Newsgroup Archives

If your mind is boggling at the thought of all that genealogical information being spread around, and you're worrying how you are to ever keep up with the newsgroups (let alone your off-line life), then rest your brain. Many newsgroups now have archives where all the messages are stored and are available for searching. Using sites such as DejaNews (a newsgroup archive search engine) or the genealogy newsgroup archive at Rootsweb, you can easily conduct a search for that missing cousin, book name, archive address -- in short, search for any text mentioned in any message posted to that newsgroup (some newsgroup archives are updated more frequently than others).

Where do you find these gold mines of information? The good folk at Rootsweb recently arranged searchable archives of the following newsgroups:

• fr.rec.genealogie
• soc.genealogy.african
• soc.genealogy.computing
• soc.genealogy.french
• soc.genealogy.german
• soc.genealogy.medieval
• soc.genealogy.methods
• soc.genealogy.misc
• soc.genealogy.slavic
• soc.genealogy.surnames
• soc.genealogy.uk+ireland
• soc.genealogy.west-indies

Dejanews has archives for all Usenet newsgroups. You can search recent or older messages, and an advanced search feature allows you to search by keyword, subject, author, or newsgroup. Dejanews can be found at http://www.dejanews.com