Ancestry advice

[greyingrey]

In my situation would you go for the British or Worldwide Ancestry package ?

I've got some German ancestors, but German Stuff is notoriously difficult to track....there's very little online , a lot has been destroyed,&, really, you need to go direct to the German archives. I've got the usual crop of people who emigrated to the USA, but I have a friend over there & she's a great help.

A friend has found great advantages with the Worldwide package....for example, only a couple of weeks ago she was tracing a branch of her husband's family & found a sudden jump across to Normandy.

I tend to think I should sign up for the British package first & get as much out of it as I can & then see how it's gone......but what do I know ?

[Christine in Herts]

How near do you live to a library with the library edition of Ancestry.com?

A change in economic situation earlier this year meant I thought I'd better choose between FMP (full) and Ancestry.uk (Premium), instead of having both. I decided to keep the FMP (full) and use the library for Ancestry. Generally it works well, because the library edition is more-or-less the full worldwide .com version (but missing the links to other people's trees). The main problem I find is not being able to help people here when they post links to censuses on Ancestry without listing the reference info which would enable me to look at the same record on FMP!

My library is up the road: far enough that I'd normally drive, but near enough that I could walk (up the pretty steep hills) if necessary.

I have to say that the library computer system is a bit s-l-o-w, but I try to get what info I can into a list, before going up there, so that I'm not trawling, just going straight to the record(s) I want.

Christine

[greyingrey]

Thanks for the reply, Christine....I live in Germany, so I can't get to a library with Ancestry at all.

[Elaine ..Spain]

Why not start with the UK subscription - I would recommend Premium rather than Essentials - and then upgrade to the worldwide one when you feel you have got as much as you can from the UK one. You don't have to wait until the end of your year's subscription - you can upgrade at any time.

[Christine in Herts]

Thanks for the reply, Christine....I live in Germany, so I can't get to a library with Ancestry at all.

I've been trying to work out whether any German libraries have a similar facility but, if they do, it isn't obvious. This page shows that Lübeck has some kind of free Ancestry.de access: http://archiv.luebeck.de/bestaende-u...tel/index.html But I think it may be free only for the Lübeck archives which Ancestry is digitising (too much mental effort to work out a definite translation).

Am I right that this library/archive does give you access to Ancestry.com? http://www.vorarlberg.gv.at/vorarlbe...nforschung.htm or is it just giving useful links?

Christine

[Christine in Herts]

This the Libraries on the Web list (German ones): http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/Germany.html

It isn't clear that this represents libraries with the library edition of Ancestry.com

I guess if you're a member of your local library and pay your way in the community, there's no reason why you shouldn't ask them to consider adding Ancestry.com to their facilities. I got our county library to extend their historical newspaper coverage to the BL C19th Collection that way.

Christine

[greyingrey]

Thanks very much for your comments....I was thinking along the same lines as Elaine. I live in a small town & we haven't got a library ...in general you don't get the public libraries like you do in Britain (one of the things I miss). The university at the nearest city (about half an hour away) has a library, of course, & I could enrol there,....but, as I don't drive, I'd have to go by train, so it would probably be cheaper to pay to have Ancestry at home !

Thanks

[Mary from Italy]

Try contacting your local LDS centre - they may offer access to Ancestry:

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhc/FHC_Results.asp?FHCCountry=Germany&FHCStateProv=&FHCCounty=&FHCCity=&submit=Search

[greyingrey]

Thanks very much, Mary,...it would cost me about 20 pounds train fare to get to the nearest centre & take about 90 minutes/2 hours each way...so it would be better to have Ancestry at home (I'm in a bit of a no-horse town here). But I do very much appreciate your offering a suggestion, which would have been really helpful if I lived nearer to a centre..... (no need to do lots of family research where we live...they're all inbred !)

[JBee]

Have you looked at purchasing FTM 2010 with 6 months free ancestry. I got two earlier in the year with worldwide when they were half price through Avenis??? can't recall proper name.

[Janet]

I don't know if it would be worth your while contacting the Anglo German Family History Society to see if they can help you in any way. Their website is at:

http://www.agfhs.org.uk/

Janet

[Astro Lady]

I have German ancestors Grey, i've PM'd you :-)

[Mary from Italy]

Thanks very much, Mary,...it would cost me about 20 pounds train fare to get to the nearest centre & take about 90 minutes/2 hours each way...so it would be better to have Ancestry at home (I'm in a bit of a no-horse town here). But I do very much appreciate your offering a suggestion, which would have been really helpful if I lived nearer to a centre..... (no need to do lots of family research where we live...they're all inbred !)

Same where I live

But at least I have a car, and the LDS centre 40 minutes' drive away has been invaluable.

[Christine in Herts]

Thanks very much for your comments....I was thinking along the same lines as Elaine. I live in a small town & we haven't got a library ...in general you don't get the public libraries like you do in Britain (one of the things I miss). The university at the nearest city (about half an hour away) has a library, of course, & I could enrol there,....but, as I don't drive, I'd have to go by train, so it would probably be cheaper to pay to have Ancestry at home !

Thanks

That's disappointing. When we visited our friends in Landsberg am Lech last summer, they took us along to their town library, so I hadn't realised that that was unusual. Perhaps we should have been more impressed? We simply thought it was a normal service, because we have one here in our (large) "village".

Christine