>> A J Aiseirithe: Welcome.
This presentation shows
how you can use Library
of Congress resources to get
started with your genealogy
and family history research
from your home computer.
It's important to note
that not every source
for your research is available
online, but the number
of resources that are
online keeps growing.
There is a lot of information
in this presentation
because there's a
lot that you can do.
A good place to start is
with digital primary sources.
Digital sources available
online include manuscripts,
material relating to houses and
buildings, maps, photographs,
historical newspapers, veterans
history project collections,
and telephone directories.
The Manuscript Division has
digitized several collections
in which you might
find an ancestor.
From the Library of Congress
homepage, that's loc.gov,
click on "Digital
Collections" and then select
"Manuscript Division"
from the menu at left.
The collections include the
papers of the American Colony
in Jerusalem, WPA interviews
with formerly enslaved
Americans,
Civil War diaries, and more.
There is another way to search
for your ancestors
in manuscripts.
From the homepage,
click on "Researchers."
Scroll down to "Special
Format Collections"
and click on "Manuscript."
That will take you to the
Manuscript Division's webpage.
There, click on "Finding
Aids for Collections."
Then click on "Search
across all finding aids."
Enter the name of an ancestor,
last name first,
and click "Search."
The results will list
collections in which someone
with that name is a subject.
When you search this way,
keep in mind that not all
of the collections that come
up in your results will
be available online.
Do you have an ancestor
who was a suffragist?
A frequently asked
question, or FAQ,
on our "Ask a Librarian"
page offer strategies
for finding suffragists
in the family tree.
From the homepage, scroll down
and click on "Ask a Librarian."
Click on "Genealogy."
Then select "Browse
Frequently Asked Questions."
From here, you can scroll down
to the suffragist question,
or if you enter the
word "suffragist"
into the search box, it
will pull the question
into the search box and then
you can click "Search FAQs."
Did any of your relatives
live in a historic home?
You can learn more about
the property and its stories
from the digital
collections of the Prints
and Photographs Division which
contain thousands of images,
drawings, and documents
of individual houses
and other buildings.
If the property has a name,
you can enter it in the
"Everything" box at the top of
the homepage and press enter.
There are more ways to search
for houses and buildings.
Click on "Digital Collections"
from the library homepage.
You will see that
one of the houses
and buildings collections,
the Historic American Buildings
Survey, is a thumbnail image
on the "Featured
Collections" carousel
and you can click
on it from there.
Also at the Digital Collections
page, you can enter the name
of a collection into
the search box at top,
such as the Gottscho-Schleisner
Collection.
The Library of Congress has one
of the premier collections
of maps in the world.
At the "Digital Collections"
link on the homepage,
you will find maps that show
landownership, maps of cities
and towns, Civil War
and other military maps,
and the Sanborn Fire Insurance
maps, among other collections.
Altogether, the digitized maps
reflect only a small portion
of the library's
map collections.
To find maps showing
landownership,
go to the "Everything" box
on the library homepage.
Next to the word "Everything,"
click on the down arrow
and select "Maps" from
the dropdown menu.
Then enter "landownership" in
the search box to the right.
You might also find places
your ancestors lived or visited
in the cities and towns, or
Civil War map collections,
which appear as thumbnails
on the Featured Collections
carousel
on the Digital Collections page.
You could also go to the
Digital Collections page and,
as we saw with manuscripts,
select "Geography
and Map Division"
from the menu at left.
There, you will find
the military battles
and campaigns collection, the
Rochambeau collection of maps
in the American Revolution,
and more.
The Sanborn Fire
Insurance maps were created
from about the mid-1850s
to the mid-1950s
for a very wide range
of cities and towns.
Sanborn maps often
contained detailed information
about a specific building and
the building surrounding it.
Photographs, we mentioned the
images of houses and buildings,
but the Prints and Photographs
online catalog contains a great
many images of people, too.
Wherever possible, the item
information lists the names
of the people pictured, so it's
always worth a try entering the
name of your ancestor
or just the family name
to see what might come up.
At the "Everything" box
on the library homepage,
use the down arrow next to the
word "Everything" and select
"Photos, Prints, Drawings"
from the dropdown menu.
Then enter a name to the right.
Keep in mind, the collections
include a great many photographs
of individuals as well as groups
in which the people
are not identified.
As a general rule, we have
found that when hoping
to find an image of an ancestor
who did not have a famous name,
it may help to search using
terms for something larger
with which your ancestor
was connected.
Did he arrive on a ship or
serve on a ship, in a regiment
on a battlefield, on a railroad,
in a business, or did she
or he lead or participate
in a strike?
If so, search on the name
of the ship, the regiment,
the battlefield, the railroad,
the business, the strike.
Even if the results do
not include an image
of your ancestor,
and if they do,
your ancestor will most likely
not be identified by name,
they will at least
give you a visual sense
of that larger world of which
your ancestor was a part.
On the Digital Collections page,
you can also browse collections
by selecting "Prints and
Photographs" at left.
Digital collections include
the Van Vechten collection
of the Harlem Renaissance,
the Farm Security
Administration/Office
of War Information Black
and White Negatives,
the Detroit Publishing
Company photos,
mostly of the eastern
United States,
and the Daguerrotype collection.
The Library of Congress Veterans
History Project collects
and preserves the remembrances
of American war veterans
and civilian workers
who supported them.
Some of these are
transcribed interviews,
some audio only,
some audio and video.
Not all materials
have been digitized.
From the Library of
Congress homepage,
click on "Researchers."
Scroll down until you find, in
the second column from left,
the link for "Veterans History."
Then click on "Search the
Veterans Collections."
The best way to locate
specific people is
to use the project's
own search form.
You can search by
name, by conflict,
by branch of service, and more.
The Library of Congress
also makes certain external
electronic resources available.
The library's E-Resources Online
Catalog provides searchable
access to both subscription
and free electronic resources.
The catalog is available
at eresources.loc.gov.
From that E-Resources
Online Catalog landing page,
look under the "Arts
and Humanities" category
near the top and click on the
"Genealogy" link at left.
Then look for e-resources marked
at right as "free access."
You can access these
from your home computer.
Browse the list to
find resources such as
"Black Sea German Research" or
"Burke's Peerage and Gentry."
Look on this site for
the free-to-view links.
You will also find
historical newspapers.
Go back to the page where
you clicked on "Genealogy"
and instead find the link
for "Historical News."
Again, find the ones with
a free access indicator.
The free databases here
include historical newspapers
from states such as New York,
California, Texas, and Wyoming.
Historical Jewish
newspapers combines newspapers
from various states.
Free online newspapers
from national libraries
include Belgium and Bermuda.
There are also periodicals
and newspapers
from Australia, Austria,
and Brazil.
Here you can also find
newspapers from the Middle East
and North Africa, and
elsewhere in Africa
and the African diaspora.
Additional useful free resources
include the Chicago Daily News
Negatives collection and
online digital collections
from several university
libraries.
The Researchers page offers
a link to research guides.
These can help guide your
research on a particular topic
across Library of Congress
reading rooms and formats.
At guides.loc.gov, the
default search parameter is set
to "subject."
If you enter a topic, such
as, for instance, "Titanic,"
the results will display
pages from various guides
that reference the
Titanic, or you can click
on "Research Center,"
then select "Local
History and Genealogy."
Those results will display
a list of guides by title.
Topics of research
guides currently available
under the Local History
and Genealogy Research
Center include guides
on using photographs
to identify ancestors,
using fire insurance maps, using
church and synagogue records
for genealogy, and many more.