YOUR ONLINE HOME LIBRARY:
FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS ONLINE
©2011 by Donald R. Snow
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This page was last updated 2011-02-25.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don Snow's Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO CLASS
- Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu and dmsnow34@gmail.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 > Class Outlines > Don Snow's Listings . Many other class notes for family history are posted there, too.
- Note: holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on a link here will open the link in a new window so you can keep your place in these notes.
- These notes show how to find and use some of the many full-text family history books posted on the Internet.
ARTICLES AND SEARCH ENGINES FOR FULL-TEXT BOOKS ONLINE
USING THE DATA FOUND - PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT (PDF)
- Most online books are in Adobe's pdf (Portable Document Format) which can be read with the free Adobe Reader downloadable from http://get.adobe.com/reader/
- Two forms of pdf with text:
- Regular pdf -- generated by a word processing program like Open Office, Word, or WordPerfect, with the file saved as pdf
- Style used by LDS Church for Ensign magazine, Priesthood/Relief Society manuals, etc. on
their website http://www.lds.org .
- Can copy lines, paragraphs, pages, or the entire book, and paste it into Notes in a genealogy program such as PAF
- Scanned pdf -- this is a picture of a printed page and was not generated from text directly
- Flatbed scanners and screen captures produce this type of pdf.
- Can paste parts or all as images, but not text , into PAF's mulitmedia or source images (see FastStone Capture mentioned below)
- Converting this type of pdf to text requires Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- FastStone Capture -- excellent freeware screen capture program to copy parts or all of screen, or even an entire scrolling window, to graphics format so it can be OCR'd -- Version 5.3 was the last freeware version (later versions are shareware) -- 5.3 available from http://www.oldapps.com/fast_stone_capture.php
- Can link jpg's, tif's, pdf's, and other image formats into PAF's multimedia or source images (for pdf's, use the Audio or Video setting in PAF)
FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY AND CATALOG
- The Family History Library in Salt Lake City is working with
the Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library to digitize and
post online the out-of-copyright FH volumes from the FHL,
the Allen County FH Library (Fort Wayne, Indiana), and several other large FH
libraries.
- The Family History Library Catalog (FHLC) entries for digitized books contain the words written in red: "To view a digital version of this book click here." -- takes you to the digitized book posted on BYU Harold B. Lee Library's Family History Archives site
- Scanned books are in pdf format, are completely searchable for any name, location, word,
etc.
- You can download as many pages as you want, or the entire book, in most cases -- when downloading parts, be sure to rename the download each time or it wipes out the previous download
- Examples
- To be digitized and posted volumes must be out of copyright or the copyright holder must have given permission.
- To find most of these digitized so far go to http://www.familysearch.org/ and then
- Library Catalog > Keyword (Beta) search and search for "To view all digital" (without the quotes) -- brings up almost 16,000 entries in the FHLC, each of which has a link to view it as a digital image
- Or click on "Go to the previous site" (bottom lower left of FamilySearch screen) -- takes you to the old FamilySearch website; then click on Search Records > Historical Books -- leads to the BYU's Family History Archives online collection at http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php -- lists about 18,000 volumes in this collection
- For more detailed searches and to see the other kinds
of FH records that the BYU Library has online, click on their Advanced Search at
http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/search.php
- Can search all the online books or only selected collections, e.g. the Family Histories collections - go to the lower pane and select "Family Histories 2", "Family Histories 19 - Fort Wayne", etc.
- Each set of Family Histories has several hundred volumes
- Can select all to be searched or move selected
ones to the right panel to be in the search collection
- For estimates of how many volumes are in each Family History set do an advanced search on the set for something like "." (without the quotes) that would occur in all volumes -- Family Histories Set 1 has at least 560 volumes, Family Histories 23 - Fort Wayne has at least 360 volumes, etc.
- For each of these titles the FHLC has the note in red: "To view a digital version of this book click here."
- BYU Library has many other online digital collections helpful for FH, including photographs -- see
http://www.lib.byu.edu/online.html
GOOGLE BOOKS -- see Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
- Google has signed contracts with many large libraries to digitize books and post them online -- includes both full-text and partial text postings -- has more than 10 million books so far
- Most are already out of copyright, but Google has received permission to post some that are still in copyright
- Go to http://books.google.com/ or from
http://www.google.com click on More, then Book Search.
- To do a search in all their volumes for a name enter the name in quotes, e.g. “Brigham Young”, or go to the Advanced Search screen and enter it in the "Exact Phrase" field
- To search only those volumes that are full-text go to the Advanced Book Search and set it to search only Full View texts
- Your term shows up highlighted on the pages in each of the digitized books.
- Where Google doesn't have permission to post the entire volume you only see a snippet of the page with the search term highlighted and information on where you can see or purchase the entire volume.
- For full-text books you can usually download the pdf of the entire volume or just the pages you want
- Most Google full-text books seem to have a button to click to show it in printable text format -- can use this to copy and paste any lines or paragraphs you want
INTERNET ARCHIVE -- see Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive
- Internet Archive - a major source of FH information -- http://www.archive.org/
- Are scanning many books themselves, as well as
linking others - millions of online books, including many FH books
- Allows reading them in your browser or downloading in various formats, e.g. pdf or text files
- Also contains
- The Wayback Machine - archive of the Internet at various times since 1996 - can find websites and items that have since been removed from the web
- Archives of images, moving images, and audio
HERITAGEQUEST ONLINE -- see Encyclopedia of Genealogy article at http://www.eogen.com/heritagequestonline
- Has 28,000 FH books, all in pdf format and can be downloaded in parts
- Also has all U.S. Census images (but not all indexed), Revolutionay War Records, PERSI (Periodical Source Index), and other records
- Many public libraries have a subscription and allow patrons home access to HQO through the library's website by using their library card barcode -- examples in Utah are Provo, Orem, St. George, and Davis County public libraries
- See partial list of libraries in U.S. that subscribe in the above Encyclopedia of Genealogy article
ADDITIONAL ONLINE FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS
- Open Library -- http://openlibrary.org/ -- 23 million books
with 1 million full-text books
- World Public Library -- http://worldlibrary.net/ -- 750,000 books online
- Project Gutenberg -- http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
- Virtual Reference Shelf by the Library of Congress -- http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
- University of Texas -- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/books/etext.html
- University of Pennsylvania Library -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ -- lots
of early LDS books and periodicals
- Feedbooks - Public Domain Books -- http://www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain
- Free History and Genealogy Books Online -- http://www.genealogysearch.org/free/digitalpublications.html
- Genealogy Book Links -- http://www.genealogybooklinks.com/default.htm
- List of 40 ebook websites --
http://education-portal.com/articles/40_Places_for_College_Students_to_Find_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
- DjVu Books -- http://www.djvuzone.org/demos/appli/index.html
- FullBooks -- http://www.fullbooks.com/
- Australia, South Pacific, and other locations -- http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm
- World E-Book Fair -- http://worldebookfair.com/Collections.htm
- DiplomaGuide.com -- http://diplomaguide.com/articles/List_of_Online_Archives_for_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
- ReadPrint - Free Online Library -- http://www.readprint.com/
- Forgotten Books Online -- http://www.forgottenbooks.org
- e-Books Directory -- http://e-booksdirectory.com/ -- many good pdf format text, math, science, and other books
- Electronic Texts list -- http://www.svrc.vic.edu.au/ATaltformat.shtml -- from Statewide Vision Resource Centre, Melbourne, Australia
- Online Books eTexts/eBooks -- http://www.harrold.org/rfhextra/books.html
- To find many other such websites do searches for things like “free online full-text books genealogy” (without the quotes) in search engines like
ASSIGNMENT
- Do a Google Books search to see if you can find a full-text volume containing the name of one of your ancestors. If not, try "Erastus Snow".
- Search the Internet Archive for one of your ancestors or for a location where your ancestors lived, e.g. Woburn, Massachusetts.
- Do a Google or other search for "free full-text books online" (without the quotes) and see the list of websites that comes up.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don Snow's Class Listings Page .