It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree! Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going. You can send your tips to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com.

Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.

Have a great day!
Juliana

Digital Copies
Bill Draper

I no longer decide which pages are important enough to copy, or pay for bad photocopies. When I'm in the library, I simply photograph the pages with a digital camera. Not only are the pages printable, but each is automatically "scanned" and ready to store on my computer. It works great for oversized books.

I use an average 4 megapixel Canon PowerShot S400. I set it to its highest resolution, and switch to manual to avoid the flash. It works best holding it about 18 inches from the page. After taking the shot, I zoom in on the photo to be sure there was no movement. If so I delete it and try again. When I'm finished, I insert the memory card into my laptop, and I have all my digitized pages ready to store. No more killing trees for research, and best of all, no more breaking the spines of books in flat photocopiers or scanners.

Now I need to try it on microfilm readers.

Browse the Town
Barbara Hovorka

Researching in New Glaus, Green Co. Wisconsin, I was able to find the Kundert family I was looking for. Granted, there were a lot of them but in spite of the number, I was able to sort them out. They were everywhere in the 1860 and 1880 census but not one single Kundert in the 1870. Not being able to envision a mass exodus of Kunderts I resorted to another search. I typed in 'New Glarus, Green, WI.' and up came an alpha listing of the whole community (sometimes this kind of search will give you the numeric listing) and was able to discover the problem. The extractor had misread Kundert to be Kemdart and suddenly there they were. Even with all possibilities of spelling I had not produced this one! The surprise was that even though some were very carefully written, the extractor had not caught the spelling error.

Hidden Treasures
Allen Lawrence

In Cindy Petrie’s tip "Search Old Furniture for Hidden Treasures," I was reminded of the time we cleaned out a friend’s grandmother’s home. They found important papers, money, stocks and bonds in a tear in a mattress, and in of all places the freezer wrapped in foil packages. The latter was an accident when I bought the freezer and started to clean it out and one of the bundles burst open. Were we surprised! Now we look everywhere.