Behind The Home Page - GRIP 2012

I recently returned from the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, where I took a week-long course titled: "Behind The Home Page: Problem Solving With Online Repositories," taught by D. Joshua Taylor and Paula Stuart-Warren.


Much of the course was devoted to finding databases and document images -- digital collections at lesser-used archives and library websites. We learned that much of this information will never be found with a Google search because (a) it's buried too deeply at the website (Google indexes depth proportional to traffic) and (b) Google usually does not index material buried behind image logos and search screens.  


Here are a few course websites that you may want to check out today:

1. Visit the free Archive Grid beta at http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid to search historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world.

2. Digital State Archives is a new but growing link farm covering 36 states: http://www.digitalstatearchives.com

We will discuss more of the course content -- including overlooked websites YOU should be searching -- at the August 2012 Professional Standards meeting. See http://slocgs.org/interestgroups.html for more information.

Cafi Cohen