User:Mynty/Sandbox 2

A few words about Ancestry.com

I have noticed that most people go to Ancestry.com, put in a name and maybe a date or place, push search and wait for what they want to pop up. Sometimes this is all they need, but more often than not the person needs more that is given.

Using census records is easy. Just look at the bottom of the main search page and find the year you want to search, then search. But if you look just to the right of the list of census years you will see a list of "collections". There are only a few listed, but at the bottom of the list it says "see all databases".

Clicking this can be a little daunting as there are currently 30,673 collections or databases. Many of thse collections are only availble at Ancestry.com. These are sorted usually by popularity, but that can be changed to by Title, Date updated, Date added, or Record count.

There are also filters on the left. You can filter by continent, country in North America, and language. Other filters include census &amp; voter rolls, birth-death &amp; marriage records, newspapers &amp; periodicals, and several other catagories.

Although these filters can be useful since there are so many databases, sometimes they also sort out collections which contain small hints which can make a big difference in finding ancestors.

The databases are all readable on Ancestry without doing a search. What that means is that going to the databases and choosing one gives you the choice to do a search for a name or to just read the document. I know that, especially the new researcher, reading or scanning a document can be time consuming and tedious. But I know from experience that it can also be very rewarding.