GenealogyBank.com
"Search Tips" for obtaining the best results

• Historical Newspapers, Books, and Documents Tips
• America's Obituaries Tips
• Social Security Death Index Tips

Historical Newspapers, Books, and Documents Tips

Search using the Last and First name fields

• Using these fields returns content in which the surname is automatically "near2" to the first name.
• This means the search engine automatically finds occurrences of the first and last name within two words of each other.
• This helps to find occurrences of middle names or initials, without having to enter or remember them.
• The "near2" search command is not order specific - meaning your search will retrieve the person's name no matter what order the person's name is mentioned: the first name then last name or the last name then first name.
• This search default is intended to bring you the most occurrences of the name you are searching.
• However, if the name is popular, like Smith, try using some of the available search options, such as, location, date range, and keyword. (See below.)

Refine your search using "Advanced Search" features

• There are two keyword search boxes to narrow your search: "Include keywords with search" box and "Exclude with keywords from search" box. (See below)
• Date search box to enter a specific date or date range.
• Publication Location search box that pinpoints your search by state in which the publication is located. (Available in the "Historical Newspapers" database.)

Search using "Keywords," Use of "Quotations"

• All searches against historical content are full-text keyword searches against OCR-generated ASCII text.
• By using the "Include keywords with search" box and/or "Exclude with keywords from search" box, you can narrow or expand your search.
• Put phrases in quotes like "John Adams" in the "Include" keyword box to limit the search to that exact name -- versus using the last/first name search that brings back results matching John near2 Adams.
• If you find too many names in the search results, narrow your search even more by typing names or places you do NOT want in your search in the "Exclude" box.

Use Boolean Operators

• Use AND, OR, ADJx (order specific), NEARx (order non-specific) and Wildcards, such as "?" and "*)

Broaden or narrow search queries

• by filling in all the blanks or by removing information

Display search results in different ways, such as:

• Best matches - (this is the search default)
• Oldest items - (based on publication dates of documents)
• Newest items - (based on publication dates of documents)
• Changing the selection will remain the default until you change it again.

Date Range

• If you know the date of the content you are seeking, then use the "Date" search box
• Enter a specific date or a date range
• Examples: June 2, 1804 or 1804 - 1849 or June 1804 - August 1949

Colonial English Variant Spellings

Many of the documents in the historical collections are very old, and the searches must deal with Colonial English.

• The long "s" character was almost identical to the "f" in many texts.
• When searching on words containing the letter "s," use the "?" wildcard in place of the "s."
• Note: this can occur whether it is the first letter, or a letter within a word or at the end of a word.
• The double "s" is in words like Massachusetts and needs to be replaced twice.

• In addition, type was set by hand and printers did not always have enough pieces of type to include all of the letters in a word. This resulted in letters being omitted or letters that looked similar being substituted for other letters.
• Much of this material predates the usage of today's standard spellings.
• Examples of some conventions that were common:
• Use of name variants - Smith or Smythe
• Use of "e" in word endings - Chesapeake or Chesapeak
• Dropping the letter "h" - Philadelphia or Philadelpia
• Examples of irregular vowel usage:
• clerk - cleark
• color - colour
• Delaware - Deleware
• Elijah - Elifha
• Israel - Ifreal - Ifral
• Jehovah - Javovah
• Examples of letter e to word endings
• Brown - Browne
• Chesapeake - Chefopeak or Chefopeake
• Clark - Clarke
• highways - highwayes
• Examples of interchanging use of the letters "I" and "y"
• adjoining - adjoyning
• Pennsylvania - Pensilvania or Penfilvania
• rails - rayls

Notes:

• If in doubt, use wildcards, such as the question mark "?" or the asterisk (*).
• A single-character wildcard is a question mark and a multi-character (allow for up to 5 characters) wildcard is an asterisk.

Early Newspapers, Books, Documents and OCR

What is OCR?

• These historical databases have been created from microfilm using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to digitize the content.

How does OCR Work?

• OCR works by recognizing shapes on a white background, and by matching those shapes with known letter shapes that are stored in the computer's memory.
• In some cases, especially in the case of old newspapers, the letters "bleed" into each other, making the shapes unrecognizable or mistakenly interpreted as other letters by the computer.

Are there different qualities of OCR?

• Yes.
• In America's GenealogyBank, each page is produced in a manner that provides the highest quality possible image from rare, fragile newspapers and microfilm.
• This includes a specialized process that de-skews and crops every page image.
• Keep in mind that the historical content in America's GenealogyBank is among the most difficult type of content to digitize because of age of the documents and the wide variety of constantly changing type faces, font sizes, ink quality, article format and more.
• We are continually striving to improve image quality as technology evolves.
• America's GenealogyBank brings some of the oldest content published in the U.S. to a searchable online format because of its value to the genealogical and historical communities.

Does the OCR process cause some false hits?

• Sometimes.
• This is a universal problem within the industry at this time.
• Since OCR is imperfect, and it can lead to words being "closer" in the search text than they appear in the image.
• Any problems on the pages, such as inkblots, speckles, poor type quality, fading, folds, wrinkles, tears or discoloration of the original paper page, can interfere with the OCR process.
• When the computer cannot recognize or misinterprets some of the letter shapes on the page this can result in false hits and mistakes in keyword highlighting in the search results.
• That is why it is important to keep refining your search when using historical content.

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America's Obituaries Tips

Search using First and Last name fields

• Searches in this modern collection are processed against a field of data that contains the names of the deceased.
• For some newspapers, we are able to identify only the last name of the deceased within the obituary.
• So searching on both a last name and first name may not find an obituary or death notice that is available.
• If you receive zero results in this collection, try using just a last name.
• Conversely, if you need to narrow your results, try adding a first name.

Search using the Order of Names

• The search engine will retrieve obituaries and death notices that contain both words, within two words of each other, regardless of the order in which they appear.
• When entering first names, keep in mind that variations that might be used -- e.g., William, Bill, Will, etc.
  Examples:
• William Smith
• (William or Bill) Smith

Search using keywords, Use of Quotations

• Pinpoint your search by including keywords that would appear in the text of the obituary or by excluding keywords that you do not want in your result.
• Some users are interested in searching for obituaries or death notices of people with connections to other people, locations, companies, organizations, etc.
• To do this, simply enter the keywords that would appear in the text of the obituary in the "Include keywords with search" box.
• Remember to enclose phrases that you wish to match exactly in quotes (e.g., "naval academy").
  Examples:
• Searching for a spouse or relative?
• Enter the name of the spouse or relative in the "Include keyword with search" box.
• The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to that person.
• Searching for people in a home town?
• Enter the name of a city or town in the "Include keyword with search" box.
• The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to that city or town.
• Searching for a company name?
• Enter the name of a company in the "Include keyword with search" box.
• The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to that company.
• Searching for a college or university or school?
• Enter the name of a college or university in the "Include keyword with search" box.
• The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to that college or university.
• Search for organizations, churches or religious affiliations, or hobbies, and so on?
• Enter the name or names of all in the "Include keyword with search" box.
• The search results will include all obituaries and death notices with a reference to all the terms you entered.

Date Range

• If you know the date of the content you are seeking, then use the "Date" search box
• Enter a specific date or a date range
• Examples: June 2, 1985 or 1985 - 1990 or June 1985 - August 1990

Location

• The "Location" search box pinpoints your search by state in which the publication is located

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Social Security Death Index Tips

Search using First and Last name fields

• First and last name searches in this modern collection are processed against a field of data that contains the names of the deceased.
• When using both a first and last name, the search engine will retrieve social security records that contain both names, within two words of each other.
• The use of this NEAR2 operator can help in cases where hyphenated names or middle names may be used.

What distinguishes America's GenealogyBank's version of SSDI?

• America's GenealogyBank is the ONLY database that is updated WEEKLY.
• We have integrated the searching of SSDI records with the other collections in America's GenealogyBank.
• By searching in both SSDI and America's Obituaries, this product provides 98% of recent annual U.S. deaths with the full text of obituaries and death notices for more than 85% of recent annual recorded deaths in the U.S.
• The data comes from reliable and authoritative sources and includes the full text of obituaries and death notices for matching and checking names of the deceased.
• For example, if we type in a name of the deceased, we will receive an integrated search result that includes the obituary or death notice along with the same name that is in the SSDI database. The user can then verify if this is the same person.
• Also, in America's GenealogyBank, in addition to searching names, we can limit a search in the SSDI data by:
• birth/death date or year
• by zip code wildcard (i.e., 051*)

What data is in the SSDI?
Our current version of the SSDI database contains more than 80 million unique names with the following information about each person:

• Name of Deceased
• Social security number
• Date of birth, including the day of the week
• Date of death, including the day of the week
• Age at death (years, months, days)
• State or country of residence (for February 1988 and prior years)
• State in which the social security card was issued (March 1988 to current)
• Zip code of place of last residence
• Longitude and latitude of place of last residence
• Zip code of lump sum final payment
• Determination if the entry had been confirmed by the Social Security Administration

How Can the Combined Data be used?

Verifying that Someone is Deceased: Provides closure and verification that a person is deceased. Family members, friends, organizations, churches, schools, academic institutions, insurers and businesses are all interested in this information. Search on these terms in the "other" information field in the interface we can find out about the types of organizations to which the deceased belonged. In addition, if we don't know the last name of, say, a friend's mother who died, we can search for our friend in the "other" field as a family member and find the name of the mother.

Finding Family: Lets family members and friends of the deceased find and connect with living family; those members that are listed in the obituary or death notice.

Genealogy: Makes it easy to confirm dates of birth and death of an ancestor, to locate the last residence of a specific ancestor and to find out where an ancestor lived when the social security card was issued. Combined with their obituary or death notice, we find more detailed information about them, such as their career, hobbies, civic associations, academic affiliations and a list of close relatives. This information provides more pieces of the puzzle for finding out more about our ancestors.

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