ROOTSWEB AND USGENWEB

• Welcome and Introduction to Class
• RootsWeb.com
• USGenWeb.com
• Assignment

• Welcome
• Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu , dms34@juno.com ) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
• These notes with active Internet links are posted on the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group website http://uvtagg.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings , and are linked on the St. George Regional Family History Training Center webpage .  Many other class notes for family history are linked on the UVTAGG website also.
• This will be a discussion of two important, free, and large family history web sites -- http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ and  http://usgenweb.org/  .
  

ROOTSWEB -- http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/   or  http://rootsweb.com (old URL, but still works)

• RootsWeb is the largest and oldest volunteer FH web site
  • Hosted by Ancestry.com, but is free for everyone -- just be careful to note which boxes you are filling in to search on or you will be taken to Ancestry.com  
• Has lessons, helps, databases, hosts FH email lists, message boards, web sites -- a major source of FH data
  
  • See their home page for categories of their data
  • See Getting Started with RootsWeb for a good introduction
• Examples of searching, saving, and printing
• Search Engines and Databases -- includes a Social Security Death Index that is more up-to-date than on http://www.familysearch.org, but not as up-to-date as on http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/  
• Family Trees (WorldConnect) -- GEDCOM files from individuals -- these are also used in Ancestry.com, but are free here
  • Half a billion names in nearly half a million databases at present
  • Can search all databases for any name or can go to a particular database, e.g. earlylds
  • Some are set to allow you to download a GEDCOM of only a certain number of generations or else the entire file
• Mailing lists -- surname lists, place lists, program lists, subscribing (all free)
• Message Boards -- you post a message and people can find it and respond later
• Web sites hosted -- can form a free personal or family webpage here
• Volunteer Projects
• Contributing your FH info
  • See Gerhard Ruf's notes on Where Should I Contribute My Data? for an informative chart of this and other sites (can also get to his notes via http://www.uvtagg.org under Class Outlines)
  • Can post your database online and have as much or as little public as you want -- even say none it is public and use it just for a free online backup of your data
  • Example -- Index file for our EarlyLDS.com database -- To find that database do a search for earlylds-index.
    

USGENWEB -- http://usgenweb.org/index.shtml or http://usgenweb.org/ (old URL, but still works)

• Volunteer effort for FH data about every US state and every county in every state (about 3000 counties in the US) -- rich source of FH information and links
• Click on a state, e.g. Utah, and look at all the information and links
  • Can also click on the word STATES at top and get a map of the US to click on the state
  • Shows county websites, research aids, searchable databases, maps, lookup assistance (RAOGK = Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness)
• Many special projects that volunteers are working on, e.g. Archives Project, Genealogical Events Project, Kidz Project, Lineage Project (descendants of an invidivual), Census Project, Digital Maps Project, Marriage Project, etc.
• Click on Site Map (lower right-hand side of Home Page) to get an overview of USGenWeb and its projects
• Search engine for entire website -- see Search USGenWeb link on lower right-hand side of Home Page
• Project Achives, National and State pages (see upper left side of home page)
• Click on Researchers for lots of helpful information about FH and how to do it
  

1. See if there is an email list for your surname hosted at Rootsweb.  See what procedure you would go through to join it.
2. Do a search on Rootsweb for some ancestor and see what comes up.
3. Select some county in the U.S. that you are interested in and see what databases and links USGenWeb has for it.