Quoting from Ruby Coleman’s introduction, "As a genealogy instructor, I realized the need for compact notes, examples and better yet, links to webpages for my students. I have designed four sets of lessons, consisting of 26 total instructional lessons, based on beginning research, intermediate research, advanced research, and genealogical computing. Each set of lessons contains an Extra File packed with information. They can be used in classes that you teach or your society teaches, or they can be used at home on your personal computer."

GENEALOGY, Climbing Your Family Tree was created with Adobe Acrobat. According to the author, it can be used both on Windows and on Macintosh systems. I also tried it on a Linux system, and it worked there as well. If you do not already have Adobe’s free Acrobat Viewer installed on your system, you can download it from www.adobe.com.

The CD-ROM’s material is divided into five lesson areas:

• Lesson One—Beginning the Ancestral Quest; learning terminology and establishing research goals; charts and forms; beginning evaluation; organization
• Lesson Two—Researching; type of sources; working with home sources; traditions; interviewing relatives; family relationships; correspondence and queries; documentation; publications and periodicals
• Lesson Three—Home Source Sleuthing; types of home sources; bibles and books; letters and certificates; photographs; odds and ends; originals and derivatives
• Lesson Four—Library Research; on-site research; computer catalogues; interlibrary loan; Family History Library and Family History Centers; printed records; newspapers; directories and maps; tips for library research
• Lesson Five—Twentieth Century Records; Social Security Death Index; immigration records; FBI records; directories; educational records; family histories; finding living relatives; medical records and DNA
• Extras—Getting Over the Brick Wall; Family Legends; Dating Photographs; Social Security Number Allocations

Each of these lessons is further divided into more topics. You can view a complete list of the CD-ROM’s contents at http://incolor.inetnebr.com/rcoleman/CDContents.html.

GENEALOGY, Climbing Your Family Tree is a book published in electronic format. Like most good genealogy tutorials, it is well illustrated with color pictures, diagrams, maps, and screen captures. However, unlike printed pages, it also has hyperlinks throughout the tutorial that link to references and sources on the World Wide Web. For instance, when this book has a reference to the online catalog of the Mid-Continent Public Library in Independence, Missouri, you can move the mouse’s pointer over those words and click twice, and you are soon viewing that online catalog’s website.

Ruby Coleman’s material seems to be complete and logically presented. It is aimed at genealogy newcomers, supplying information with a minimum of unique terminology. Ms. Coleman includes a lot of references to other books, CD-ROM disks, and online websites for those who wish to obtain further information. In short, this appears to be an excellent "e-learning" CD-ROM disk for anyone who wishes to start researching his or her family tree.

You can order the GENEALOGY, Climbing Your Family Tree CD-ROM online from GenealogyToday.com via PayPal’s safe and secure payment system. For $14.95, you will receive the complete CD-ROM disk and a password that will "unlock" only one chapter of your choice. You may purchase additional passwords to the other chapters for another $14.95 each. However, I suspect that most purchasers will elect to obtain full access to all the chapters for $29.95 since that seems to be more cost-effective.

For more information about the GENEALOGY, Climbing Your Family Tree CD-ROM disk or to order it online, go to www.genealogytoday.com/guide/lessons.html

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