From Library Journal
One needs a solid work to sort through all the Internet books for local historians, and this is it. Although a popular guide like Elizabeth Crowe's Genealogy Online: Researching Your Roots (McGraw, 1996) does walk net-wise family historians through the genealogical maze, others?notably David Hawgood's Introduction to Using Computers for Genealogy (Federation of Family History Societies, 1994)?are dated. But Kemp's work is exceptional. A well-known librarian who has written several respected books in the field, e.g., The International Vital Records Handbook (LJ 2/1/95), Kemp has produced a succinct guide that allows readers to pinpoint precisely all contact points for any web site. Better yet, he highlights the best in each category. One cavil: Readers looking for Welsh sites under "England, Wales and the Channel Islands" won't find any. Perhaps Kemp was waiting for prepublication information that never arrived. Despite that, this is arguably the current premier guide in the field.?Gail Benjafield, St. Catharines P.L., Ontario, Canada
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
An indispensable guide for those who use the Internet for genealogical research. I highly recommend Virtual Roots. -- P. William Filby, Former Director, Maryland Historical Society, Fellow of the Society of Genealogists, London, Fellow of the National Genealogical Society
With Virtual Roots, you do not have to spend countless hours roaming around the Internet looking for good sites. You can go immediately to useful sites, gather meaningful data, and springboard from those sites into other more specific veins of electronic data. -- Curt B. Witcher, Manager, Historical Genealogy Department, Allen County Public Library
About the Author
Thomas Jay Kemp is the author of numerous books, including The 1995 Genealogy Annual, The International Vital Records Handbook, and The Connecticut Researcher's Handbook. He is the head of the Special Collections Department of the University of South Florida Library in Tampa. Prior to his current position, he was the library director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.