Map
Room This is an essential place. It contains a
variety of geographic locators, like atlases and gazetteers, and maps spanning
a variety of centuries. For towns that disappeared during the Holocaust,
old maps are essential in locating them. This room also contains district
maps for New York City, which have helped me identify census districts,
which led to finding the actual US and New York State Census records for
many relatives.
Jewish
Division Contains yizkhor books and reference
materials useful in your searches.
Local
History and Genealogy A lot of searches begin
here, as the staff is well trained in knowing not only their particular
collection, but which other divisions need consulting, and how to read
information once you have found it.
This Website offers a lot of good advice for genealogies
of any skill level. Their Jewish Family Finder and Shtetl Finder help researchers
get in touch with one another.
I visited YIVO only once, last year, but some of the
documents I had translated here came from sources they have in their library.
Some of the staff know Hebrew, Yiddish,and Polish, and were able to verbally
translate for me on the spot. YIVO's website contains an interesting list of tips
for genealogists, reminding us foremost that "genealogy beings at
home."
This is the Website of the makers of the software I use
to keep track of my family history project. I have used several different
programs and this one consistently does everything I have needed it to
do. So, it comes recommended from me.
This useful web utility compiles telephone listings nationwide
and puts it at your disposal. I have found many relatives this way, since
I was not limited by having to know the town in which they live. There
is a similar service for Canada (called Canada411),
and a collection of worldwide directories, nation by nation, as well, called Worldpages.
This allows you to enter a street address and it will
give you a map that shows the exact location. It also allows you to zoom
in and out. It will also allow you to find business by type that are near
that location, and gives directions from the street address to the business
you choose. Big Book is another site
that does a similar mapping service.
This is a very useful place to start your searches. This
site, sponsored by c|net, allows you to enter search terms once and then
search them successively on more than a dozen search engines. This allows
you to get possible hits on some search engines that are not found on others.
The one search engine that consistently has uncovered material for me that
no other search engine did was Alta
Vista. It searches actual text on the web, not just URLs and Titles.
