Customer Reviews

The Genealogist's Question & Answer Book

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The Genealogist's Question & Answer Book: Solutions And Advice For Maximizing Your Research Results by professional genealogist Marcia Yannizze Melnyk offers the reader a solid wealth of practical "how-to" advice and inspiration useful to genealogists at all experience levels ranging from the novice amateur to highly skilled and experienced. Individual chapters address how to extract desired information from numerous types of records, including records of census, churches, the military, cemeteries, taxes, city directories, the Internet and much more. Strongly recommended for personal and community library genealogy reference collections, examples and step-by-step instructions make The Genealogist's Question & Answer Book first-rate for teaching oneself the art and science of practical genealogy.

The book presents a wide range of research methodology and correct processes--but it is heavily focused on USA research. It is written in the indicated "question and answer" format, with like questions grouped into chapters. The questions are typically fairly short, while the provided answers are lengthy and complete. In many respects, the book would be suitable as a reference work on basic genealogy--except that it is insufficiently indexed to allow one to easily find specific questions or topics. The lack of robust indexing is the book's major failing.

The section on census use is particularly strong, with detailed descriptions of which censuses exist, which have been fully or partially indexed, which have Soundex or Miracode indices, and how those indices work. Another section details resources available on-line; this section is useful but not as exhaustive as a work purposely devoted to the topic. All in all, a solid and very enjoyable work.

I first checked this book from the library and couldn't believe the list of references and resources. I decided I need to have this for my own library. There is one section that lists all of the different census documents and what is on each of them. Great resource and reference book!

Excellent book, answers lots of questions, but didn't think when I purchased it that I really needed something to help me with overseas research. My fault.