OLD POST: Finding Rare Resources

July 9, 2008

Here is another old post I dug up from Google.  The post was actually written last Christmas!  I hope the information contained is still useful.

I hope this article will be helpful to others researching their family history and looking for good resources.  It will have some specific examples for illustration purposes, but it should be helpful to anybody doing genealogical research on any family.

When doing research I have found that the hardest part is finding information.  When I first started I thought I could simply type “Eisenhauer family tree” into Google or any other search engine and be off to the races, but as you already know by now if you have ever tried researching your family, it is rarely that easy.  Information on the internet is not always as reliable as you would like and often websites require you to pay before viewing the data.  But don’t give up on the internet yet! I have found that the internet is a great way of finding rare resources that previously could only be found in libraries after tons of digging. For example, a key book to my research about the Eisenhauer’s has been “Präsident Dwight d. Eisenhowers Vorfahren und Verwandte (President Dwight D. Eisenhowers Ancestors and Relations)” by Heinz Friedrich Friederichs.  This book is no longer published and can usually only be found in a University library or in a personal collection.  Needless to say it was nowhere to be found in my families personal collection and while I do attend the University of Wisconsin it is still very difficult to do research from the school’s copy since it cannot be checked-out.

A good place to start when looking for these rare books or manuscripts is Google Book Search (http://books.google.com).  Continuing the example previously presented, I found “Präsident Dwight d. Eisenhowers Vorfahren und Verwandte” on Google Book Search.  Many books have the full text of these books available online, especially if the contents of the books are no longer protected by copyright law.  But in other cases, only small snippet previews of the book are available.  This is the case with the book I needed.

If the full contents of the book are not available online you can always look at some of the used and decomisioned library book sellers.  Google book search often links directly to these sellers when a specific books contents isn’t available online.  I have especially had luck with Alibris and Abebooks.  In fact I have purchased two copies of the rare book mentioned above from these dealers and one of them even came from Germany.  Actually I have even found an even more rare manuscript by Fannie Belle Taylor-Richardson on the Eisenhauers from one of them. Remember you can always try eBay too.

Once you get your hands on one of these you can start looking at the citations in that book to find other key resources.  Keep checking the sellers also because even though a book isn’t listed today it may appear later when a library goes out of business or decides to update its stock.

Oh, and I just realized it is after midnight so it is technically the 25th…Merry Christmas!

I know some of this data is a bit outdated, but some of it should still be helpful to beginner researchers.

Posted in Books, Genealogy Research, Resources