It is becoming more and more popular to perform your genealogical research on the internet. But there are also those "old schoolers" who believe that internet research is a waste of time because everything on the internet is "not accurate" and the information "cannot be trusted." But here's the real story on internet genealogy research. Using the internet has made information faster and easier to obtain than ever before. Digitized images for example, have made census research amazingly simple. No longer do you need soundex codes to find your ancestors in the US census. More and more images are going online everyday. Archives are finding out that digitizing images and keeping them online reduces the dangers associated with viewing original documents. The originals can stay intact and safe, while the digitized copy can be viewed by all. Passenger lists are becoming more available.

Ancestry.com has just updated their New York Arrivals to include 1820-1959. Now arrivals prior to Castle Garden and after Ellis Island can be easily found. There is a fee for this service. Newspapers are becoming more and more available online. Even Google has a free search of books and newspapers available. Just be sure you trust your source if you plan on using the information. Once you learn how to use particular search engines, you can then find almost anyone. This holds true for all images.

How do you know what sources to trust? If using an online genealogy or family history, be sure that the facts are documented. All facts that are not common public knowledge (like Columbus sailed to America in 1492), need to have a note as to where, when, and how the information was obtained. If this information is lacking, consider checking the information yourself before you add it into your files as something permanent. On the other hand, digitized images are usually very accurate. It is difficult to alter these, but not impossible. When in doubt, check it out. For digitized images you should compare the low resolution, unenhanced version to the enhanced version. This is due to the fact enhancements sometimes remove small comments or other important or additional information just to get an overall better picture. Be sure that you compare both. Another downfall to images found online is that the image sometimes does not match up with the person you think you have. Ancestry.com had this problem with their draft cards. Some of the 2nd pages of the draft cards were actually for another individual. This was due to the order in which these records appeared in the microfilms. (I believe this error has been corrected.) To be on the safe side, if your ancestor lived in Detroit, MI, be sure that the draft board he registered with is not in Alabama or some other far away place.

Anything created by humans is subject to human error by nature. All documents run the risk of incorrect spelling and transposed numbers in dates and addresses. The internet should be looked at as a giant depository containing millions of documents that can be easily and quickly retrieved, anytime of day or night, in the comfort of your home or office. Without the aide of the internet, genealogy would not be as popular a hobby as it is today. There is a lot to be said for being able to research from the comfort of your own home. This is especially true during inclement weather or for those individuals with limited mobility.

Many libraries and archives have embraced the internet and its capabilities. In order to make their collections more accessible and to reach a great number of people than ever before possible, many of these institutions have uploaded images to the internet. This is a boon for us all. It helps to preserve fragile originals from over handling and degradation due to excessive light exposure. Originals can be scanned once and uploaded to the internet. The original document can go either on display under glass or can be archived away in a properly prepared facility so that it can last several more generations.

One of the largest libraries to put information on the internet is the Library of Congress. You can view some of their holdings online. This service is free, as it is with most libraries. Other libraries have collections online as well. The North Carolina State Library has information that can be viewed. So do many others. It would be impossible to list them all in this eBook. The best thing to do is to search the internet for the library you are looking for and then see what they have to offer. Another great thing about the internet is the ability to search webcat. This is a list of all the books available at all the libraries everywhere. When you find a book you are interested in, you can go to your local library and request an interlibrary loan for the book. With so many genealogies in print, it is so neat to be able to find millions of books in just one place. The St. Louis Library and the Cook County Library all have wonderful collections and they can be searched online. You can also search holdings of the New England Historical And Genealogical Society's Library online. The list goes on forever. You just need to research what you want to know.

Another excellent repository available online is NARA (US National Archives). They have their AAD and ARC databases. AAD is a searchable database of many items, although none of them are digital. The ARC database is their database of digital holdings. Here you can get pictures, letters, family trees, diagrams and maps, immigration proceedings, and all other kinds of information. It is all free and you can search it anytime. You can get to their website at http://www.archives.gov.

Other places to search online are paid genealogy websites. Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, and MyFamily.com are all owned by the parent company My Family, Inc. Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com have amazing collections. You can access digitized images of draft cards, census sheets, passenger lists, old newspapers and more. If you are doing a lot of research, a subscription to one or more of these services may be worth it. The third listing in this group is MyFamily.com. This is a unique website as it allows you to create your own family website for a small fee. These website are password protected so that only those you invite can access the data contained in it. You can upload pictures, send out family newsletter, schedule family chats online, set up polls and questionnaires, reviews and more. It is something to look into if you are really interested in bringing your family together.

Genealogy societies have online holdings as well. Joining a society or two can be useful. Some that deserve mentioning here are the New England Historical and Genealogical Society (NEHGS), New York Genealogy and Biographical Society (NYGB), The National Genealogical Society (NGS), and The Association for Professional Genealogists (APG). All of these aforementioned organizations have varied information for their members to use. For example, NEHGS currently offers ProQuest, Heritage Quest Online, Early American Newspapers, and many in house databases as well as digitized images of Massachusetts Vital Records through 1910. They also offer online classes that are free for their members. NYGB also offers many of their own databases to search and they have many tours and classes going on all of the time. The NGS offers Bible records online, a deceased Physicians database, some newspapers, and online home study courses in genealogy. APG will let you know what to look for in a genealogist you plan to hire, give you a code of ethics that their members need to abide by, provide a list of their members who do research. This is not a complete list by far out of all that is available online. For the most complete listing of online genealogical resources try http://www.cindyslist.com.

Newspaper Archives Online http://www.newspaperarchive.com/ is a great resource. Although it is a for fee database, the information they have is incredible! More newspapers are added on a daily basis. This website is a database of an enormous collection of old newspapers. It is searchable by keywords, like surnames. What your search will return is a scanned image of newspapers that match your search criteria. Keep in mind that OCR software was used to develop the database for the search engine and OCR tends to confuse the letter "K" with "F" and zero with "O", as well as other minor idiosyncrasies. However, small OCR quirks aside, newspapers are a power research tool. The NY Times had it right when they used to say "… all the news that's fit to print …" In newspapers you will find information about local businesses and business owners, land purchases and disputes, all sorts of local news about high school athletes, major accomplishments of local citizens and all sorts of local gossip. They can tell you what the price of meat or gas was at the time by looking in the ads. Classified ads are also great. You never know what will turn up there. Old newspapers from the colonial period and 1800's will have ads placed by husbands or wives looking for a spouse that has run off. These ads make for great reading as well as giving you a good idea of what was going on in that family. Be sure to look at local newspapers when researching your family. You never know what might turn up.

There are many places to take genealogy courses online. BYU offers courses for free. They also have more in-depth paid courses, but the free ones are very good, especially for beginners or in an area that you have no experience. They also have books about many family histories available online. You can view their free, non-credit genealogy course offerings at http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/courses/freecourses.cfm. NGS offers courses for a fee – the courses are wonderful and they are adding more all the time. (Their home study course on American Genealogy should be required for anyone looking to become a certified or accredited genealogist.) Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com also offer courses for a fee. You can get your training online as well as your research.

Another neat tool that the internet offers is a place for families to get together to discuss their family stories and research. MyFamily.com offers family based websites for a small yearly fee. You can set up these websites to include family trees, pictures, stories, genealogies and documents. These websites are all secure. You must have a password and permission from the website admin to access the information. In addition you can set up family chats, publish a newsletter and share all kinds of information. As an administrator of one of these websites, you can decide if you want to limit access to those who are immediate family members or if you want to open the website up to any one interested in that particular surname. Anything in between is also OK. This is definitely worth looking into, especially if you have a lot of information that you want to share and keep secure.

The internet is a powerful tool for genealogists to use. The amount of records available and the sheer speed at which they can be accessed is truly amazing. No longer are the archives and libraries of the world off limits to those who cannot travel to them. The internet has opened up the doors to some of the worlds greatest institutions and many of these are free. It is a great time to be researching your family tree.