Hello! My name is Rebecca, and I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library. (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!) Welcome to a new series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases. A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!
Welcome to the sixth installment in the series! If you missed the previous ones, you can find them here. Today, I will talk a little about Ancestry Library Edition. Many if not most of you have likely heard of Ancestry before, but if not, Ancestry is one of the leading online resources for genealogical (family history) research. Ancestry has 30 billion records from all over the world, from census and immigration data to historical newspapers, maps, photographs, and more. Ancestry Library Edition gets you access to Ancestry’s wealth of information as long as you are on a library computer or connected to the library’s Wi-Fi network.
Pro tip: While you cannot create an account on Ancestry Library Edition, and thus cannot save your research to the website, you can create a free family tree account on the regular Ancestry website, so you can download records from Ancestry Library Edition and then upload them into your family tree on the main site.
Find Ancestry Library Edition on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> A –> Ancestry Library Edition
For more genealogy research, you can also check out HeritageQuest or MyHeritage Library Edition. HeritageQuest is owned by the same company as Ancestry, so you might recognize the user interface; it carries fewer records than Ancestry, but it has the collection of Freedman’s Bank records, which is unique to this resource. MyHeritage Library Edition is a genealogy resource provided for free to all Pennsylvania library card holders through the State Library of Pennsylvania; it has 20+ billion records and is available in 42 languages. Find HeritageQuest by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> H –> HeritageQuest. Find MyHeritage Library Edition by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> M –> MyHeritage Library Edition.
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