You may think that after you've bought your computer and installed your genealogical software, you should set the computer aside for a while and run off to interview your living relatives. Yet if you're starting with yourself, that would be premature. You should actually begin by entering your own information into the computer.

So you start up your genealogical software, and begin entering information about yourself. So far, so good. Obviously, you won't have a death event for yourself, and you may or may not have a marriage event, but no matter who you are, you'll have a birth event to record. Nearly all of us know our date of birth, as well as our location of birth. But do you have a copy of your birth certificate? After all, we should always try to support our genealogical facts with documentation.

Recently, I decided to go on a cruise, and since I didn't have a passport, I needed to provide some alternative documentation, such as a certified copy of my birth certificate. I have such a copy--on yellow paper with a raised seal (although interestingly enough they weren't recording parents' names back then). But I didn't want to risk taking my only copy with me on the trip, so I decided to obtain one or two additional copies for my records (which meant I could keep a copy for my genealogy files). But how could a computer help me to obtain a certified copy of my birth certificate?

I began by using my Web browser to visit http://www.vitalrec.com, which has information concerning the availability of birth, marriage, and death certificates in the United States. Since I was born in New Jersey, I looked up the information on the Web site for obtaining birth certificates from New Jersey. From there, I learned the bad news that it might take up to four months to get a copy of my birth certificate from the New Jersey State Department of Health and Senior Services, and my cruise was coming up too fast for me to be able to wait that long.

I decided to investigate the possibility of getting the copy directly from the county in which I was born, Essex. I began by looking for an official Essex County Web site. I used Yahoo's “Government” category and proceeded through the subcategories of “U.S. Government” and then “Local Government.” This provided a link to a site entitled “State and Local Government on the Net,” at http://www.piperinfo.com/state/states.html

Next, I followed the links to New Jersey and then to Essex County, whose official Web site is at http://www.co.essex.nj.us, but this began to look like a dead end. I used one of the phone numbers on this site to call and ask for information, and I was told that I needed to contact the City of Orange instead.

I had difficulty in finding an Orange city government Web site, so my next stop was Yahoo's Yellow Pages. There, I found a phone number for “Orange Vital Statistics,” and when I called that number, I was told that I was in the right place! The helpful clerk at the other end gave me the exact instructions for obtaining my birth certificate copies, and it wasn't going to take four months to get them.

My last use of the computer in this process was to use my word-processing program to write the letter to request the copies, and to print an envelope with the correct address and my return address. Together with my check, off it all went in the mail, and a week or so later I had my copies.

The moral of the story here is that most state, county, and city governments have Web sites that can help you in obtaining copies of vital records, and those governments that don't can still be found in online yellow pages. In this way, you can always be sure of having up to date information (such as current prices).