TOOLS TO DO THE JOB

by Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G.

-- The Handybook for Genealogists at http://www.everton.com

-- The Red Book at http://www.ancestry.com

-- The Source at http://www.ancestry.com

-- The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy at http://www.genealogybookshop.com/genealogybookshop/index.html

All are in print and available from the respective publishers and many genealogical book dealers.

Let's add another one: Printed Sources: A Guide to Published Genealogical Records, edited by Kory L. Meyerink and published recently by Ancestry Publishing, P.O. Box 476, Salt Lake City, UT 84110-9949; at http://www.ancestry.com; or at (800) 262-3787.

Printed Sources is a must-have book. It is both a guide and a bibliography to the best printed genealogical material available. This 840-page, hardbound, 8.5"'x11" tome retails for $49.95 (add $4.95 for shipping and handling).

Printed Sources contains information about finding aids, ethnic sources, vital and cemetery records, church sources, censuses and tax lists, printed land records, court and legal records, military sources, immigration, and documentary sources. The latter are publications that pertain either to the original records of an archive or library, or to a collection of various sources under a single heading or title.

Additionally, such subjects as county and local histories, biographies, genealogical periodicals, and medieval genealogy are discussed in-depth, with extensive listings of available material for each type of source.

Tell Santa you want a copy of Printed Sources.

STAR BREAK

1850 Massachusetts Census CDs

Broderbund Software has just published a CD-ROM collection called Census Microfilm Records: Massachusetts, 1850. The six CDs contain the names of approximately 385,000 heads of households, and are indexed.

However, these CDs are not just an index to the 1850 Massachusetts census but contain the images of each page of the actual census records, as well as an index listing each head of household's name and the page number of the entry in the census records.

Using the CDs' index you can determine an ancestor's name, county, and location of residence at the time of the census, and the microfilm page number on which the information appears. Then you can go to the actual image of the census page.

In many instances you can learn an individual's ethnicity, occupation, and the value of his or her real estate as well as names of other household residents. Other handy features of these CDs are zoom capabilities to help you read the data, and the PRINT function, if you want a printed copy of the actual page where your ancestor's name appears.

This set (307) is available for $49.99, with a 90-day money-back guarantee. It requires Windows 95 or 98 operating systems with a CD-ROM drive and Family Tree Maker version 4.4 or higher. You can order the CD set at http://www.familytreemaker.com or call Broderbund customer service at (800) 474-8696.

If you're using Family Tree Maker 4.0 or earlier, there are two options to upgrade so you can view this 1850 Massachusetts CD set: Contact customer service to upgrade to FTM, or use the Family Archive Viewer Version 4.01 and install a special application included with these CDs.

The Family Archive Viewer also can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.familytreemaker.com or obtained through Broderbund's customer service.

(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate