Not Just Genealogical Research: What Ancestry Library Edition Can Do For You
The waiting is over! Ancestry Library Edition is now available at Falvey Memorial Library. Earlier this year, the library ran simultaneous trials of two popular genealogical databases, Ancestry Library Edition and HeritageQuest. Faculty and students alike unanimously voted for Ancestry. Access to Ancestry is available via the library’s Databases A-Z list as well as from the History and Biographies research guides.
Ancestry encompasses a vast collection of genealogical data which traces the history of millions of individuals going in some cases as far back as 1300. The collection consists of census data, vital records, directories, photos, and more. Faculty members in the history department are already planning student research projects with Ancestry data sets for the coming semesters.
U.S. census data from 1790 to 1940, Indian census rolls, passenger lists from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, New South Wales and Hamburg, U.S. naturalization records, Irish immigrants arrival records, and London parish records are some of the data collections available through Ancestry. An unexpected bonus are image collections, such as U.S. historical postcards, U.S. Civil War photos, U.S. war and conflict images (1765-1970), and the African American photo collection. The photo of St. Rita Hall in this post is from the U.S. historical postcards collection.
Questions or comments? Contact me directly (jutta.seibert@villanova.edu) or post your comments online.
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
I am sure that the students from the history department will be very happy and will have access to enough information for their projects. I hope they will find the historical data and photos interesting.
Dear Jutta,
This is just terrific news, thank you. I anticipate using this in my research as well as in my teaching of the Biography graduate seminar. You continue to be a wonderful resource for history students and faculty at Villanova,
Adele
[…] more information, see Jutta Seibert’s blog on this new resource. No comments […]
Having just used it for my family name, this is an incredible resource. The scans of the census data are very high resolution, and the transcription makes it easily searchable. A great addition to the library!