FAMILY HISTORY AND OTHER BOOKS ONLINE
©2019 by Donald R. Snow
This page was last updated 2019-01-10. Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
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ABSTRACT: Millions of books, family history and otherwise, are posted online. Large collections
of genealogy books are on FamilySearch, Google, Internet Archive, HeritageQuest Online, and many other websites. Many of the online books are every-word searchable, so you can find books
that have information about you or your ancestors. We will discuss finding the books and viewing and downloading them. We will also discuss the most common ebook formats, pdf, ePub,
Kindle (Azw3), and Mobi, and how to handle non-searchable pdf's, i.e. those where it is only a picture of the
printed page and not the text itself. The notes and other related information, all with active Internet
links, is posted on https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow (snowd@math.byu.edu)
of Provo and St. George, Utah .
- The notes and related information in other article is posted
at https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, all with active Internet links.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for these
notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon from in front of the
address in your browser onto your desktop. (2) To open a
link, but keep your place in these notes, hold down the Control key
while clicking the link.
- The problem for today: Finding and using the millions of
books available on the Internet.
ONLINE BOOKS
- Reading hard copy vs eReading on your mobile device
or computer -- each has advantages and disadvantages
- ebooks are about half of all books sold in the US now (From
Statistica); data is probably the same for other countries
- Most common ebook formats are pdf (Portable Document Format), ePub, Mobi, and
Kindle (Azw3) -- more details below
- Download the book, if possible, so you will have a copy, even it they take it off the Internet
-- can then read, search, do screenshots, etc.
- Screenshots
- FASTSTONE CAPTURE - good screen capture program-- http://faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm
- Will do screenshots and even scrolling windows -- especially helpful for long articles or even entire books
- Will save screenshots in various formats, including pdf, but such pdfs must be OCR'd to be searchable -- see below
- Last free version of FASTSTONE CAPTURE was 5.3 and is still available from http://aplusfreeware.com/categories/mmedia/FastStoneCapture.html
- Later versions (current version is 9.0) are better, but are shareware, so try for free, but pay a one time fee of $20 to continue using it
FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY AND FAMILYSEARCH CATALOG
- The Family History Library in Salt Lake City is digitizing and
currently has posted online more than 350,000 out-of-copyright and
permission-granted books, mostly FH -- https://books.familysearch.org/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=FHD_PUBLIC
; these are from large libraries such as the FHL, BYU Library, and
Allen County FH Library (Fort Wayne, Indiana), and from personal
collections; for still-in-copyright books the copyright holder must
sign an agreement to allow the FHL to digitize and post them
- For digitized books the FamilySearch Catalog (FSC, sometimes still called the FHLC, Family History Library Catalog) shows the words in
red: "To view a digital version of this item click here."
which takes you to the digitized image to read and/or download
- Many of these books can be read and/or downloaded by anyone
anywhere -- Examples: Valiant
in the Faith: Gardner and Sarah Snow and Their Family,
1990 and
A Blanchard Memorial by Arthur William Blanchard, 1935
- When downloading a book, if you have to do it in parts and the parts come with the same name, be sure to change the names as you save them or you will be overwriting them
- Some books can only be read and/or downloaded in the FHL, FHCs (Family History Centers), or partner libraries -- see https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/FamilySearch_Partner_Libraries
-- See the statement there that if you are at such a library and you get the message of not having rights to read this book, try again in an hour, since it may be that the FHL only has permission for one copy and someone else in the world is using it at that time, just as though it was a hard copy book on the shelf; such libraries are scanning their books and taking the hard copies off the shelves, so they are only available online and to any one person at a time world-wide
- Search terms in the FamilySearch digital books search box are searched in every book in the collection, since they are OCR'd -- this allows you to find all books containing the search terms and then where those terms are in the book
- The Genealogy Gophers search website at https://www.gengophers.com/#/ makes searching the FHL's book collection easier -- it leaves out hits that are not names, e.g. when I search for Snow it does not give me snow storm, snow fall, etc. -- the problem is that at present it only searches 80,000 of the 350,000 FHL books; it also includes searches for other forms of a name, e.g. for William, it also looks for Wm and W.; Eastman's Online Genealogy
Newsletter blog has an article about it at http://blog.eogn.com/2015/03/03/a-new-genealogy-website-went-online-today-genealogy-gophers/
- The BYU Harold B. Lee Library (the main BYU Library) has many online FH digital collections
including books and photographs and some are already in the FamilySearch Books collection -- see http://lib.byu.edu/digital/all.php
and http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/search
GOOGLE BOOKS
- Google books and searches are at http://www.google.com , https://books.google.com/ , and https://www.google.com/googlebooks/about/
- Wikipedia article on Google Books, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books ,
gives history of Google Books and related operations; info on using Google Play Books is at https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/4517692?hl=en
- Google has contracts with large libraries to digitize and post their books online, both full-text and partial
text postings, for out-of-copywrite or permission-granted books
- In 2010 Google estimated there were about 130 million different books ever publishedin the world -- see https://www.pcworld.com/article/202803 -- and as of Oct 2015 they had scanned and
posted more than 25 million books -- /google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html
- Google book searches
- To find a specific book search for the title in quotation marks,
e.g."The Snow Genealogy"
- Two ways to find a specific name or term in a book: (1) Go to https://books.google.com/ and search for the term, and (2) Do a Google search and then click on Books, e.g. "brigham young" (Remember caps are not
required in Google); then, on the results page at the top you see
All Images News Shopping Maps More -- click on More > Books to see the hits in books
- When you see the red icon "EBOOK - FREE", you can click on it and
put it in "My Library" where you can read it or copy parts or all
of it for free -- Example: for Erastus Snow's One
Year In Scandinavia , hover your cursor over the red "READ
EBOOK" icon and you see options about reading and/or downloading
it in various formats
- Downloaded pdfs of scanned books from Google do NOT have the text layer and must be OCR'd to make them searchable -- see below
- When Google doesn't have permission to post the entire volume, you
only see a snippet of the page with the search term highlighted and
information about whereto find or purchase a copy -- You may still
be able to find the full text book for free on some other website; or you can
use a screen capture program to save off just the part you are
interested in
INTERNET ARCHIVE
- Website is http://www.archive.org/ -- Goals include preserving an electronic copy
of every book ever published anywhere and a "snapshot" of the entire Internet every few days; also to preserve all audios,
videos, and movies, and have them free for everyone to use; for their books go to TextsThe
- See Internet Archive FAQs and Wikipedia article about Internet Archive
- Internet Archive scans 1000 books per
day, according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books#Similar_projects ; more than 15 million books and texts scanned and freely available to search and download; has contracts with many libraries, large and small; a major source of FH information
- The Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a contract for them to store and show all old LDS magazines, conference reports, historical books, etc., all completely searchable and free
- Can read texts in your browser or download them in
various formats, including pdf format which also contains the text-layer so they download as searchable, unlike Google
- Links to many libraries world-wide for scanning, e.g. see the scanned books from European libraries -- https://archive.org/details/europeanlibraries
- Internet Archive also lists books in some collections
- Genealogy Collection at
https://archive.org/details/genealogy
- Open Library (to check out books) at http://openlibrary.org/
- The Wayback Machine --
"snapshots" of the entire Internet every few days since 1996 --
has old websites not on the Internet now -- lots of good FH
information from the past
- Archive of recorded sound and movies, e.g. lots of old 78 RPM records
and old radio broadcasts
HATHITRUST
- https://www.hathitrust.org/ -- a partnership of academic and research institutions with millions of volumes in their catalog
- Can search and see All Items or just Full Text items
- Can refine your search to selected authors, publications, locations, languages, types of books or journals, etc.
- Items are downloaded as pdfs with the text-layer, so they are searchable, but OCR might not be completely accurate; can build your own collection of downloads from them
- See Search Tips at https://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#SearchTips for helpful advice
- If you are with a partner institution (many universities), log in from there to get more results, but many results are available to everyone without being logged in at all; can also log in from Google, Facebook, etc. -- see https://www.hathitrust.org/help_digital_library#NoLogin
HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE
- HQO is a genealogy database available to use at home through a library's website if they have a subscription; many U.S. public libraries do have subscriptions; check your state and local area
- For information about HQO see https://blog.eogn.com/?s=heritagequest+online -- it contains all U.S. Censuses, a large genealogy book collection, U.S. Revolutionary War records, U.S. Government Serials, and more
- In Utah you can get to it with any public library card through https://onlinelibrary.utah.gov/ ; with a Washington County public library card you can use http://library.washco.utah.gov/heritage-database/
- HQO is owned by Ancestry and uses that same search engine; Proquest used to own it
- HQO has more than 40,000 FH books in pdf format
- Can search their entire online collection for any name, word,
place, etc.
- Can download parts or entire book, but usually has a limit of
number of pages at a time, so you have to download in pieces and
use a freeware program such as http://www.pdfsam.org
to put it all into one pdf; you may have to OCR it to make it text searchable
FORMATS FOR ONLINE BOOKS
- Formats for online books
- Most common format of scanned online books is pdf (Portable Document Format); format is used world wide; makes pages appear exactly the same on any device or operating system, but text size can't be changed - you can only make the entire page larger or smaller to increase or decrease the text size; the format shows pages exactly as in printed book, including page numbers
- For small-screen devices (smartphones and tablets) standard
formats are ePub, Azw3 (Kindle), and Mobi; allows the text
itself to be changed in size, unlike pdf, hence no page numbers since those would vary by the size of the text
- Many free ereader programs for all formats -- Examples:
ADOBE READER ,
SUMATRA READER ,
NITRO READER ,
and CALIBRE; for info and links to 15 ereaders,
some commercial, see
http://beebom.com/2015/01/best-epub-reader-for-windows
- CALIBRE is a free ereader that will also convert from
one format to another
- PDF -- Adobe's Portable Document Format -- most online family history books download in pdf format
- Is a standard in many organizations for books, newspapers, articles, magazines,
and handbooks; types of pdfs include image-only and image-with-text-layer
- Image-only pdfs
- Is a picture of the page only, has no text layer so NOT text-searchable
- Generated by flatbed scanners, cameras, and screen capture programs
- Copying and pasting from this type only gives an image and is not text-searchable
- To make these text-searchable you must OCR the file (Optical
Character Recognize it) -- see below
- Image-and-text-layer pdfs
- Has both image and text-identification layers, so these are text-searchable
- Can OCR an image-only pdf to make it into this type -- see below
- Exporting to pdf from word processor includes the text-layer, so is searchable
- Copying words, paragraphs, or pages, gives you both layers, so these
remain text-searchable
- OCR programs -- Optical Character Recognition
- Use one of these to form the text layer of an image-only pdf, so the symbols
are recognized as words
- Several free or commercial OCR programs with various languages
- Adobe Reader (free) does some OCR'ing online; commercial version (very expensive) has a good
OCR program; some flatbed scanners come with an OCR program, check the manual; also some
libraries, e.g. the BYU Library, have a good commercial OCR program you can use for free
- A good free-for-private-use OCR program is in PDF-XCHANGE EDITOR (old version
was called PDF-XCHANGE VIEWER); has OCR for several languages --
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/downloads
-- accuracy depends on how clear the image is
- After running OCR, save the new pdf with a new name, so you don't overwrite
the image-only pdf
- CALIBRE -- https://calibre-ebook.com
-- free and very helpful to catalog, read, and convert ebook formats; good short video
about CALIBRE on the home page; CALIBRE will convert a pdf to ePub format,
but only so the pages can be read in an ePub reader; i.e., it will not do OCR and
the text size is not changeable; will search some free websites incuding Internet Archive for words in books
OTHER RESOURCES
- WorldCat by OCLC (Online Computer Library
Center) -- https://www.worldcat.org/
-- searches library collections of 10,000 libraries
worldwide; finds both digital and hardcopy books
- World Public Library -- http://worldlibrary.net/ --
commercial site; more than 2 million book pdfs online
- For LDS history and family history books see many links on my LDS
and Utah Records notes on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
- Digital Public Library of America --
http://dp.la/ , http://dp.la/info/ , https://dp.la/guides/the-family-research-guide-to-dpla -- umbrella
organization to list all online digital items in America -- see FAQ
at http://dp.la/info/help/faq/
- MyHeritage is a partner site with FamilySearch -- https://www.myheritage.com/ -- European records; Books and Publications at https://www.myheritage.com/research/catalog/category-8020/books-publications?s=195946641 -- book collection is small, e.g. only books from 4 U.S. states and only 6 European countries; doesn't seem to have a way to download an entire book; does have an index to many U.S. yearbooks
- Virtual Reference Shelf by the Library of Congress -- http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
- University of Texas --
https://www.lib.utexas.edu/indexes/titles.php?type=eBooks
- Project Gutenberg -- http://www.gutenberg.org/
-- 42,000 free ebooks and an additional 100,000 through their
affiliates
- University of Pennsylvania Library -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
-- lots of early LDS books and periodicals; also see their Books Page website -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/archives.html
-- major list of book websites and indexes
- World Vital Records -- http://worldvitalrecords.com/
- Mocavo -- http://www.mocavo.com/
-- Do a search, then click on Documents (left hand side) -- recently
bought by FindMyPast
- Feedbooks - Public Domain Books -- http://www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain
- Free History and Genealogy Books Online -- http://www.genealogysearch.org/free/digitalpublications.html
- Genealogy Book Links -- http://www.genealogybooklinks.com/default.htm
- List of 40 ebook websites --
http://education-portal.com/articles/40_Places_for_College_Students_to_Find_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
- DjVu Books -- http://www.djvuzone.org/demos/appli/index.html
- FullBooks -- http://www.fullbooks.com/
- World E-Book Fair --
http://worldebookfair.com/Collections.htm
- DiplomaGuide.com -- http://diplomaguide.com/articles/List_of_Online_Archives_for_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
- ReadPrint - Free Online Library -- http://www.readprint.com/
- Forgotten Books Online -- http://www.forgottenbooks.org
- e-Books Directory -- http://e-booksdirectory.com/
-- many good pdf format text, math, science, and other books
- Online Books eTexts/eBooks -- http://www.harrold.org/rfhextra/books.html
- To find many other such websites do searches for things like
“free online full-text books genealogy” (without the quotes) in
search engines like
- http://www.google.com
- http://yippy.com/
- http://www.dogpile.com/
ARTICLES AND SEARCH ENGINES FOR BOOKS ONLINE
- Kimberly Powell article on sources of online books -- http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_documents/tp/family_histories.htm?nl=1
- About.com articles -- http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_documents/tp/historical-books.htm?nl=1
and http://freebies.about.com/od/onlinebooks/p/free-ebooks.htm?nl=1
- USA Today article on Online Books (13 Jul 2010) -- http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-07-14-InternetArchive14_st_N.htm
- pdf Search Engine -- http://www.pdfsearchengine.org/--
very helpful for genealogy
- e-Book Search Engines -- http://drscavanaugh.org/ebooks/libraries/ebook_search_engines.htm
- Digital Book Index -- http://www.digitalbookindex.com/search001a.htm
-- "A Union Catalog of Electronic Books, Texts, and Documents" --
Click on Search: Simple + Advanced and in the Query box type in
something like "family history"
CONCLUSION
- To find a book online check several websites since none lists
everything and the same book may be available elsewhere; maybe even for
free
- Helpful to attach links to people in
FamilySearch Family Treefor sources of online books, but tell why you are linking and include
page numbers for the related info in the reference
- There are millions of free genealogy and other books to read online and/or download.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
or Don
Snow's Class Listings Page .