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Neighbors | Abby Slanker.Tim Seman demonstrated how to search on Ancestry Library Edition at the Canfield library on Jan. 15.
By ABBY SLANKER
The Canfield library hosted a demonstration of the Ancestry database with Tim Seman on Jan. 15. Using a large overhead screen, Seman gave detailed information on how to search ancestrylibrary.com and provided several research tips.
Seman began with a brief tutorial on how to search the site.
“As an online tool, Ancestry Library Edition is essential for beginning and advancing your research. You can search card catalogs, family trees and immigration and travel records,” Seman said.
Seman advised attendees to narrow their searches, if possible.
“You can start narrowing your search by what you’re looking for. You could keep it general, but you will get better results and more manageable results if you narrow by category,” Seman said.
Seman gave the crowd a tip about searching passenger lists, which is one of his favorite resources.
“Passenger lists provide lots of information. The writing may be hard to read on them, but they offer physical features and place of birth. Another thing is you need to look at the original list if you can get it. Mistakes could be made, and very often were made, when copies were made of the lists,” Seman said.
Seman then spoke about controlling your results list.
“When searching, you can edit your search when you want to include more information. You can add additional search features. You can change your search parameters from exact to less exact to broad. Exact can be too narrow, broad can be too far out. By adding variables, you can get the information you’re looking for more easily,” Seman said.
Seman then focused on overseas searches.
“You can explore by overseas location. This will show you there are various record collections scattered around a certain country. They could have the documents you are looking for and you can have them translated if necessary. Every city is different. It depends on how the documents were recorded and stored. It’s mesmerizing how much foreign information is available on Ancestry. They keep adding more and more,” Seman said.
Seman gave the attendees a bit of encouragement before ending the program.
“Don’t get defeated. Don’t give up if you can’t find what you are looking for,” Seman said.