1/1/2004
By Allison Stacy
Let this issue guide your journeys in online genealogy.
Recently, I read a newspaper article about traffic congestion on a major highway through my city. The story followed a suburban driver on her morning commute, as she crept along in a sea of brake lights, skirted an accident blocking her usual route and lamented the time lost in her day.
I think a lot of family historians share that driver's frustration when they try to navigate the Internet. You hop online, optimistic you'll soon arrive at new clues about your family's past. Hours later, after multiple detours and perhaps several failed attempts at busy sites that recommend you "try again later," either you haven't found your answer — or you've spent so much time on Internet back roads that you forgot the question.
Web truly is a fitting term when you talk about online family history: "Googling" for genealogy nets close to 16 million hits. The popular Cyndi's List of categorized Web sites — the Yahoo! of family history — is about to crack the 200,000-links mark. And not only are a ton of family tree resources parked out in cyberspace, but there's also a slew of researchers using them. Genealogy-related Web sites are recording more than 13 million unique visits each month, making family history the second-most-popular topic online. So you'd have good reason to feel as if you're caught in a gigantic online traffic jam.