Genealogical Accounts Another major component of many genealogical periodicals are compiled genealogies. Often a researcher has learned significant information about several generations of a family, but the number of people covered is too small for a book. Also, many researchers publish corrections or updates to earlier book genealogies. As we have often indicated, immigration, and immigrant origins, are some of the most popular of genealogical topics. Virtually all North Americans descend from many different immigrants. Over the course of their research, family historians will often find the foreign origins of many of those immigrants. Their success stories make excellent articles for local and national genealogical periodicals. More often than not, articles about immigrants deal with colonial immigrants. Usually they identify where they came from in the old country. Even if the actual town has not been found, such articles provide the most up-to-date information about the status of research on the immigrant. Since they provide current findings, they include whatever clues previous researchers have found. Often this is enough for the next researcher to pick up the trail, and solve the question of an immigrantís origin. Copied Records One of the greatest services that periodicals perform is to copy documents of genealogical interest into their pages. This makes the original records much easier to read and to search. In addition, it is likely that the index to that issue will identify many more names in the record than the original document's index. Virtually any and all types of genealogical documents have been transcribed or abstracted in periodicals. Transcriptions, of course, are a word-for-word printing of the original document. Punctuation and spelling are usually left as found in the original.