Sunday, February 21, 2010

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy- Catching Up

As you know, I tend to get behind in my tasks when a thing called "life" gets in the way, and participating in Amy Coffin's 52 Weeks to Better Genealogyhttp://www.geneabloggers.com/52-weeks-genealogy/is one of my behind tasks. I love her ideas, and actually made a list of the ones she did last year to use as future blogs if i ever need an idea.

This entry is from Challenge # 5- Play With WorldCat

I actually have played with it a few times since the challenge was announced. The first thing that I learned was to write my search term as "SURNAME"  family history. When I did this I was pleasantly surprised to discover several books that existed about members of my family in which I had no idea.

For example, I am a descendant through the Cozart, Cossairt family who came to the United States by landing in New Jersey in the 1600s. When I entered "Cozart family history" in the search box, a book surfaced called "A genealogy of the three branches of the Bumpass family...John Bumpass (1736-1813)...Samuel , who died in 1776... Winnifred (1745-1819), who married Anthony Cozart III in 1739..  written by William Moses Jones. A 2nd entry for this book goes into further detail by discussing these three branches, including the connection to Plymouth.  What was confusing about the entry was that it stated "no libraries with the specified item were found.'  That was confusing to me since i thought the purpose of Worldcat was to tell me where to find the results.

In another case for my Raley Family, I was referred to an internet site for further research and to a county repository for loose family papers.

In all three cases I was thrilled. I have new information to seek out, and other sources to use in verifying what I know at this point. One source builds to another, etc. and I can see the definite benefit of WorldCat and will place it in my arsenal.

1 comment:

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Very cool! I'm glad you were able to find some things. Gold star for doing the challenge. There's no such thing as late. I wrote it and I say so!