Special 2012 edition of Peter Christian's "The Genealogist's Internet" now available on the Internet Archive

Peter Christian has very kindly made available through a Creative Commons license a version of the last edition of his book The Genealogist's Internet, published in 2012, on the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/the-genealogists-internet/.

In this version, Peter has not updated the main text, other than to replace any links that can still be updated - in other words, this is very much a book that describes the online world twelve years ago, rescuing as many of the links as can be that have since changed for sites that still work, but also identifying those that no longer work as being broken. In his email to me he explains the new version as follows:

Please bear in mind that this is not a new edition -- it is the text of the 2012 edition, largely unchanged. Inevitably, a number of sites — mainly the smaller ones — have disappeared, and for major sites the detailed descriptions are now sometimes out-of-date. Usually, though, that is simply because the original material has been moved or reorganized.

In fact, over one third of the links in the original 2012 edition are now broken. But for this version all the links have been newly checked, and several hundred broken links have been updated to the current location of the material. The remaining broken links are marked as such but will still give readers an idea of the sort of material it is worth looking for online.

To give just two examples where the book stands out as being of its time, for Scottish Catholic research, this edition points to ScotlandsPeople for access to the parish registers, which in 2012 was absolutely the place to look, and which still hosts some records. However, today, FindmyPast hosts over twice as many of the available records for Scotland. Similarly, in 2012, the Fianna website is the site referred to for Irish Catholic records, whereas today most surviving pre-1880 records have been made available by the National Library of Ireland at https://registers.nli.ie, with many third party derivatives and indexes also now available. Nevertheless, as Peter suggests, the book will still provide a workable access to some records, and to give an idea of just what might be out there if searched for by other means. 

Despite being dated to 2012, there is still a great deal of additional value in Peter's work, including background information on many of the collections as recorded, with some for Scotland and Ireland, but of course, in particular for English and Welsh sources. One slight issue when looking up chapters is that in the browser based version I have seen at https://archive.org/details/the-genealogists-internet/ there is no internal pagination, and the chapter headings in the contents are not hyperlinked to the relevant page, so there may be a little trial and error if seeking to go to a particular chapter straight away - not an issue, of course, if you simply start at the beginning and work your way through!

Peter has written a new introduction to this online edition, and has very kindly recommended my Scottish and Irish internet themed books within this as being much more recent for those areas, as well as my Sharing Your Family History Online book, which he notes as "particularly recommended as a supplement to the present work because of the major changes affecting social media covered in Chapter 18." You can find my books in the UK via https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Chris-Paton/a/1799 and in the US via https://www.penandswordbooks.com/search-grid/?keyword=Paton. 

With regards to Peter's book, he further suggests that "probably the best format for reading is the ePub version, while the Microsoft Word file is intended mainly for those wanting to reuse or adapt the text. There is also a web version on my own web site at www.spub.co.uk/tgi/."

(With thanks to Peter)  

Update: Peter has contacted me to say that if you download the ePub, all the internal links to chapters and individual pages should work.

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.