I had the pleasure in May of this year of leading a genealogical research tour to England. It was sponsored by the Iowa Genealogical Society and, while we were in London, we had the opportunity to visit and conduct genealogical research in some of the great repositories of the world. Not the least of these was the Society of Genealogists (SoG). The genealogical materials they hold are the largest collection of its type in England, if not in all of Europe. When I was there, I spent a lot of time working with manuscripts and card files, a short time looking into published family histories.

At the time we were there, the prototype of their online catalog, SOGCAT, was accessible in the SoG building. Since that time, it has been made available to the general public at their website. This is an exciting development because it gives access to their holdings.

Since my time with the SoG’s local and family histories collection was so limited, I only had the opportunity to research and photocopy a limited number of pages in a few books. Now that I have had a few extra hours to spend with my research, I decided to get into SOGCAT and see what published books are there. I identified several books about my BALL family history and then began to wonder how I could gain access to them. I certainly considered working with my public library to determine what libraries might have copies and then make an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request for a copy of the index, followed by another ILL request for copies of actual pages from the books that interested me. I also considered the possibility of using online used booksellers to locate copies of the books to purchase, but that could be an expensive proposition.

I decided that, before I did all that work, I would see if there were copies of any of the books I sought were accessible in digitized format online. Once again, the Ancestry.com site came through for me. In “Along Those Lines . . .” this week, let me explain the process I used, and perhaps it will inspire you to do similar research.

[ Read More ] - Click Here