, but to ignore any input fields that don’t apply to that database.
For example, if you specify a range of years, but the database being searched
doesn’t specify years, Ancestry’s metasearch will just ignore the year range
and display any results from that database.
FamilySearch.
There are
various searches on this site, including Record Search and Advanced Search. The
Record Search has considerably improved search options—some of which are almost
unique to this tool. The advanced search site lists the databases it searches
along the left. The default is “all resources,” a metasearch. You can limit
your search to a specific database to get additional search options.
FamilySearch’s general policy is to restrict your search fields to just those
fields that are common to the databases being searched. Thus, an all resources
search has search fields. When you select census records, you get different
search fields. When you select one census year to search, you get yet more
options unique to that census.
Heritage Quest Online. This site has some useful
ways of grouping results and actually has the most flexible census searches. It
is less of a metasearch than the other sites listed here because it has three
categories, and has no single search that searches all three categories.
Nonetheless, there are thousands of databases searched within a category.
Hopefully,
you can see that your searches will be more successful if you understand the
limitations, capabilities, and “gotchas” of the site or search tool that you
are using. The best rule is to READ THE HELP files relating to searching. They
are often very helpful.
Final Notes
I’ve
often mentioned automatic backup services, and I’ve tried to use several.
Several services offer free online storage, but you have to remember what to
save there and manage the use of the space and the files stored there. An
automatic backup service does this for you automatically. One of my long time
favorites, Mozy, has introduced a backup service for a fee of only $4.95/mo. Alternatively, you get a free 2 gb at Mozy (and I get 256mb
more if you use this link - https://mozy.com/?ref=6H24GG).
For
more general Internet search tools and information on search engines, see searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156241
(metasearching),
searchenginewatch.com/resources/index.php
(facts, tutorials, explanations), and
www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/index.php.
Doesn’t
forget the need to know what you are searching—what’s the scope, the source,
and how do you use it?
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©Copyright 1999-2008 by Alan E.
Mann, AG and Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. Written permission
to reproduce all or part of this syllabus material in any format, including
photocopying, data retrieval, or the Internet, must be secured in advance from
the copyright holders.