The FamilySearch Catalog. Chances are you use it. But are you using all it offers? Case in point: subject headings.

Subject Headings are likely something you’ve encountered in other library catalogs. You will see subject headings in pretty much every library catalog you use, even the FamilySearch Catalog. So what are they? “Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is a list of words and phrases – called headings – that are used to indicate the topics of library resources. It is used by most academic and research libraries in the United States, as well as by many public and school libraries. It is also used by libraries throughout the world....LCSH brings consistency to library collections by categorizing topics into logical arrangements, and by controlling synonyms, variant spellings, and homographs.”[1] So in a nutshell, subject headings are a way that library materials are cataloged. 

What this means for you is the opportunity to find other works that are similar to your item of interest. This doesn’t always work to our advantage, sometimes there simply aren’t other similar resources in the catalog, but in some cases, you might uncover additional resources. I find this especially helpful in cases where I have conducted a keyword search.

So let’s look at two examples from the FamilySearch Catalog. In this first example, I did a Place search on Spain, Madrid and then chose the category Civil Registration. This is the card catalog entry for the single result in this category.

Notice under Subjects it says Locality Subjects and provides two links:

Spain, Madrid - Census

Spain, Madrid - Civil registration

In this case, the civil registration link is for this entry and no others exist in this category. The census link includes two resources, this entry and another.

Now let’s look at a different example, this time I conducted a keyword search on the phrase “women newspaper.” This is an example where my keyword phrase probably isn't the best so I could benefit from other suggestions. One of my results was the book, Index of references to American women in colonial newspapers through 1800. Notice that in this case not only are there more links but they are divided by Locality Subjects and Library of Congress Subjects.

Notice that these include Locality Subjects for Genealogy and Newspaper Indexes for the United States as well as Library of Congress Subjects for Women and American Newspapers. In this case, the LOC subjects lead me to no other resources. However, the Locality Subjects lead me to over 100 additional resources. This can be beneficial in helping me locate additional items for my research.

The FamilySearch Catalog is a vital resource for your genealogy. Don't stop at entering a search. Study your results to get the most from your research. Learn more about using the Catalog so your research can benefit. To start, read the FamilySearch Wiki page “Introduction to the FamilySearch Catalog.” 

[1] “Process for Adding and Revising Library of Congress Subject Headings,” Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/subject/lcsh-process.html: accessed 18 November 2021).

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

As I prepared for my webinar presentation Learning More about American Female Ancestors Prior to 1850 for the marathon this month, I started looking at what resources I could pass along to the Legacy Webinars audience. One of my struggles as I work on a presentation is finding the “right” resources to help the audience. In some cases, I feel uncertain whether to even mention familiar resources since they are probably too “well-known” for the majority of family history researchers.

FamilySearch is a website that should be very familiar to researchers. Because it is so familiar, I think we sometimes take it for granted or assume it has nothing to offer our current genealogy research project. It’s no surprise that I recommend taking a look at the FamilySearch Research Wiki to learn more about a location, record or, resource. It's a resource we need to not take for granted.

As I considered American women’s lives prior to 1850 and the various states and eras webinar participants would be researching, I searched books, journal articles, websites, and documents. But one resource that I went back to time and time again was FamilySearch.

The Research Wiki has over 95,000 articles and growing. It’s a resource I always go to to learn more about a location and its records. If you haven’t used the Wiki before, it’s About page states,

The FamilySearch Research Wiki is a free, online genealogical guide created and maintained by FamilySearch, a non-profit organization. It contains links to genealogy databases, websites, other resources, research strategies, and genealogical guidance to assist in the search for your  ancestors. Articles included are locality pages for countries around the world and topic pages that include pertinent genealogy record types explaining how to use the record, what it contains, and how to find it.[1]

For my webinar, I found a great page about United States Colonial Records that included various states and the year of the earliest church, land, and court records. A great resource to orient you to the very earliest US records.

My wiki “discovery” is a good example of how important it is to dive deep into a resource to make sure you truly glean everything you can from it. Each country and state page on the Research Wiki has a box with Wiki Topics. It’s a good idea to take your time and click on each link to see what it can teach you about that record type. But that’s not all the wiki provides, research guidance, tools such as maps, topics necessary to genealogy such as migration and handwriting. Clicking around that Wiki Topic box is a must for good research.

As we approach new research we are so excited to see what we can find by entering a name, date, and location in a website search engine that we don’t take the time to do some preliminary discovery of what is possible for that date and place. The FamilySearch Research Wiki helps you do better research. It’s important to take some time to explore the Wiki before you do that search. Educating yourself about research makes you a better (and more successful) researcher.

[1] “FamilySearch Wiki: FamilySearch Research Wiki,” FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/FamilySearch_Wiki:FamilySearch_Research_Wiki: accessed 15 April 2021).

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

FamilySearch published nearly two million indexed historic records from the state of Washington this week. New indexed records and browsable images were also added for Argentina, Brazil British Columbia, Illinois, Italy, Louisiana, Paraguay, and Texas. Search these new free records and more at FamilySearch by clicking on the links in the interactive table below. Find and easily share this announcement in the FamilySearch Newsroom. 

Searchable historic records are made available on FamilySearch.org through the help of thousands of volunteers from around the world. These volunteers transcribe (index) information from digital copies of handwritten records to make them easily searchable online. More volunteers are needed (particularly those who can read foreign languages) to keep pace with the large number of digital images being published online at FamilySearch.org. Learn more about volunteering to help provide free access to the world's historic genealogical records online at FamilySearch.org/indexing.

The recording of today's webinar, "Multi-Media Story Telling" by FamilySearch's Devin Ashby is now available to view at www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com for free.

Webinar Description

Stories are all around us but very few are captured and even fewer are shared. The technologies we have to tell stories today are unique and go way beyond just text. We'll discuss ways to capture audio, video, text, photos and use the internet to make your stories come alive with multi-media.

View the Recording at FamilyTreeWebinars.com

If you could not make it to the live event or just want to watch it again, the 1 hour 32 minute recording of "Multi-Media Story Telling" is now available to view in our webinar library for free. Or watch it at your convenience with an annual or monthly webinar membership.

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Register for our upcoming webinars (free)

• Becoming a Genealogy Detective by Sharon Atkins. December 7.
• From the Heartland - Utilizing Online Resources in Midwest Research by Luana Darby. December 14.
• Tracing Your European Ancestors by Julie Goucher. December 16.
• No, no, Nanette! What negative evidence is... and isn't by Judy Russell, JD, CG, CGL. December 20. Hosted by the Board for Certification of Genealogists.
• An Introduction to BillionGraves by Garth Fitzner. December 21.

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