It’s storming like crazy in New Jersey this afternoon. We lost power for an hour or so, and our fingers are crossed that it’s back on for good! I almost went to the library in the next town just to get internet service, and I realized how long it’s been since I’ve actually been there. So much is online these days, including archives of genealogy related books! Here are my top online archives that don’t require a subscription:
The General Archives
These archives contain books relevant to genealogy worldwide
This is the granddaddy of them all. The Internet Archive is a non-profit library with 20 million books available on almost any topic and in any language. The vast majority of their books don’t require an account to access. A smaller subset (not that 2.3 million is small!) are available for digital loan with a free account. If you’re looking for a specific genealogy or history topic, this is a great place to start.
Google Books is another online behemoth. It has 40 million titles in its collection, although many of these are previews, with only specific pages shown. If you find a Google book that is only in previews, you may want to continue to search on one of the other sites for the whole text.
I’ll confess that I had not heard of HathiTrust before I started researching this article, but now I’m hooked. It was created in the mid 2000’s as a digital repository by a number of academic institutions and is hosted by the University of Michigan. I love their search engine which performs full-text searches lightning quick. A search of “Webb genealogy” gave me all of the family genealogy books that had a “Webb” anywhere in them. I’ll be spending a lot of time on this site in the future!
The beauty of the FamilySearch archive is that all of its 500,000 digital books are related to genealogy and family history. It’s a collection that sometimes can get lost amid all of the record archives, family trees and online courses. You’ll need a (free) account, but honestly, don’t you have one anyway?
Country Specific Archives
Digital Public Library of America (United States)
The Digital Public Library of America, or DPLA has over 50 million texts, images, videos and other items related to American history. There is an entire subsection related to genealogy and family history, including 2800 items about family bibles.
Canadiana (Canada)
Canadiana makes me wish I had more Canadian ancestors to research. There are tons of historical texts, miles (kilometers!) of newspaper pages. The site can be viewed in both English and French.
Trove (Australia)
Do you have ancestors “down under”? Then check out Trove, the Australian archive. The online newspaper collection alone is worth the visit.
Gallica (France)
Gallica was created and is maintained by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. It’s a goldmine of historical French books, newspapers, and images that can help move your French research along. The site can be viewed in both English and French