books
music
film & videos
gifts
travel
food & wine
genealogy
italian american
features
news
forums
free email
newsletter
link directory
|
new york
events, links, forum
boston
events, links, forum
new!philadelphia
events, links, forum
chicago
events, links, forum
san francisco
events, links, forum
los angeles
events, links, forum
|
|
about us
|
you can help us!
We're an all volunteer website and need your help to keep going. Here are five ways you can contribute:
1 Donate
2 Buy something
3 Submit a story
4 Volunteer
5 Advertise
get in gear!
New in the gift shop, virtualitalia.com logo wear and use items!
|
|
PLEASE NOTE: We are experiencing unexpected
technical difficulties caused by our web host. We apologize for
the inconvenience. During your visit you may experience service
and page interruptions - we are in the process of fixing everything and hope to be
fully back on our feet soon.
your online genealogy search
by Deborah K. Millemaci 
Today there are a multitude of resources available for doing genealogy. One avenue
I have found up and coming in researching family ancestry is the Internet. It can be a good companion to your library and public record searches. You
can find almost anything on the Internet. These websites are geared to
all stages of your genealogy research, so don't be intimidated if you are new
to online searching. I have visited hundreds of websites and I have yet
to find one that I wasn't impressed with (but you can look at my collection of
links), which makes it difficult to pick only a few of the best -- this article. But here are a few of
my favorites.
how-to websites
These websites offer
simple instruction on beginning or advanced genealogy research techniques. In
this category there is a potpourri of sites to choose from. A few of the
websites I visit frequently in this category are: COI (Communes Of Italy),
D'Addezio.com and
PIE (Pursuing Italians Electronically). COI and PIE are online
mailing lists, and also have websites where you can find information along with
archived messages pertaining to Italian genealogy and heritage. D'Addezio.com is a great genealogy site that provides Italian and
non-Italian genealogical resources.
family homepages
I love visiting family home pages.
These websites because they provide more insight to families and their ancestral
research. Many of these sites will invariably include their recommendations to
links which will further assist others in genealogy research. A couple of my
favorites here are: Arduini;
Pizzo Italian American History and Alessandri
Family Homepage.
genealogy forums
Websites that provide forums (such as
virtualitalia.com's genealogy forum)
are a great way to interact with others who
seek information on names being researched or other data needed such as
traditions and customs from the area their ancestor is from.
link pages
I have yet to find a
webpage that doesn't include Links to more information about a given topic. And
in Genealogy research there are new ones appearing all the time. A couple of the
more well-known sites are: Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites
on the Internet (one of the largest resources for Genealogy research on the Internet) and
A Barrel of Genealogy Links
(another large resource site). These link sites are
important to our research because of the wealth of information they contain
which are not always found on other genealogy
sites .
reference websites
These websites have numerous
collections on passenger lists, other informational databases, and genealogy
terminology. One interesting website in this category is Italian Searchable Databases
(through Roostweb). You will find some regional data on Italy and explanation of Italian
Records, find a list of them in my link collection.
I don't believe that researching your genealogy online is the only
way to do your search. It is definitely convenient for many who
may not be able to get out for one reason or another to do this type of
research, but it may not be complete. Researching your genealogy online puts extensive resources at the disposal of the beginner and,
to the advanced family historian, access to some crucial pieces of information necessary to
explore our family roots. As more
countries progress and put more information about themselves online,
it will take less time to obtain pertinent data. So, no matter what stage
you are at in your genealogy, just know you have another good alternative to
explore - online.
©Deborah K. Millemaci - 2002
No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author.
|