Family History Month Day 28 – HathiTrust Digital Library for Genealogy

The HathiTrust Digital Library is an online archive of content in and out of copyright. They receive content from Google, Internet Archive, Microsoft, and other partnering institutions. This is one of several digitized book sites that’s useful for genealogy research.

 

You can search for an ancestor by surname or by collections. Searches can be made by Material type (book, periodical, etc.) or Language (many languages) or year range. Search for family names, genealogies, city histories, or family interests, like “Loyalists”, for leads on those hard to find ancestors. After your initial search results, be sure to start a further digital search within the book.

A few helpful search tips:

• Use quotes to search for an exact phrase “James Webber” or “Webber, James”.

• Use the wildcards * or ? to search for alternate spellings “James W?bb*”.

• Use Boolean searches AND or OR (capitalized) to include or restrict search returns.

• Use a minus sign – to restrict search results Levi -jeans -company -strauss to search for the surname Levi and remove any search results for Levi Strauss Jeans/Company.

  For more search tips: HathiTrust Digital Library Search Tips.

Happy Family History Month and best in your research!