Help:Wiki University Purpose of Wiki

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What is the Purpose of the Wiki?
FamilySearch Wiki is a tool people can use to learn how to find their ancestors by searching in geographical areas.

The FamilySearch Wiki is about finding records that may have been generated about your ancestors and the places in which the records might be found. It is a vast record depository of the paper trail that people leave behind long after they are gone. When you search in the Wiki, you search for places your ancestors lived and records you think they may have been included in. You will not find a Wiki page about your particular ancestor, but you may find a database that contains your ancestor's death record!

The Wiki has records from the United States, as well as from 244 other countries. Here you will be able to find documents such as census records, marriage records, birth records, death records and much more.

Types of Records in the Wiki

 * Pages in the Wiki are generally organized around the following areas:
 * Family History Centers
 * Organizations/Societies
 * Geographical (drilling down by State, County, city or equivalent)
 * FamilySearch Publications
 * Census Pages (descriptions)
 * Historical Records Collection Pages (descriptions)
 * Research techniques and tools

Think of the Wiki as a Google for Family History Research. We can never have enough articles in the Wiki!
 * Some typical types of content for the wiki are:
 * Links to online sites that can be used to search for ancestors' names (see an example of an online record page)
 * Instructions on how to find, use, and analyze records that are genealogically useful
 * Historical definitions of legal terms, occupations, and other terms that are useful to genealogists
 * Images of records used as examples of the types of information a particular record will contain
 * Translations of genealogical terms

Try these out
 Quick Quiz


 * Links are limited only to other articles in the Wiki.
 * True
 * False


 * You can search for names of your ancestors in the Wiki.
 * True
 * False


 * The Wiki has a complete list of all places where genealogical records are kept in the world.
 * True
 * False

Check your answers

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