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Introduction

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Introduction

The World Wide Web is a vast information resource. This unit will provide you with the foundation skills to use search engines confidently to locate both information and images on the Web. You will also learn how to critically assess and reference the information you have found for study purposes.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

use search engines confidently to locate information and images on the Web;

critically address resources that you locate on the Web;

describe some of the processes underlying search engines.

1.1 What this unit is about

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

1 Accessing online information

1.1 What this unit is about

In this unit you will be looking at information that can be found on the Web. You may already have explored the Web and discovered what an enormous amount of information it contains. Alternatively you may be a newcomer to the Web. Either way, this unit will help you to develop your skills in accessing online information.

Here are some things that I regularly use the Web for:

Finding phone numbers
Getting train times and booking tickets
Getting information about theatre, cinema and concerts
Checking the weather forecast
Getting a map for new places I am about to visit
Listening to radio programmes that I've missed
Doing my weekly shopping
Researching information, for example on a health topic, or looking for family history.

This list is not exhaustive; I use the Web for other things, and you may too.

2.1 Introduction

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2 How to do it

2.1 Introduction

In this section we will cover the following topics:

browsing for information on the Web;
searching for information on the Web;
using search engines;
bookmarking websites;
finding images on the Web;
how to reference sources.

Some of the material in this section has been drawn from Safari, an interactive website provided by the Open University Library. Safari covers finding and assessing information in much greater detail and using resources other than the Web; we do not cover these areas in this unit, but you may like to return to Safari in the future.

2.2 Browsing for information on the Web

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2 How to do it

2.2 Browsing for information on the Web

One way to find what you are looking for on the Web is to start from sites that you know are likely to have useful ‘links’ on them, like the main Open University pages or the Open University Library pages. These opening pages are known as home pages and are a bit like the contents page of a book. The home page usually gives you some information about the content of the website, often with links to other pages of information held on that site and on sites elsewhere. By clicking on a link – which might be a heading, underlined or different coloured words, images, or a drop-down menu – you are actually sending a request to the computer that holds that information, asking it to send it to your screen. Following the links that are presented to you on the screen is called ‘browsing’ – which you have been doing already.

Home page

A home page is either the first page in a website or the page that your browser loads when it first starts.

Link

A link is a cross-reference from one document to another, particularly between web pages. Links on websites are often shown as coloured and underlined text; clicking on the link loads the new page. The terms 'link' and 'hyperlink' are now used synonymously.

You use what is on the screen to guide you to what you want.

Another quick way of accessing web pages is by using the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the page you want to look at. Type the URL (also sometimes called the web address) into the location/address box of your browser, press enter, and the website is presented on screen.

2.2.1 Making URLs work for you

Each page on the Web has a unique address, rather like a postcode or telephone number. ‘Locator’ is the important word in ‘Uniform Resource Locator’ since it can give you clues as to where you are within a website (for example, are you on the home page or are you further in?), what you are looking at, and the source of the information you are viewing (for example, whether it is from an academic institution or a company). Not only that, but if you understand how a URL is structured you can use the principles to deduce what a company or organisation's web address might be.

All website names are part of the Domain Name System (DNS), and usually look something like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk

DNS, or Domain Name System

A system which translates between domain names (such as www.open.ac.uk) and numeric IP addresses (such as 137.23.148.4).

We can break down this long address and examine the individual parts to find out what we are looking at.

http:// tells us that we are looking at a website – http stands for hypertext transfer protocol, the ‘protocol’ or set of rules used by the computer to access and deliver web pages.
www.bbc tells us that we are looking at a website held on a computer (also called a ‘web server') known as ‘www’ belonging to an organisation called ‘bbc’. A web server computer is often called ‘www’, but occasionally something more specific; for example, the T180 website is on a server called ‘students’.
.co.uk tells us that we are looking at the website of a company (‘co’) in the UK. This part of the address is called the ‘domain’. Examples of other domains you may come across include .edu or .ac (educational or academic); .com (commercial); .gov (government); .org (non-governmental, non-profit making organisations). These might be followed by a country code, such as .uk, .au (for Australia), or .fr (for France) that can indicate the location of the computer holding the website.

Once you get past the home page of an organisation or institution an address might take the form:

http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/childbenefit/eligible.htm

We can break down the second part of the address:

The pathname refers to the folder in which the document or file is to be found. In this instance the document name is ‘eligible.htm’, and it is stored within a folder called ‘childbenefit’ on a computer belonging to an organisation called ‘inlandrevenue’ in the UK government domain. The pathname may have several parts to it if the file is in a ‘nested folder’, as shown below.

Activity 1

Look at this URL. What information can you deduce from it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/genes/gm_genie/gm_science/index.shtml

Now read the answer

Answer:

This document is called ‘index.shtml’ and is contained within a folder called ‘gm_science’, which itself is contained within other folders called ‘gm_genie’, ‘genes’ and 'science’, on a computer belonging to the BBC, which is a company in the UK.

2.2.2 More on URLs

It is often possible to make an intelligent guess about a URL if you know the name of a company or organisation, but you may find some surprises. Some tips:

domain names can't contain spaces or punctuation, so try running words together
UK companies are usually in the .co.uk domain, but may also use .com
organisations may use .co or .com rather than .org
companies and organisations often also own variants on their domain name and will automatically redirect you to the correct website.

Activity 2

Try to deduce the URLs for the following:

the Guardian newspaper
The Times newspaper
Tesco
Marks & Spencer

Now read the answer

Answers:

the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (and not www.guardian.com)
The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ (and not www.times.co.uk, which is a totally unrelated site whose page counter claims more than 12 million visitors – perhaps many of them were looking for The Times)
Tesco: http://www.tesco.com/ (but www.tesco.co.uk automatically redirects visitors to the correct URL)
Marks & Spencer: http://www.marksandspencer.com/ (and not www.marks&spencer.com)

2.3 Searching for information on the Web

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2 How to do it

2.3 Searching for information on the Web

What do you do if you don't know the URL of the website you are looking for, or haven't been able to browse to it? The Web is not like a library – it isn't carefully organised and catalogued, and it is growing all the time. Luckily, there are search sites that can help you find what you want.

2.3.1 Portals

Activity 3

Visit the Excite home page. Spend no more than a few minutes getting a sense of what information is available from this page.

Now read the discussion

Comment

Some websites are set up as web portals: they aim to provide you with a one-stop-shop for everything on the Web. They provide their own editorial material, news headlines, weather and other up-to-date information, as well as links to commercial partners and paid advertisements. They also provide a search facility – did you spot the one on Excite?

Internet service providers (ISPs) usually provide their own portal and may configure your browser to use it as your home page. (Note that ‘home page’ here means the default page your browser displays when first started.)

2.3.2 Search sites

Other sites such as Google and Yahoo! concentrate on providing search facilities.

Yahoo! started out as a list of useful websites put together by two Stanford University students, but has grown somewhat since then. It still offers a web directory: a huge list of useful web pages collected by Yahoo! staff that you can browse. The directory is organised in the same way as a classified phone directory, but the difference is that categories can be browsed in successively greater detail.

Activity 4

Visit Yahoo! Find the Web Site Directory (see image above) and follow links to a topic that interests you.

Now read the discussion

Comment

For example, I followed these links: Science > Animals > Mammals > Primates > Apes > Gorillas to reach this page:

Web directories can be a useful starting point if you are looking for information in a general area. If you are looking for more specific information or want to look more widely, a full-text search engine provides an alternative.

Full-text search

A full-text search is when you search the full text of the original source, rather than the keywords associated with it.

Search engines attempt to search all the text on all the pages of the Web. They use software spiders to seek out and index web pages, storing the results in huge databases. We will see how this is done later in this unit.

Spiders

Programs that crawl over the web, fetching web pages by following links. Spiders are used by search engines to find pages for indexing.

Activity 5

Visit Google. Search for a topic that interests you.

Now read the discussion

Comment

For example, I searched for ‘gorilla’, with the following results:

Search sites often provide both directories and full-text search, and will combine results to offer you the best of both worlds.

2.3.3 Search results

Let us look at the results returned by a search engine. I've chosen to use Google, but you may use another search engine; the layout is likely to be different in detail but most of the same elements will be present.

Activity 6

Visit Google or another search site and search for a topic that interests you.

Now read the discussion

Comment

The page of results may include hits from several different sources. Google, for example, may include some results from current news stories. Search sites will often include prominent results that are paid for by advertisers.

Hits

Documents that meet your search criteria.

Activity 7

Look at some results. Can you distinguish those that come from advertisers?

Now read the discussion

Comment

On Google some results are marked as ‘sponsored links’ – businesses and organisations pay Google a fee so that their pages are associated with particular keywords.

Each hit returned provides several pieces of information to help you decide whether to visit the page. This may include the title of the page, a short extract with search terms highlighted, and the domain (which will give you clues to the publisher of the page). For pages that also appear in the search site's directory there may be a short description and a link to the category in which the page appears.

A search engine may return a huge number of hits, but surprisingly often the information you wanted can be found by following one of the first few links. This is because the results are ranked to offer you the ‘best’ first.

2.4 Using search engines

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2 How to do it

2.4 Using search engines

Search engines can be very good at finding information since they cover such a huge number of web pages. Unfortunately it can be difficult to find the one you want in the huge number of hits that they return. I can illustrate some of the problems, and some of the strategies you can use to overcome them, with an example.

Let's assume a friend of yours, Jill, has heard you talking about ‘Living with the Net’ and is trying to find out more about the course. What problems might Jill face when using a search engine to do this?

Jill's first impulse might be to visit a search engine such as Google and type ‘living with the net’ in the search box. How many hits might Jill expect? How likely is she to find the page she needs?

Activity 8

Visit a search engine such as Google and try ‘living with the net’ (omitting the quotes) as a search term.

Now read the discussion

Comment

When I tried this search I found 7,820,000 hits! Clearly there is little chance of Jill finding the pages she wants in this list. What can she do to improve her searching?

Google responded to my search by returning all pages that contained the words ‘living’ and ‘net’. Even though it ignores the commonest words such as ‘with’ and ‘the’ it still finds a large number of hits. Clearly Jill needs to be more specific.

One strategy is to search for a phrase. In this case Jill is expecting to find pages with the complete phrase ‘Living with the Net’, so she can search for that.

Activity 9

Search for “living with the net” (including the quotes).

Now read the discussion

Comment

When I tried searching for the phrase, Google returned a much smaller number of hits – only 274. The first in the list was to the RelevantKnowledge home page at the Open University, so that was a good result. Unfortunately phrase searching will only be successful if you know the correct phrase; searching for “living with the internet” will not find any information about the specific course.

Another strategy is to think of other words that are likely to appear on a page you are looking for, rather than what the page is about.

Activity 10

Jot down some words you would expect to be on a page describing the course. Search for them.

Now read the discussion

Comment

I tried ‘university course computer internet email chat’. That still produced 174,000 results; unfortunately the words I chose are all very common on the Web. I didn't find any results to do with the course, but the results did include many other similar courses, mainly in the USA.

Searching for a more unusual word or words is likely to return many fewer hits. For example, if Jill remembered the course code, T180, she could search for that.

Activity 11

Search for ‘T180’.

Now read the discussion

Comment

Again, when I tried this search, the results weren't what I hoped for! Google returned 186,000 hits, mainly to do with a mobile phone called a T180.

A search that combined some of these strategies would probably lead to good results, but you might need to turn to the advanced search features of the search engine.

2.4.1 Advanced search

Search engines usually offer an advanced search page where you can construct more complex queries.

Activity 12

Construct an advanced query to find information on T180. Did you find it?

Now read the discussion

Comment

I tried the following searches on Google:

Search	Hits	Relevance
with: T180	19,300	OU in first position
without: Motorola		but many other model numbers
exact phrase: “Living with the net”	27	All 10 hits on first page relevant
domain: ac.uk

The search I used in this particular example is perhaps unusual since we've been looking for a very specific piece of information. More often we search for less specific information and are content to accept results from any source.

2.4.2 Other search engines

It is a good idea to try several search engines, and then stick with the one you like best. You should consider how useful the results tend to be when picking your favourite, as well as ease of use and additional features such as spell checking.

Activity 13

Here is a list of popular search engines:

Try one from the list that you have not previously used. How does it compare with your current favourite?

As an alternative to search engines you may like to try a metasearch engine. A metasearch engine is a site that takes your search request, passes it on to several different search engines, and then collates the results. The idea here is that, since each search engine has different coverage and ranks its results differently, a website that features in the top results of several engines is likely to be particularly useful. Some metasearch engines are listed below.

Remember that many websites provide their own search engine, and the restricted scope may help you find information more easily. You can use the same search techniques we discussed previously.

2.5 Bookmarking websites

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2 How to do it

2.5 Bookmarking websites

Most browsers allow you to keep a record of links to websites that you have found useful. These are called ‘Bookmarks’ in Firefox and ‘Favorites’ in Internet Explorer, and may have other names, such as a ‘Hot List’, in other browsers. For convenience I've chosen to call them bookmarks. Browsers usually offer the facility for organising the bookmarks into folders and sub-folders so that you can keep track of them as your collection grows.

You may well have a collection of bookmarks already. If not, try the activity below to collect some.

Activity 14

Use Google to find three websites that you would find useful. When you visit a site that you think you will find useful, create a bookmark in your browser using the drop-down menu. This will enable you to easily find the site again.

Now read the discussion

Comment

For instance, three sites that I regularly use are:

Virgin trains – to book my tickets from Manchester to Milton Keynes;
Jobs.ac.uk – for keeping my eye on the jobs market;
BBC weather page.

2.5.1 Organising bookmarks

As you collect bookmarks in your trips around the Web you are likely to find that the list gets very long. Sometimes you may not be able to remember what a particular bookmark refers to, because its title isn't sufficiently informative. To make the use of bookmarks easier, most browsers offer some facilities for organising them. The commands you need will probably be on a Bookmarks or Favorites menu.

You can create folders to group your bookmarks, creating a hierarchy of folders within folders if necessary, just like the filing system on your hard disk. If the name of the bookmark is not clear, you can change it to something more informative.

Activity 15

Open your browser's list of bookmarks, and create a new folder called ‘Useful sites’. Put the three bookmarks you collected earlier into the folder.

Now read the discussion

Comment

To give you an example, I have organised my bookmarks into the following folders:

Cinemas
Theatres
Travel
Shopping

2.5.2 History

What do you do when you realise that you forgot to bookmark that really useful page and now can't remember its URL?

You may be able to find it again using the ‘History’ feature of your browser. This will list all the sites and pages you've visited recently and you may be able to retrace your steps using it.

Activity 16

Look at the History feature in your browser. Can you find pages that you visited yesterday?

2.6 Finding images on the Web

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2 How to do it

2.6 Finding images on the Web

As with websites, one of the easiest ways of searching for images is to use a search engine such as Google. You will see that above the Google search box are some words that allow you to select what you are searching for: web, images, groups, news, and more.

Activity 17

Search for an image that you think you may find of interest to you.

Now read the discussion

Comment

I searched for ‘baby gorilla’; the results are shown below.

Google: [accessed 10 Oct 2006]

You will notice that each result is shown as a thumbnail with some additional information below it. For example, one of the images I found was babygorilla1.jpg

Google: http://www.awf.org/images/wallpaper/babygorilla1.jpg [accessed 16 March 2004]

To get this image I followed the link from Google to a page provided by the African Wildlife Foundation which offered a selection of images for download for use as wallpaper or a screen saver. I chose a link to the image of the baby gorilla.

2.6.1 Thumbnail

This thumbnail gives you an idea what the image looks like, but remember that the full image may be much larger and more detailed.

Thumbnail

A thumbnail is a smaller version of an image that acts as a preview to the full-sized version.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)

A format used for storing bitmap images in compressed form. GIF is a good choice for storing line drawings and other simple images, but not for storing photographic images.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group).

A file format that stores images in a compressed form. JPEG is a good choice for photographic images.

Here's an explanation of the text underneath the image.

Filename babygorilla1.jpg
Images used on the Web are most commonly stored in GIF and JPEG (pronounced jay-peg) formats; they can be recognised by file extensions .gif and .jpg or .jpeg. These formats are widely supported by browsers and they are compressed so that images are relatively quick to download.
Picture size 800 × 600 pixels
Each picture is made up of dots called pixels.
This picture is quite large (800 dots across by 600 down). This would fill the screen on a small monitor, though you may have a monitor with a larger screen area.

Pixels

A pixel is a single dot from a digitised image. Each pixel has colour and intensity; an array (grid) of pixels make up an image.

Activity 18

To find out the screen area of your monitor, right-click on the desktop and choose Properties > Settings. The screen resolution is displayed in this dialogue box.

File size 52k
The file size is given in kilobytes. The file size determines how long it will take to download the image from the Web: the larger the file size the longer the download time. It also shows how much storage space is required; this may be especially important if your website or mailbox space is limited by your ISP.
URL http://www.awf.org/images/wallpaper/babygorilla1.jpg
This is the URL of the original image. You will need to make a note of this URL so that you can reference the image if you use it. You will learn about referencing later in this unit.
To visit the page where the original image was found, click on the thumbnail.

Resolution

The number or fineness of dots or pixels used by a device to display images. A printer may have a resolution of 600 dpi (dots per inch). A computer screen may be described as 800 x 600, giving the total number of pixels.

2.6.2 Saving an image from a web page

Once you have located a page containing an image that you want, you can save it on your hard disk by right-clicking on the image and choosing ‘Save Picture As…’ (Internet Explorer) or ‘Save Image As…’ (Firefox).

Activity 19

Save an image that you have found onto the hard disk of your computer.

Now read the discussion

Comment

You could save all your images in one folder, such as ‘My Pictures’.

2.6.3 A note on copyright and plagiarism

You must remember that images and other material found on the Web are subject to copyright.

One of the reasons the World Wide Web has grown so quickly, and why it is so interesting, is that anyone can publish (almost) anything on it. This raises a number of problems, however, particularly with the issue of copyright. It is very easy to find information, images, audio and video files on the Web. You can then easily save them and incorporate them into your own material. This ease of copying means people often make the mistake of assuming that everything on the Web is freely available. This is not the case.

Here are some general rules of thumb you should bear in mind:

Just because something is on the Web does not mean it is freely available for you to use in your own work. As with any material which is protected by copyright, you should seek the author's permission if you wish to use it.
With text you can use up to 5 per cent of any one piece of work without seeking permission. With images, sound, animations, and video clips, you should seek permission, unless you are specifically told you can download and use them freely.
Bear in mind that information published on the Web may have been put there by someone who does not hold the copyright to it. Simply because material appears on the Web does not mean that it is in the public domain, or that it has been published legitimately.
If you wish to reuse a lot of material taken from the Web, you should make a link to the page where it appears, rather than incorporating it into a page of your own. When you provide links you should place them in an appropriate context, and identify the site to which they connect.
Copyright law allows students special concessions, but these are very limited. As a student you may use copyright material for your own personal study purposes only. This includes using copyright material submitted as part of an assignment for assessment. If you later want to use the same material for any other purpose you must seek permission.
You should never alter images or other copyright material (except that illustrations may be resized, and editorial deletions can be made to texts so long as these are clearly indicated).

Attempting to pass off someone else's work as your own is plagiarism.

You should always acknowledge the source of any ‘third party’ material you include in your own work. Failure to do so will be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at plagiarism. The OU takes plagiarism very seriously.

Any use of someone else's material must be acknowledged, and the following section will show you how to do that.

2.7 How to reference sources

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2 How to do it

2.7 How to reference sources

You have seen how easy it is to find what what you want on the Web. When you quote any information or use any images that you have not written or created yourself it is important to ensure that you reference the source of the quote or image. This is to show that you are not trying to pass off someone else's work as your own, and to enable your reader, should they wish, to access the source of that quote.

2.7.1 How to cite sources of information

The reader may want to to access the source of the quote to see the its context or to explore further the ideas contained in the quote. The reference should provide all the information that the reader needs to find the source.

In this unit we are going to show you the Harvard system, a common method of referencing quotes. There are other ways to reference that are equally acceptable and you may already be aware of these or come across them in the future.

A reference has two parts: the first immediately follows the quotation and the second part is in a bibliography at the end of the article or essay. The reference in the text is a short form that doesn't clutter up the main text, and the bibliography provides the full source details.

2.7.2 First part of a reference – following the quote or image

This part of the reference consists of just the author's name and the year of publication. These are placed in brackets after the quotation e.g. (Bennett, 2004).

For some material, especially images and web pages, it isn't possible to identify the author or publication date. In these cases you may be able to attribute an organisation or publisher, either by name or by using a URL. For online material, give the date you accessed it; for example (www.awf.org, 16 March 2004).

If you find you have used more than one work by the same author, add a letter to distinguish them; for example (Bennett, 2004a; Bennett, 2004b). For web resources, give more of the URL.

2.7.3 Second part of a reference – the bibliography

The bibliography contains full details of the source. The entries are listed in alphabetical order of author.

There are several types of source that you may be referencing so I have given an example for each.

A book

Naughton, J. (1999) A Brief History of the Future, London, Phoenix.

You should include:

Author's (or editor's) last name and initials;
year of publication (in brackets);
title (in italics);
place of publication;
publisher.

A web page

Alexander, G. On-line Collaborative Learning, [online] Available from: http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/pages/oclearn.htm [Accessed 10 Oct 2006]

You should include:

Author's last name and initials (or name or URL of publishing site);
title;
‘online’ in square brackets;
‘available from’ information such as the URL;
the date you accessed the site in square brackets.

An image from a web page

Baby gorilla [online image]. Available from www.awf.org/images/wallpaper/babygorilla1 [Accessed 20 Oct 2006]

You should include:

The title of the image, or a description;

URL;

in square brackets, the date you accessed the site.

An image from a clip art collection

Bitfolio Edition 7 [Clipart Collection CD], [no date]. Distributor: Management Graphics Ltd, Reading, Berkshire.

You should include:

Author (if given);

title (in italics);

form, e.g. Clipart Collection CD (in square brackets);

date (if given);

availability, e.g. distributor, address.

A conference or email message

ejb7@tutor.open.ac.uk, 26th March 04, University Choices, Conference message to misc.education.adult

You should include:

Author's email address;

full date of message;

subject of message (in italics);

‘email to’ or ‘conference message to’ followed by the recipient's name, or conference name.

Activity 20

Having read how to cite sources of information, which covered books, web pages, conference messages and images, please try the quiz in the next section.

2.8 Reference sourcing quiz

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2 How to do it

2.8 Reference sourcing quiz

1 When referencing an image what details should be included alongside the image?

A The URL of the image
B The file name of the image
C The image URL and the date you accessed the site
D The file name of the image and the date you accessed the site

Now read the answer

2 When referencing an image what details should be included in the bibliography?

A The URL of the image
B The file name of the image
C The image title, [online image], the image URL and the date you accessed the site
D The file name of the image and the date you accessed the site

Now read the answer

3 Here is a message in a discussion group called misc.education.adult. It was written by Hazel Blears on 12 March 2003. What information should follow this quote? ‘Hi. I am currently studying for an HND in Administration and Information Management and would like to know if anyone can recommend a course that would be beneficial to me.’

A (Blears, 2003)
B (Blears, 12 March 2003)
C (Hazel_Blears@hotmail.com. Conference message to misc.education.adult)

Now read the answer

4 For the example given in Question 3, what information should be included in the bibliography?

A Blears, H. (2003)
B Blears, H. (12 March 2003)
C Blears, H. (Hazel_Blears@hotmail.com), 12 March 2003. Conference message to misc.education.adult

Now read the answer

3.1 Searching for your ancestors

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3 An Internet search example

3.1 Searching for your ancestors

In this section we consider searching for information about your ancestors. We cannot hope to cover all the techniques and information required to research genealogy, family history and local history; there is only time in this unit to scratch the surface. Some of the activities here are open-ended; please do not spend too long on them. If the subject interests you, you can revisit it after the course finishes, making use of the genealogical resources in the Appendix.

3.2 General search engines

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3 An Internet search example

3.2 General search engines

An immediate temptation is to head straight for a search engine such as Google and enter your family name, but a moment's thought should warn you that the results will be disappointing. This is particularly so if your name is common or, like White or Snow, is also an English word. Even a relatively uncommon family name such as Rosewell turns out to be a place name in both Scotland and the USA and a misspelling of a UFO.

Activity 21

Jot down some sample queries that may be useful

Now read the discussion

Comment

You should focus on the other text on the pages you will be expecting to find – try adding magic words such as ‘genealogy’ or ‘family history’. If you know other information such as a date or place, try adding that to your search.

Activity 22

Try a web search for web pages of other researchers interested in your family.

Now read the discussion

Comment

You may find other difficulties in using search engines such as Google which simply look for matching text. For example, the spelling of names was much less standardised in the past: is it possible that members of the Rowswell family recorded in 1760 are ancestors of the Rosewells recorded in the same area a hundred years later? The various ways in which dates can be written makes it difficult to search for an exact date, and in any case they may not be known; for example you may know someone's birth date but another researcher the christening date for the same person.

Activity 23

Think of some strategies to use to avoid these problems

Now read the discussion

Comment

You will need either to repeat your queries, trying alternative spellings and dates, or become familiar with the advanced queries of your search engine and construct more complex queries. It is a good idea to record the queries you have used so that you can repeat them in future.

3.3 Focused search sites

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

3 An Internet search example

3.3 Focused search sites

An alternative to using general purpose search engines is to make use of focused search engines that only index known genealogical sites. For example, the Genealogical Society of the UK and Ireland (GenUKI) provides a search engine.

Activity 24

Visit the GenUKI search pages and look for your family name.

Now read the discussion

Comment

A word of warning here: genealogy is an area of the web where both free and paid for information is available, and advertising and sponsored links are often used to cross-subsidise sites. You will find many tempting links that end up on subscription sites.

There are a number of other general genealogical websites and portals, some of which are listed in the genealogical resources section. These sites will not only link to online information but lead you to resources that are available offline.

3.4 Databases

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3 An Internet search example

3.4 Databases

An alternative to searching by simple text matching is to look inside a database specifically structured for genealogical searching. Probably the largest such database is freely available on the Internet. It has been constructed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often abbreviated LDS and known as the Mormons) and is available through their FamilySearch website. Links from the home page of the FamilySearch website explain the purpose and background to the Church's interest in genealogy.

Activity 25

Visit the search pages of FamilySearch and try searching for an ancestor or a historical figure.

View description

Source: Family search

A search is more likely to be productive if you can provide specific information, such as the name of a parent or a specific date. The data are more likely to contain christening dates than birth dates, and there are few death or burial records. It contains only information on deceased individuals.

FamilySearch hosts several databases. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) contains information about 285 million individuals transcribed from original records such as parish registers. The Pedigree Resource Files are freely contributed by genealogical researchers to record family relationships that they have discovered. The Ancestral File also records families but its records are submitted and checked through the Church. Altogether more than 900 million names are recorded. The databases act as indexes to the original sources of the information; microfilm and microfiche copies are available for sale or at the LDS local Family History Centres (details are available through the UK branch of the Church).

The FamilySearch site also contains a complete transcription of the 1881 UK census. Cross-referencing between census records and the IGI can be very useful. For example, my research in the IGI found christening records for children Frank, Ada Clara, Emily Rose and May Rosewell, whose parents were recorded as John and Sarah. The dates made it possible that they formed one family. Checking in the census record gives a more complete picture:

Source: www.familysearch.org [Accessed 10 Oct 2006] ©

This is a strong confirmation that the children I found were all from the same family, and shows that there were probably other children in the family. It also gives the age of John and Sarah, which is a starting point for further search for their birth or christening records.

The 1901 census for England and Wales is available online from the National Archives. You can search the data for free but there is a charge to view the records, either as a transcription or as a scanned document. At its launch, this service proved so popular that the system could not cope with the demand.

There is a project underway to digitise the 1891 UK census hosted by Ancestry.co.uk. Access to records requires payment although there are free trials available.

3.6 Tracing your family tree

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3 An Internet search example

3.6 Tracing your family tree

In order to show some of the possibilities provided by the Internet, we have gone straight to searching for material online. A careful family historian would take a more measured approach, starting with the evidence to hand within their own family, and researching offline materials as well. Tracing your family tree involves repeating these steps:

start with what you know
record it
decide what to pursue next
research and query
analyse the results to see what's needed next.

We have provided some links in genealogical resources section that offer background and more tips on how to get started.

3.6.1 Recording what you know

While researching your family history you will need to keep records. Some of your material will be on paper, especially copies of original documents. You can also find standard charts on the Web to record family information – look in one of the large genealogy sites such as FamilySearch or Cyndi's List.

Activity 26

Go to FamilySearch and follow links Search > Research Helps > Sorted by Document Type. Download a pedigree chart and family group form. You can use these to gather information on your immediate ancestors.

You may also want to use your computer to store information to make the most of the searching and cross-referencing provided by electronic data. You can keep good records using nothing more than a word processor and organising documents into a good folder structure, for example one folder per person arranged as a family tree.

Alternatively, you can use specialised software that has tools to browse through family relationships, search for dates, produce charts, etc. There are a number of packages available, for example:

Family Tree Maker is possibly the market leader and is available in several versions, often combined with a subscription to the online service at Genealogy.com.
Brother's Keeper is a shareware product that can be freely downloaded for evaluation. In addition to the current version, it is possible to obtain an earlier version (v5) which is considerably faster to download (about 5 minutes by modem).
Personal Ancestral File is available for free download from FamilySearch or can be purchased with other products from the UK branch of the Church of Latter-day Saints. This includes some features intended for use by the Mormon temple but is still a good general-purpose package.

Optional Activity

Obtain a genealogical package and use it to collect information about your immediate family.

Now read the discussion

Comment

One advantage of using a software package is the possibility of sharing data with others. There is a widely supported standard (GEDCOM) that allows genealogies to be be exchanged between all these packages, although you may find that the supporting material such as your notes or images are not so easy to transfer.

Remember to keep backups of data!

3.6.2 Recording your sources

Historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources. A primary source is an original document of an event – for example, a birth certificate or a marriage licence. A secondary source is one that may cite the original, for example a published family history. There is a range of possible secondary sources and you should be aware of the possibility of error or misinterpretation at every step. We will consider how to evaluate information on the Web more generally later in this unit, but you may like to spend a few moments considering the following.

Note the possible errors and misinterpretations that could arise in:

A newspaper notice of birth, marriage or death
A newspaper obituary
A published transcription of a parish register
A record from the 1881 census obtained online
A family researcher's personal web page

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

(A cable sent by Mark Twain after his obituary had been mistakenly published.)

Source: http://www.bartleby.com/59/6/reportsofmyd.html [Accessed 10 Oct 2006] ©

When you record information it is very important that you also record the source so that it is possible to follow the chain of evidence back to the primary source for checking and reinterpretation. You should use the methods of referencing sources you met previously.

3.6.3 Copyright and privacy

Researching genealogy and family history is often a cooperative enterprise, and greater progress is made when people share their information.

You should give due credit for the work done by others and be aware of the issues of plagiarism and copyright discussed previously. Note that facts, such as someone's date of birth, cannot be copyrighted, but the expression of those facts – the words describing them – are copyright.

Family history is also an area where you need to be aware of privacy concerns. As a rule of thumb, you should never publish information about living individuals. Be aware that even information about deceased individuals can cause distress. Consider your feelings and those of your family if you were to discover from careful study of dates that a member of your family was born out of wedlock.

3.6.4 Publishing

Once you have some family history, why not make it available to others? There is a chance that your interests will overlap with those of others and you will be able to share information.

There are several ways in which you can publish your information. You can use a weblog to record your search – that may be of great interest to your relatives and spark reminiscences. You can contribute to discussion groups. You can create your own website.

Do remember that the Internet has only been around for a few fast and furious years compared with the generations you may uncover in your family history. Your own blog or website may not prove to be that permanent, so it is still worth keeping paper copies of material – a tried and trusted technology to hand down to following generations.

Another possibility is to contribute your data to large hosted sites such as FamilySearch or WorldConnect. Although the Internet and Web will change out of all recognition over the next decades and centuries, the data in these sites are certain to persist in some form.

4.1 What is a search engine?

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4 What's going on

4.1 What is a search engine?

Search sites are powered by a search engine: a program that can search for web pages that match your query, and then return a list of hits. The list of hits arrives at your browser as a web page, complete with links to the pages the search engine has found. A website such as the Open University may provide its own search engine which searches only its own web pages, but the big search sites claim to search the entire Web. This is a stunning claim: Google claims to search over four billion web pages yet usually finds what I want in a fraction of a second. How is it done?

4.2 Index

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.2 Index

It is not practical for the search engine to go looking at every page on the Web whenever it receives a search request. Instead, the search engine consults a vast index to the Web. This index is prepared in advance and is stored as a database to make retrieval as efficient as possible. The index of a search site is just like the index of a book – it contains a list of words, each with a reference to the page on which that word was found. The reference to the original page is, of course, a URL, so the search engine can provide you with a link to the page in the list of results.

An index of the Web is of course much larger than the index of any book. No search engine can claim to have indexed all the Web; it is too large and too rapidly changing for that to be possible. Even so, as mentioned above, Google currently claims to index some four billion web pages. And, what's more, the index is a full-text index: it notes the occurrence of each and every word on the page. (Actually, it ignores the commonest words such as ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘un’, and ‘le).

So how does that index get built? There are three routes by which web pages get into the index.

4.2.1 Paid inclusion

Companies and organisations can pay to have their web pages included. Results from paid inclusion are usually picked out in the list of hits, for example by being labelled as a ‘sponsored link’. Paid inclusion provides income for the search site. Arguably, sponsored links can be valuable to the searcher; no company is going to waste money on directing you to a page that isn't of use to you.

4.2.2 Classified directory

Some pages are added because a researcher has chosen them. The researcher reads the page, categorises it, writes a short description, and adds it to a classified directory. The best known example of this approach is Yahoo!, which employs people to scour the Web for useful sites and add them to the Yahoo! directory. Google relies on the Open Directory, a project that allows volunteers to contribute useful sites in the same way. One advantage of this approach is that it benefits from human judgement on the quality of the page. Another advantage is that using a limited set of categories and keywords reduces problems arising from the use of synonyms such as ‘Internet’ and ‘Net’. But the cost and sheer impossibility with keeping up with the growth of the Web mean that a directory can never be exhaustive or complete.

4.2.3 Spider

By far the largest number of pages are added to the index automatically by a software spider (also called a ‘crawler’, ‘robot’ or ‘bot’) which crawls over the Web. The spider downloads a page, indexes every word that appears on it, and then follows each link that it finds on the page, repeating the process for the new page. The benefit of the spidering approach is coverage: spiders can cover far more sites and pages than human readers ever could, and they can revisit rapidly changing sites such as news sites frequently. A disadvantage is the lack of human judgement on the quality of the page.

Spiders find new web pages because they follow links from existing websites. But it may take time for a spider to find a new site, so search sites usually provide a facility for anyone to submit their website for spidering.

4.3 Search

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.3 Search

When you submit your query, the search engine will look up each word of the query in the index and construct a list of hits. Hits are pages that contain all of the words in your query.

If you perform an advanced search, additional filters are applied to the hit list. For example, if you search for documents in the .ac.uk domain only, pages from other domains will be excluded from the hit list.

Some search engines provide extra features. Most will check the spelling of the words you entered, and warn you if you make a spelling mistake (but remember that many web pages use American spelling). Some offer stemming, that is, including common grammatical variants. Some may search for common synonyms as well as the word you typed.

Stemming

Replacing grammatical variants of a word by its root or stem; for example replacing 'searches' and 'searching' by 'search'.

Activity 27

Look at your favourite search engine. Which of these features does it offer? Look for the help pages or search tips.

4.3.1 Searching for images

When I searched for an image of a gorilla, was the search engine really recognising images of gorillas? The answer is no. Instead it was searching for the text ‘gorilla’ associated with the image – in the filename, in the alt text description or in the text surrounding the image on the web page.

Alt text

Alt text is a description of an image for people who might have difficulty seeing the image itself. It can be seen when a mouse is passed over the image.

4.4 Quality, not quantity

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.4 Quality, not quantity

4.4.1 Ranking

It is common for a web search to return hundreds, or even millions, of hits; certainly too many to check. But uncannily, the first few hits often contain just what you were looking for. How do search engines manage this seemingly miraculous feat?

The answer lies in techniques used to rank pages so that the ‘best’ are first. Each search engine uses different techniques, tweaks them continually, and guards the details jealously. But there are some general principles.

One approach is to use information that is on the original page. For example, greater weight can be attached to words that appear in the page title or in headings, or when a word occurs frequently on a single page.

A different approach is to include some human activity, albeit indirectly. For example, Google weights a page more heavily if it finds that other pages have links to it. It is making the assumption that people only create links to pages that have proved useful. This can be applied in a circular manner, so links are worth more if they are from pages that are themselves highly ranked. Another method is to note whenever a page is chosen from the results list and weight that page more heavily; after all, if one person thought it useful it is likely that someone else will.

Most search engines also combine information from their directory and spidered index. Pages that appear in the directory can be given additional weight and so appear near the top of the hit list in a search. Google applies ranking to its directory, so not only are sites in the directory manually chosen, but they are ranked in order using the techniques above.

Activity 28

Why do you think search engines are reluctant to reveal details of their ranking techniques?

4.4.2 Query rewriting

Some search sites provide additional features that help you to refine your search. For example, the search site can keep a log of all the searches that people make. When you enter a search, the search engine can suggest searches that were similar.

Activity 29

Go to AltaVista and search for a topic that interests you. Look at the related queries. Are any of these useful to extend your search more widely?

Another possibility is to extend your search from a page that has proved useful. For example, Google offers a ‘similar page’ search.

[www.google.com]

Another approach is to make use of the directory's categories. For example, a hit found from a full-text search that also appears in the directory may be shown with a link to the appropriate directory category. By following this link you can see pages that researchers have put in the same category.

View description

[www.yahoo.com]

Search sites are continually looking for ways in which to improve the quality of their results, so we can expect new techniques to appear.

Activity 30

You have learnt some of the techniques used by search engines. How can you use that knowledge to help you find information you want?

4.5 What's going on when searching for your ancestors

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.5 What's going on when searching for your ancestors

You have seen how general purpose search engines work. In this section we consider some of the additional techniques that are important to genealogical searches.

4.6 Lineage linked data

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.6 Lineage linked data

Earlier you saw how a genealogical database records relationships between people. A lineage linked database allows queries such as ‘Ada Rosewell the daughter of John Rosewell’ and makes possible the creation of family pedigrees and other charts. For example, the pedigree chart below shows how Alcimenes was the son of Jason (the Argonaut) and Medea and the grandson of Aeson and Alcimedes.

Part of the family tree of Jason the Argonaut (from Graves, R. (1944) The Golden Fleece)

There is a widely used standard format (GEDCOM) for data files that describes genealogical trees such as this. GEDCOM format files can be exported and imported into all genealogical packages and make it easy to exchange genealogical information. You can see the GEDCOM encoding for the family tree by clicking on 'View document' below.

View document

Activity 31

Using the above file structure, spend a few minutes identifying the features below.

Now read the discussion

Comment

Note how each individual has a record and is identified by a number. For example, the entry for Jason (I1) is:

0 @I1@ INDI

1 NAME Jason //

1 SEX M

1 FAMS @F1@

1 FAMC @F2@

There are also references to families associated with Jason, F1 and F2. These can be found defined elsewhere in the file. F1 is Jason and Medea's family with their five children:

0 @F1@ FAM

1 HUSB @I1@

1 WIFE @I2@

1 CHIL @I3@

1 CHIL @I4@

1 CHIL @I5@

1 CHIL @I6@

1 CHIL @I7@

and F2 is the family consisting of Jason's parents and himself:

0 @F2@ FAM

1 HUSB @I8@

1 WIFE @I9@

1 CHIL @I1@

Notice how Jason, coded as I1, appears as the husband in family F1 and a child in family F2. These links trace out the lineages in the data; they make it possible to browse and search related individuals and draw charts such as the one above.

GEDCOM files are not intended to be human readable and they can be much more complex than the example seen here. Their main use is a transfer format.

4.7 Soundex

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

4 What's going on

4.7 Soundex

You will have seen that most genealogical websites and software can match names despite differences in spelling. For example, FamilySearch provides a check box to choose matches using exact spelling; if this box is not checked, results include many variant spellings. How is this done?

Most genealogy software uses the soundex method; this has been used to index the US census back to 1900. Soundex converts names that sound similar into the same code and the search is then performed on the coded name.

Soundex

A method of coding surnames so that names that sound similar but are spelled differently are given the same code. For example, Brown, Browne and Braun are all coded as B650.

Activity 32

You can try out a Soundex calculator by clicking here. Enter your surname in the Calculate Your Soundex Code, click on Calculate Soundex and take a note of the result.

The soundex code consists of a letter and three numbers. The letter simply preserves the initial letter of the name. The numbers are obtained from the remaining letters according to rules: letters that sound similar (such as S and F, P and V, or M and N) are converted to a single number, vowels and some other letters are ignored, repeated letters are ignored, and the code truncated or padded to be four characters long.

For example, Rosewell is encoded as R240, where the 2 represents the S and the 4 represents the L; all other letters apart from the initial R are ignored and a 0 added to pad the code to four characters. The same code represents other similar names such as Rosewall, Roswell, Rowswell and even Russell.

The US National Archives and Records Administration provides a detailed description of how soundex works.

Activity 33

Can you think of limitations to the soundex scheme?

Now read the discussion

Comment

The scheme was developed for English surnames and so is based on the sounds of spoken English. It also works reasonably for related languages such as French and German but less well for dissimilar languages. Even for English names it does not always perform as you might hope; for example, check the coding for Thompson and Thomson using the soundex calculator above.

5.1 Pros and cons

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

5 What it means

5.1 Pros and cons

Let's start by brainstorming the impact that access to information on the Web has had on you and on the people with whom you are in contact.

Activity 34

Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of getting information from the Web. Think about the effects it has had on you, and on the people with whom you are in contact. Then compare it with my list. For instance an advantage might be get information easily without having to wait for ages on the phone and a disadvantage might be loss of personalised service

Now read the answer

My answers to the brainstorm activity

Advantages of the Web

can get information easily without having to wait for ages on the phone

can find shops etc. which are out of my area without having to ring directory enquiries

can check ticket availability regularly and easily

Disadvantages of the Web

loss of personalised service, e.g. finding out cinema showings for my daughter's birthday in 2 weeks time is impossible via the Web, which just gives details of films currently showing

my mum often asks me to search for holiday information for her as she hasn't got a computer. This is a pain for me and does not enable her to get the best deals because by the time I've spoken to her the information is out of date!

From this personal reflection we can start to generalise to the impact of the Web on society. I have produced a list of what I think are the benefits and drawbacks.

5.1.1 Benefits of Web use for society

It's a cheaper way for companies to provide a service to customers.
The service provided is reliable and uniform.

5.1.2 Drawbacks of Web use for society

Those without Internet access are disadvantaged. Will this lead to inequalities in society?
Loss of personal service and human values in interactions. Will this have a negative impact?
Some of the information is out of date and unreliable.
New skills are needed to manage the abundance of information on the Web.

Activity 35

What impact do you think information via the Web has had on society?

5.2 Evaluating the quality of information on the Web

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5 What it means

5.2 Evaluating the quality of information on the Web

The quality of the information you will find on the Web varies enormously as there is no editorial control. Anybody can establish a website, claiming to be whoever they want to be. As Mark Twain put it:

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

So how can you judge the reliability and quality of the information you find on the Web? If you think in terms of who (put the site there), why (they created the site) and when (the site was last updated) you won't go far wrong.

5.3 Checklist

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5 What it means

5.3 Checklist

The Open Library suggests the following mnemonic to help you: PROMPT, for

Presentation
Relevance
Objectivity
Method
Provenance
Timeliness

There is a checklist in the Appendix that you can use to help you apply the PROMPT criteria.

5.3.1 Presentation

Poor presentation makes information difficult to use. If the website owner has taken little care in presentation, perhaps they have been equally lax in the quality of the information.

Look out for language, writing style, structure and layout.
Is the information clearly communicated?

5.3.2 Relevance

Information is only useful if it meets your needs. Be clear about what it is that you are looking for – this will help you be ruthless in discarding things that are irrelevant, perhaps because they are inappropriate geographically, are at the wrong level (too specialised or too general), or have the wrong emphasis.

Have a search strategy – know what you are looking for.
Look for an introduction or overview to get a quick idea of ‘what it is about’.

5.3.3 Objectivity

In an ideal world, ‘objective’ or ‘balanced’ information would present all the evidence and arguments, and leave you to weigh them up and draw conclusions. In the real world, however, we recognise that all information presents a position of interest, whether this is explicit or not.

You need to develop a critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read, and to take account of them when you interpret the information. An author may be explicitly expressing a particular viewpoint – this is fine as long as you recognise the perspective they represent. Hidden bias, whether or not it is deliberate, can be misleading.

Do the writers state their position on the issue?
Is the language emotive?
Are there hidden, vested interests?
Look out for opinion presented as if it were fact.

5.3.4 Method

Knowing the methods used is particularly important in judging the reliability of scientific research. But there are some general questions you can ask of any information, for example a newspaper report.

Is this an opinion or based on data?
How much data was considered?
Is it representative or are there sources of bias?
Is it a review of others' work? Does it cover a wide range?
Is it a primary source?

5.3.5 Provenance

The provenance of a piece of information (i.e. who produced it, and where it came from) may provide another useful clue to its reliability. It represents the ‘credentials’ of a piece of information that support its status and perceived value.

Can you identify the authors? Are they well known? Do they have authority in their field?
Can you identify the organisations involved? What are their interests? Who funds them?
How is the information published? Is it edited? Is it reviewed, in the same way as a scientific paper?

5.3.6 Timeliness

Generally, up to date information is more useful than old (although an old news item may be useful as a historical document). You will need to judge, knowing what you are looking for, and how likely it is that the information has been superseded. It can also be difficult to tell the true ‘age’ of information: a website may have been recently updated, but still contain old information.

Is it clear when the information was produced?
Does the date of the information meet your requirements?
Is the information obsolete?

6.1 Various resources

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6 Where to learn more

6.1 Various resources

6.1.1 How search engines work

The Spider's Apprentice offers general advice, FAQs and a page on how search engines work.

SearchEngineWatch.com is a site packed with information about search engines. It is mainly intended for marketing purposes, but also has articles on How Search Engines Work, Major Search Engines and Directories, Kids Search Engines, and Metacrawlers and Metasearch Engines.

University of California Berkeley Meta-Search Engines – When are meta-search engines useful, and when not?

6.1.2 Tutorials on web searching

Safari is an interactive website provided by the Open University's Open Libr@ry. Safari covers finding and assessing information in much greater detail than in this unit and using other resources as well as the Web.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html This is an excellent course designed for the beginner as well as the more experienced Internet user.

Nancy Blachman has a website, Google Guide, which is a tutorial covering all the features of Google. Together with two software engineers from Google, she has also written a book: Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen (2003) How to Do Everything with Google, McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, ISBN 0072231742.

6.1.3 Referencing

The OU library provides more detailed help on citing references: http://library.open.ac.uk/help/helpsheets/cite.html

6.1.4 Intellectual property rights

The area of intellectual property rights, of which copyright is just one aspect, is interesting and challenging. More information can be found at a UK government site covering Intellectual Property.

6.1.5 Further study

From the Study at the OU web page you can find information about any OU course.

U120 MOSAIC: Making Sense of Information in the Connected Age. This is an Open University course designed to help you develop both skills and confidence in finding, using and handling information, with a particular emphasis on the use of electronic media – from search engines to online libraries.

A173: Start writing family history. This short online course helps you to interpret and write about family history.

The PROMPT checklist

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Appendix

The PROMPT checklist

In the table below is a checklist to help you apply the PROMPT criteria, adapted from the Open University Safari. You can use this to help you evaluate a website.

PROMPT	Site 1	Site 2	Site 3
Presentation
Is the information clearly communicated?
Look at language, writing style, structure and layout
Relevance
Does the information match your needs?
Look at the introduction or overview – what is it mainly about?
Objectivity
Is the author’s position of interest made clear?
Do the writers state their position on the issue?
Is the language emotive?
Are there hidden, vested interests?
Method
Is it clear how the data was collected?
Were the methods appropriate?
How much data?
Is it representative?
Are there sources of bias?
Provenance
Is it clear where the information has come from?
Can you identify authors or organisations?
Are they well known?
How was it published?
Timeliness
Is it clear when the information was produced?
Does the date of the information meet requirements?
Is the information obsolete?

Genealogical resources

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Appendix

Genealogical resources

This page has links to a number of useful resources on genealogy and family history that may of help to you if you wish to research your family tree. Some of these resources are free to use; others are subscription services, although many of these offer free access to their indexes while charging for access to records. Most of the links given here have a UK bias; many of the larger genealogical sites are international but in practice dominated by the huge interest in the USA.

General

The BBC website has resources on family history and a practical guide to researching your family history

GENUKI is the UK and Ireland Genealogical Information Service and is an important website for any UK research. Beginners should look at the sections on Getting started in Genealogy, Guidance for first-time users, and FAQs. There is also a section containing links to newsgroups and bulletin boards. The main content is found under Contents and Search, which leads to mainly primary source material and indexes.

The Federation of Family History Societies is an umbrella organisation of local and regional societies. It has an introductory section on Help with research and is a good route to finding local societies.

The Society of Genealogists is a UK-based national society. Their website links to their Library collection of transcriptions of primary sources; unfortunately not all of the catalogue is online. There are also links to their bookshop, volunteer projects, events and mailing lists (hosted by RootsWeb).

Genes Reunited is a rapidly growing UK genealogy site based mainly on contributed family trees.

RootsWeb is a major free genealogy website, international but with a strong American slant. (Although RootsWeb is free, it is supported by the commercial Ancestry.com which can lead to some confusing cross-linking.) There are tempting name search boxes, but also a wealth of background information to browse. RootsWeb hosts large numbers of mailing lists (and an archive of old messages) and message boards

Cyndi's List retains the look of a site built by an enthusiast, but is well respected as an excellent source of links to other genealogical resources. There is a search engine and a classified listing of topics.

Genealogy.com is another large genealogy site with an American slant. It is linked to the popular Family Tree Maker software and you can upload your family tree to a World Family Tree. Some features require a subscription or purchase of the software.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often abbreviated to LDS and known as the Mormons) provide excellent electronic access to genealogical sources, both online through their FamilySearch website and through CD-ROM resources available for sale or at their local Family History Centres. Links from the home page of the FamilySearch website explain the purpose and background to the Church's interest in genealogy. There are also some introductory pages, including research guidance which suggests types of record to consult for different periods and places of interest.

FamilySearch hosts the International Genealogical Index (IGI) which contains information about 285 million individuals transcribed from primary sources. The Pedigree Resource Files are contributed secondary sources that record family relationships. These databases and others are searchable online; more than 900 million names are recorded.

FamilySearch also provides the free Personal Ancestral File genealogical software and useful paper forms for maintaining your records.

The British website of the LDS gives information about the local Family History Centres where you can consult many genealogical resources including microfilm and microfiche copies of parish records. The site also has information about software and CD-ROMs, including the 1881 Census and British Isles Vital Records Index.

Census information

The 1901 census for England and Wales is available online from the National Archives You can search the data for free, but there is a charge to view the records either as a transcription or as a scanned document. The home page has a link to a guided tour of the site.

There is a project underway to digitise the 1891 UK census hosted by Ancestry.co.uk Access to records requires payment although there are free trials available.

FamilySearch contains a complete transcription of the 1881 UK census. It also contains the 1880 US and 1881 Canadian censuses.

Census Links has links to census information from other countries.

Births, marriages and deaths

Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths started in England and Wales in 1837 and became compulsory in 1875. Copies of certificates can be obtained from the Family Records Centre The full indexes are not available on the Web but may be consulted at the Family Records Centre or on microfiche at LDS Family History Centres. The FreeBMD and the UK BDM Exchange are two volunteer transcription projects that are putting some of this material online.

Mailing lists, message boards and newsgroups

The Family Chronicle website has an introductory article about mailing lists in genealogical research.

RootsWeb hosts large numbers of mailing lists and their archives and message boards. Ancestry.com also hosts a large number of message boards.

Usenet newsgroups are archived on Google Groups Most genealogical groups are in the soc.genealogy and alt.genealogy sections. Here is a useful list of the genealogical newsgroups giving links to FAQs, archives and web pages associated with each of them.

Other search sites

Origins.net collaborates with other bodies to provide access to British genealogical resources. There are separate subsites for England, Scotland and Ireland. Their site includes a focused search engine which searches web pages for surnames and place names, including variant spellings.

WorldConnect is a large lineage-linked database created from family trees uploaded by individuals.

Surname Helper on RootsWeb will search for surnames on many other genealogial sites.

Publishing sites

Many of the large genalogy sites such as FamilySearch and WorldConnect encourage the submission of your family tree in the form of GEDCOM files which are produced by all family tree software packages.

Other resources

Familia is a directory of family history resources held in public libraries in the UK.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness hosts a community of people who will volunteer to photograph tombstones, search a local library etc.

There are several family history magazines available. Ancestors is produced by the Public Record Office. Information about Family Tree Magazine and Practical Family History can be found on the publisher's website

There are also many books available on genealogy and family history. The following suggestions focus on using the Internet; the first two have a US slant, but the third has a good coverage of UK resources.

Crowe, E.P. (2003) Genealogy Online, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, Emeryville (7th edition) ISBN: 0-07-222978-0
Hendrikson, N. (2003) Finding Your Roots Online, Betterway Books, Cincinnati. ISBN: 1-55870-635-6
Peacock, C. (2003) Good Web Guide: Genealogy, The Good Web Guide Ltd, London (3rd edition) ISBN: 1-903282-48-9

Further study

The Open University course A173 Start Writing Family History offers a practical introduction to family history which would also give you a good grounding in historical methods.

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Acknowledgements

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