http://uvpafug.org/classes/dons/dons-fhbooksonline.html

Information was taken from Utah Valley PAF Users Group website at http://uvpafug.org/classes/dons/dons-fhbooksonline.html. 

This course show how to find and use some of the many full-text family history books posted on the Internet.

 

YOUR ONLINE HOME LIBRARY:
FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS ONLINE

ARTICLES AND SEARCH ENGINES FOR FULL-TEXT BOOKS ONLINE

• Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter -- http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/10/full_text_genea.html
• Beginner's Guide to e-Books -- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cW3dtoKNKF8J:www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/a-beginners-guide-to-e-books.html+http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/a-beginners-guide-to-e-books.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
• Kimberly Powell article on sources of online books -- http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_documents/tp/family_histories.htm?nl=1 
• USA Today article on Online Books (13 Jul 2010) -- http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-07-14-InternetArchive14_st_N.htm 
• pdf Search Engine -- http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/-- very helpful for genealogy
• e-Book Search Engines -- http://drscavanaugh.org/ebooks/libraries/ebook_search_engines.htm
• Digital Book Index -- http://www.digitalbookindex.com/search001a.htm -- "A Union Catalog of Electronic Books, Texts, and Documents" -- Click on Search: Simple + Advanced and in the Query box type in something like "family history"
• U. of Pennsylvania Online Books Page website -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/archives.html -- major list of book websites and indexes
• Check all the websites for what you are looking, since no single site lists everything and the same book may be online in more than one place and in different format or easier to download from one website than another

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:
  1. 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
  2. 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)
       • Your scanner may have come with an OCR program - check the manual
       • SimpleOCR -- a free OCR program, but not very accurate -- http://www.simpleocr.com/
       • JOCR -- a free OCR program, small, fast, and fairly accurate, but requires that MS Word 2003 or later be on your computer -- http://download.cnet.com/JOCR/3000-2192_4-10768898.html -- will not work with OpenOffice, a freeware word processor compatible with Word
       • Free-OCR -- free online conversion to text -- http://www.free-ocr.com/ -- many limitations
• 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 lastfreeware 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
  • Valiant in the Faith: Gardner and Sarah Snow and Their Family, 1990
  • A Blanchard Memorial by Arthur William Blanchard, 1935
• 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
  1. 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
  2. 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

1. Open Library -- http://openlibrary.org/ -- 23 million books with 1 million full-text books
2. World Public Library -- http://worldlibrary.net/  -- 750,000 books online
3. Project Gutenberg -- http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
4. Virtual Reference Shelf by the Library of Congress -- http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
5. University of Texas -- http://www.lib.utexas.edu/books/etext.html
6. University of Pennsylvania Library -- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ -- lots of early LDS books and periodicals
7. Feedbooks - Public Domain Books -- http://www.feedbooks.com/publicdomain
8. Free History and Genealogy Books Online -- http://www.genealogysearch.org/free/digitalpublications.html
9. Genealogy Book Links -- http://www.genealogybooklinks.com/default.htm 
10. List of 40 ebook websites -- http://education-portal.com/articles/40_Places_for_College_Students_to_Find_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
11. DjVu Books -- http://www.djvuzone.org/demos/appli/index.html
12. FullBooks -- http://www.fullbooks.com/
13. Australia, South Pacific, and other locations -- http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm
14. World E-Book Fair -- http://worldebookfair.com/Collections.htm
15. DiplomaGuide.com -- http://diplomaguide.com/articles/List_of_Online_Archives_for_Free_Unabridged_Books_Online.html
16. ReadPrint - Free Online Library -- http://www.readprint.com/
17. Forgotten Books Online -- http://www.forgottenbooks.org
18. e-Books Directory -- http://e-booksdirectory.com/ -- many good pdf format text, math, science, and other books
19. Electronic Texts list -- http://www.svrc.vic.edu.au/ATaltformat.shtml -- from Statewide Vision Resource Centre, Melbourne, Australia
20. Online Books eTexts/eBooks -- http://www.harrold.org/rfhextra/books.html
21. To find many other such websites do searches for things like “free online full-text books genealogy” (without the quotes) in search engines like
    • http://www.google.com  
    • http://search.yippy.com/  
    • http://www.dogpile.com/ 

 

Here are some excellent sources for Family History Books Online from Kimberly Powell

10 Fabulous Sources for Family History Books Online

Search and View Family Histories for Free

By Kimberly Powell, About.com Guide

Published family and local histories offer a potential rich source of information about your personal family history. Even if a family genealogy has not been published for your ancestors, local and family histories can offer insight into the places your ancestors lived and the people they may have encountered during their lifetime. Before you head to the local library or bookstore, however, take time to explore the hundreds of thousands of genealogies, local histories and other items of genealogical interest available online for free! A few major fee-based collections (clearly marked) are also highlighted.

1. BYU Family History Archive

The BYU Family History Archive, a free collection of over 17,000 family histories, local histories, city directories and other genealogy books online, is the result of a partnership of three major genealogical libraries - The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library; and FamilySearch's Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Digitized books have "every word" search capability, with search results linked to digital images of the original publication. When complete, this massive digitization effort promises to be the most comprehensive collection of city and county histories one the Web. Best of all, access will remain free!

2. Google Books

Select "all books" to include books which allow viewing of over a million books, many out of copyright, but also others for which publishers have given Google permission to display limited book previews (which often includes the Table of Contents and Index pages, so you can easily check to see if a particular book includes information about your ancestor). The list of useful books, pamphlets, newspaper articles and ephemera that you might encounter includes many county histories and biographies published in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as family histories. See Find Family History in Google Books for tips and search suggestions.

3. HeritageQuest Online

HeritageQuest is a genealogical resource offered for free by many libraries across the United States and Canada. Most participating libraries even offer their patrons remote access from a home computer. The HeritageQuest book collection includes about 22,000 digitized family histories and local histories. Books are every-word searchable, or can be viewed page by page in their entirety. Downloading is limited to 50 pages, however. You generally won't be able to search HeritageQuest directly through this link - instead check with your local library to see if they offer this database and then connect through their site with your library card.

4. Internet Text Archive

The nonprofit Archive.org, which many of you may know for its Wayback Machine, also hosts a rich text archive of books, articles and other texts. The biggest collection of interest to family historians, is the American Libraries collection, which includes over 300 city directories and 1000 family histories free for searching, viewing, downloading and printing. The U.S. Library of Congress collection and Canadian Libraries collection also include genealogies and local histories.

5. Canadian Local Histories Online

The Our Roots project bills itself as the world's largest collection of published Canadian local histories. Thousands of digital copies in French and English are available online, searchable by date, subject, author or keyword.

6. Hathi Trust Digital Library

The Hathi Trust Digital Library hosts a large online (and free) Ancestry and Genealogy collection with searchable text and digitized versions of thousands of genealogy and local history books. The majority of the content is from Google Books (so expect a lot of overlap between the two), but there is a small, increasing percentage of books that have been locally digitized.

7. World Vital Records (subscription)

There are a lot of genealogy and local history books from around the world in the online Rare Genealogical and Historical Digitized Book Collection of subscription-based site, World Vital Records. This includes over 1,000 titles from Genealogical Publishing Company (including many focused on early American immigrants), several hundred books from Archive CD Books Australia (books from Australia, England, Scotland, Wales & Ireland), 400+ family history books from Canadian publisher Dundurn Group, and almost 5,000 books from Canadian-based Quinton Publications, including genealogies, local histories, Quebec marriages and biographical collections.

8. Ancestry.com - Family & Local History Collection (subscription)

Journals, memoirs and historical narratives, plus published genealogies and record collections make up the bulk of the 20,000+ books in the Family and Local Histories collection at fee-based Ancestry.com. Among the offerings are the Daughters of the American Revolution Series, slave narratives, biographies, genealogies and more gathered from genealogical society collections from around the U.S., as well as the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Widener Library at Harvard University, the New York Public Library, and the University of Illinois at Urbana. See the Family and Local Histories Learning Center for instructions and tips on how to best use the collection.

9. GenealogyBank (subscription)

Search historical books from the 18th and 19th centuries, including digitized versions of all available books, pamphlets and other publications printed in America before 1819.

10. Their Own Words

A digital collection of books, pamphlets, letters, and diaries, dating from the latter eighteenth through the early twentieth century, that reflects the history of the United States. The 50+ books in the collection include a few biographies, autobiographies, and military journals and regimental histories.