Years ago, I submitted a set of corrections published in a genealogy newsletter to the transcription of the tombstones of several ancestors. The year was 1988. The stones today are not legible. My notes, if I still have them, are probably buried in a filing cabinet in my storage unit. I had totally forgotten submitting the correction until I found my own letter to the editor while using the full-text search functionality of the FamilySearch website. These transcriptions are not online anywhere else.
Genealogy periodicals contain a wide variety and wealth of information. The problem is that for years finding it was difficult and tedious.
Searching old genealogical periodicals is not as difficult as it was years ago as more things are available digitally and there are more finding aids than ever. Genealogists may wish to avail themselves to the following means of locating materials published in genealogical society quarterlies and other periodicals.
- PERSI-Periodical Source Index-available online at the Allen County, Indiana Library’s website. The library created and maintains the index–which is a subject index to content in genealogy periodicals. It is not an every-name index. Quoting their website, “PERSI is the premier subject index for genealogy and local history periodicals, and is produced by the staff of The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library. This valuable resource provides more than 3.1 million citations to readily-available periodical sources.”
- Digitized periodicals available on FamilySearch. These may be located using the catalog (search by title or locality) and some of them are searchable and will come up as results through the website’s full-text search capability on FamilySearch Labs.
- Inquire with the genealogical society itself to see if their old publications are available digitally.
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