Week 2 – Paid Online Genealogy Tools: Which paid genealogy tool do you appreciate the most? What special features put it at the top of your list? How can it help others with their genealogy research?
If we are looking at this as strictly online services, then I pay for two online genealogy services. Ancestry.com and Genealogybank.com. When I first started working on my family genealogy I did not have a paid subscription to Ancestry. It was very frustrating during searches to see that something was out there – just beyond my grasp because I did not subscribe. I finally caved in and purchased a yearly subscription. I have been subscribing now for 4 years. I like the ability to find other collaborators searching for the same lineage. I have corresponded with several other family historians on various branches of my tree through the use of Ancestry. I have also used Family Tree Maker for many years. I participated in the beta testing of the syncing function of the 2012 version. While it is not perfect, it has alleviated my biggest complaint about having a tree online and a database that did not communicate with each other. Double entry was driving me crazy!
Genealogybank is a recent subscription for me. I like the focus of just newspapers, obituaries, and documents. I have just recently realized the amazing benefits of obituaries in determining and possibly locating various relations. Sometimes I am very successful on genealogybank and other times I come up empty handed…so I am still in the process of determining it value to me moving forward.
Right now I am happy with using these paid online resources. I’ve seen others that might be interesting in the future. But for the time being I think I will stick with these two.
52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your thoughts on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.
Kathi O'Neill Genealogy 