Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Online up to date?Comment: While a good read with good directions, please check the copyright date. Anyone online knows how fast a book can become obsolete.Customer Rating: Summary: How to organize a search, where to begin, where to goComment: This newly revised and expanded seventh edition of Elizabeth Crowe's Genealogy Online is a thoroughly "user friendly', 432 page, hands-on, instructional resource which will enable even the most novice genealogist to deftly explore the truly vast resources of ancestry related networks, Web sites, and genealogical online services. Crowe authoritatively explains how to determine and access which ones best suit individual genealogist's purposes. Genealogy Online clearly, step-by-step, shows how to organize a search, where to begin, where to go on the Web, and how to use chat rooms, mailing lists, and Usenet effectively. No genealogical research reference shelf can be considered either complete or up-to-date without the inclusion of this impressive new edition of Elizabeth Crowe's Genealogy Online!Customer Rating: Summary: Good & Bad points..Comment: Not so suprising that there's such disparity in the reviews of this book. Especially since most every review I read so far was true.This book is good if: you are a genealogist NEW to the net. A lot of ground is covered, in terms of what kinds of software is needed (over an above the venerable genealogical database), as well as how to act/speak/do online.
This book is bad if: you've been online for more than a week. Too much ground is covered... well... look at the paragraph above... :)
I've found that some of the information she presents is a bit dated, but not so much so that a new user will terribly embarrass themselves by relying on it.
Overall, for myself (as a computer consultant of 15+ years) it did have some information to impart. Not necessarily enough to make this a "must have", but worth a read and recycle.
Customer Rating: Summary: All you need to get startedComment: I disagree with the review that says it's too American. There is a chapter on international genealogical resources and in the chapters on RootsWeb, FamilySearch and general search sites it shows how to search for genealogies beyond North America. In all it's a good book to get you started in online genealogy.Customer Rating: Summary: Technologically Inept and Too American-centricComment: I found this book a real disappointment. Anybody with more than rudimentary Web surfing skills with the ability to type "family history" in a decent search engine is likely to get more useful information than from this book.For a "fifth edition", I expected a technically more competant exploration of geneological sources worldwide, rather than a book which devotes pages covering such material as spam email addresses, emoticons (i.e. "smileys"), and a lot of material which covers Web surfing basics. I would have liked to have seen more "meat" on how to get the most out of the online sources listed in the book.
Much of my ancestry of British + European origin, and again I was disappointed by the relative lack of information on the wealth of online info sources in this area that are available. The American-centric approach is a good one if your family has been in the States for several generations, but unless you're a native American, chances are good you have roots elsewhere.
Save your money, read the reviews here, and find a book that will better serve you in your geneological search.
