Is anybody else researching your family?

From Lawpack's Trace Your Family Tree Kit.

As there are many thousands of people throughout the world who are tracing their ancestors it is as well to see if there is anyone else working on the same line as yourself.

An enormous number of families in which people are interested have been listed in various commercial directories and these should not on any account be overlooked. Check as many as you can; duplication of effort is wasteful, but sharing research with relatives can be of great benefit to both parties.

Many people advertised the surnames on which they were working in the National Genealogical Directory which was published annually between 1979 and 1993 (originally by M.J. Burchall and latterly by I. Caley). Many more entries appear in the Genealogical Research Directory (ed. by K.A. Johnson & M.R. Sainty, Library of Australian History, Sydney) that has been published annually since 1981 and is widely available. Each issue contains at least 100,000 entries.

Those who advertise their interests in one issue, however, may not do so in the next and it is worthwhile to check as many editions as possible. The Genealogical Research Directory, which relates to families being researched all over the world, also contains the addresses and other details of most family history societies worldwide.

Many local family history societies have published lists of their members’ ‘interests’ and other searchers publish their interests in the monthly magazines mentioned above. The Society of Genealogists maintains an index of its own ‘Members’ Interests’.

The largest single index of this kind is the British Isles Genealogical Register (known as ‘BIG-R’), which lists families being researched in the United Kingdom only. Three editions have been published since 1994 on microfiche or now on CD-ROM. The latest BIG–R 2000, lists 374,000 entries relating to 155,000 surnames.

The web allows access to millions of researchers by using the various local area interest lists maintained by volunteers or on www.rootsweb.com. Many British researchers’ surnames lists can be found by accessing www.genuki.org.uk.

The Church of Latter Day Saints publishes its Pedigree Resource files on www.familysearch.org. Some commercial sites such as www.genesconnected.com allow you to enter your research data in the hope that others are researching the same names and charge a small fee if you want to contact a researcher.

See The Genealogist’s Internet, P. Christian (The National Archives, 2nd edn. 2003) and The Good Web Guide: Genealogy (The Good Web Guide Ltd., 3rd edn, 2003).

12 May 2008