Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Digital Book Index

Do you need more books than you can afford? Check out the Digital Book Index. I like to browse by subject (even though some headings are idiosyncratic), but it's all good. (Hat tip to Kathleen Lenerz on the APG Rootsweb mailing list.)

Under the subject heading "Local-Regional: Mid-West: Wisconsin," four pages of books are listed (in small font) including the 1889 Plat Book of Outagamie County Wisconsin (via the University of Wisconsin), Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie's 1873 Wau-Bun: The Early Day in the North-West, (via the Library of Congress), and Albert Hart Sanford's 1908 The Polish People of Portage County (via Harvard).

Under the subject heading "Economic Hist: City Business & Commercial Directories," you can find city directories from Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Fond du Lac, Milwaukee, and Steubenville, as well as quite a few from Pittsburgh and Hannibal (not necessarily listed together, however -- you have to do some work!).

All online. Almost all free. You may go down and not surface for a week or two, but it'll be worth it.

1 comment:

DigLib said...

Genealogy booklinks.com
Another good, source of free digital books of interest to genealogists is genealogybooklinks.com.

It contains links to more than 15,000 online history, records, biographies and family genealogy books gathered from more than 20 sources.

Books are organized by name, subject and state laid out in an easy to use browse able format. Biographies and family genealogies are arranged alphabetically by name. Just click on the first letter of the name you’re seeking and you’ll find a three column table with the last name, source link, and title. Scroll down until you find the name and click on the link. Some names such as Smith, Baker, Brown, Clark, Johnson, Mason, White, Williams, etc. with a larger number of volumes are on individual pages.

The site map provides the layout, the main headings and subtopics.
Some states such as Mich, IL, Wis, Ohio, NY, and Mass, are more developed then others. The free available Massachusetts town vital records books are a subtopic of the Mass page. Genealogy Book Links is also a good source of civil war regimental histories.

A Google site search can be found towards the bottom of the homepage, if you prefer to search the site. Links to good off site resources can be found in black at the top of the page.

Check back often, because titles are constantly being added.