YOUR PERSONAL GENEALOGY LIBRARY:
FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS ONLINE
©2014 by Donald R. Snow
- Welcome and Introduction
- Format of Online Books - Portable Document Format (PDF)
- Family History Library and FamilySearch Catalog
- Google Books
- Internet Archive
- HeritageQuest Online
- Additional Online Family History Books
- Articles and Search Engines for Full-Text Books Online
- Conclusion
This page was last updated 2014-11-17.
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
or Don
Snow's Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with the Internet links active are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips:
(1) To have an icon on your desktop to open your
browser and go directly to these notes drag the icon
from in front of the address in your browser onto your
desktop. (2) To open a link from here in
another tab, but keep your place in these notes, hold
down the Control key while clicking the link.
- The problem for today's discussion: How
to find and use
the information
from the
millions of books available on the
Internet.
FORMAT OF ONLINE BOOKS - PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT
(PDF)
- Most online books are in Adobe's Portable Document
Format (pdf) which can be read with free programs such
as Adobe
Reader , Sumatra
Reader , Nitro
Reader , Kindle,
and many others
- Forms of pdf
- pdf with the image
and text layers
- Format used by many
organizations, including
the LDS Church
on http://www.lds.org
,
for magazines, manuals, and
handbooks
- Generated by programs such as Word,
LibreOffice, OpenOffice, or any word processor
that will save files as a pdf
- One layer is a "photograph" of the printed
page
- Another layer identifies the symbols on the
first layer as text, so it is text searchable
- When you copy paragraphs or pages from this
type of pdf to paste elsewhere you get both
layers
- pdf with only
the image layer
- Generated by a flatbed
scanner, camera, or screen capture program,
e.g. scanned pdf's
- Only the "photograph" layer of the printed
page and not the text layer to identify that the
symbols are words
- When you copy and
paste parts from this type, it
is only an image and is not
text-searchable
- To get the text layer you have to run it
through an OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
program
- OCR programs -- Optical Character Recognition
- Adobe Reader (commercial) has a good OCR
program, but expensive; some flatbed scanners come
with an OCR program -- check your manual -- also
some libraries have one you can use for free
- PDF X-Change Viewer
has a free
OCR program for private use that is OK, but not
perfect -- http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
-- accuracy usually depends on how clear the image
is
- JOCR -- free,
small, fast, fairly accurate, but only
OCR's screenshots and requires that MS Word 2003
or later be on your computer, even though it
doesn't use it -- http://download.cnet.com/JOCR/3000-2192_4-10768898.html
-- will not work with LibreOffice or
OpenOffice which are freeware word processors
compatible with Word
- NewOCR -- free online conversion to text -- http://www.newocr.com/
-- some limitations
- After using OCR you can save the pdf with a new
name so you know it has both the image layer and
the text layer; can then copy any parts as image
and/or text
- FastStone Capture 5.3 -- excellent free
program to do screen captures to various
formats, including pdf, jpg, and tif, but does not
have OCR; later versions after 5.3 are not free; 5.3
is available from several websites including http://www.oldapps.com/fast_stone_capture.php?old_fscapture=17--
can use FastStone 5.3 to make pdf, then use PDF
X-Change Viewer to OCR it
FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY AND FAMILYSEARCH CATALOG
- The Family History Library in Salt Lake City is
digitizing and has posted online so
far
more than 150,000 out-of-copyright and
permission-granted FH books -- https://books.familysearch.org/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=FHD_PUBLIC
; these are from several large libraries, including
the FHL, BYU Library, and Allen County FH Library
(Fort Wayne, Indiana), and from personal
collections -- For personal books they must
be out of copyright or you must be the copyright
holder and sign an agreement that they can digitize
and post them.
- For
digitized books the FamilySearch
Catalog (FSC) (was called the Family
History Library Catalog) shows the
words in red: "To view a digital version
of this item click here." and
that takes you to the digitized image
which you can read and/or download
- You
can search
through all the
digitized books
for any word or
phrase by using
the search
option on https://books.familysearch.org
- 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-- sometimes you
can only download parts at a time, in
which case you can rename the parts as
you download them so they don't
overwrite others
- Some
books can only be read and/or downloaded
in
the Family History Lib or FHCs -- Example:
The
Snow-Estes Ancestry by Nora
Emma Snow and Myrtle M. Jillson --
go to a FHC to download it to a
flashdrive
- All FamilySearch digital books are
OCR'd and the text layer downloads with
the book, so it is completely
word-searchable for any name, location,
date, or word in the entire book; Google
books downloaded don't have the text
layer and must be OCR'd to make them
searchable (see below)
- BYU Library has many related online FH digital
collections including books and photographs -- see http://lib.byu.edu/digital/all.php
and http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/search
GOOGLE BOOKS
- Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
gives history of Google Books and related operations
- Google has contracts with many large libraries to
digitize their books and post them online, including
both full-text and partial text postings; as of Apr
2013 Google estimated they had
scanned and posted more than 30 million books -- These
are already out of copyright or else Google has
permission to post them. They estimate that
there are about 130 million different books in the
world and they would like to scan all of them.
- Google book searches
- To find a specific book search for the title
in quotation marks, e.g."Documentary History of
the Church"
- Do a Google search http://www.google.com
for someone, e.g. "brigham young" (Remember that
caps are not required in
Google); on
the results page at the top you see "Web"
"Images" "Videos" "Books" "News" and more --
click on Books to see the hits in books
- You can also get to the Books Search page in
other ways, e.g. clicking on the small 3x3 "app"
icon at top right, or go directly to it at http://books.google.com/
- If 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 of it for free --
Example: Erastus Snow's One
Year In Scandinavia -- Hover your cursor
over the red "READ EBOOK" icon and you will see
options about reading and/or downloading it in
various formats; downloading in pdf does NOT
bring the text layer with it, so it is not
searchable until you run it through an OCR
program -- see above for programs to do this
- 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 on where you can
find or purchase the entire volume
-- may still be able to find the full text
book on some other website or you can use a
screen capture program to save off just the
part you are interested in
- The San Mateo CA
Public Library has a short
tutorial on using Google Books
-- http://www.smcl.org/content/how-do-i-access-google-books-sopac
INTERNET ARCHIVE
- See Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
-- Goals include preserving an electronic copy
of every book ever published anywhere,
preserving "snapshots" of the entire Internet
every few days, and preserving audio, movies,
and videos
- Is a major source of FH information -- http://www.archive.org/
-- for books click on Texts
- Has 4 1/2 million books scanned and links to
many others on different websites -- many FH
books -- scans
1000 books per day according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books#Similar_projects
- Their books are all searchable for any word,
name, place, event, etc, and you can read them
in your browser or download them in formats for
various eReaders or pdf, text, etc.
- Their downloaded pdf's have both the image and
the text layers, so are searchable without
OCR'ing, unlike Google's
- Internet Archive also sponsors
- http://openlibrary.org/
-- a wiki where you can find information about
books, their editions, libraries which have
them, and where to buy hard copies - 20
million books listed so far
- The
Wayback Machine -- "snapshots" of the
entire Internet at various times since 1996 --
has old websites no longer on the Internet --
lots of good FH information from the past
- Great archive of recorded sound and movies,
e.g. 78 RPM records and old radio
broadcasts
HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE
- See Encyclopedia of Genealogy article at http://www.eogen.com/heritagequestonline
-- article has pages with links of libraries in
various US states with access to HQO
- HQO is only available through libraries and many
public libraries have
subscriptions which allow
patrons home access
through the library's
website by using their
library card barcode --
examples in Utah are
Provo, Orem, and
Washington and Davis
County public libraries;
all counties in Utah can
use HQO through http://pioneer.utah.gov/home.html
with their local public
library card or an access
code from their local
library -- Washington
County Library website is
-- http://library.washco.utah.gov/heritage-database/
- HQO has 28,000 FH books in pdf format
- Can search entire collection online for any
name, word, place, etc.
- Can download parts or entire book, but
sometimes has a limit of 50 pages at a time --
so have to download parts and assemble it
later using a freeware program such as http://www.pdfsam.org
-- downloaded books from HQO are not text
searchable without OCR'ing
- Dollarhide's "The Census Book" can
be downloaded from the Help
section, not the Books section, and is
text-searchable
- HQO also has all U.S. census images up through
1940 (but not all censuses indexed),
Revolutionary War Records, PERSI (Periodical
Source Index), and other records-- their census
images were done in black and white, not grey
scale as Ancestry's and the LDS Church's, and
therefore are sometimes more readable
ADDITIONAL ONLINE FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS
- For LDS history and family history books see
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/
and http://dp.la/info/
-- an umbrella organization to list all online
books of all organizations in the world -- see
article in New
York Times Review of Books
- World Public Library -- http://worldlibrary.net/
-- commercial site; more than 2 million book
pdf's online
- WorldCat
by OCLC
(Online Computer Library Center) - https://www.worldcat.org/
-- searches library collections of 10,000
libraries worldwide
- Project Gutenberg -- http://www.gutenberg.org
-- 42,000 free ebooks and an additional 100,000
through their affiliates
- Virtual Reference Shelf by the Library of
Congress -- http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
- University of Texas -- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/books/etext.html
- University of Pennsylvania Library -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
-- lots of early LDS books and periodicals
- World Vital Records -- http://worldvitalrecords.com/
- Mocavo -- http://www.mocavo.com/
-- Do a search, then click on Documents (left
hand side)
- 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/
- Australia, South Pacific, and other locations
-- http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm
- 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
- Electronic Texts list -- http://www.svrc.vic.edu.au/ATaltformat.shtml
-- from Statewide Vision Resource Centre,
Melbourne, Australia
- 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 FULL-TEXT
BOOKS ONLINE
- Beginner's Guide to e-Books -- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cW3dtoKNKF8J:www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/a-beginners-guide-to-e-books.html+http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/a-beginners-guide-to-e-books.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
- Kimberly Powell article on sources of online
books -- http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_documents/tp/family_histories.htm?nl=1
- About.com article on books online -- http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_documents/tp/historical-books.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"
- University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page
website -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/archives.html
-- major list of book websites and indexes
- Check all the websites for what you are looking,
since no single site lists everything and the same
book may be online in a different format or easier
to download from one website than another
CONCLUSION
- For any books you find
online and want to link to people
on Family Tree you can save links
in your "Source Box" and then link
them; the RecordSeek program makes
saving such links very easy for
FamilyTree
- The Internet has many very helpful genealogy and
history books online and many can be used,
searched, and downloaded for free.
Return to the
Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
or Don Snow's Class Listings Page
.