Genealogy Detective software was created to help you solve family history mysteries online. It's an innovative companion to your Web browser that gives you quick and easy access to many of the Internet's most useful sites for genealogy. The program stays open in one-window while you click on links or perform searches with your Web browser in another window. Tabs take you to links and search forms in the following areas:

• The Genealogy Guide gives general advice for beginning genealogists.

• The Link Database provides hundreds of links in seven broad categories. Topics include how-to guides, maps, libraries, surname guides and genealogy software. Some of these links send you to long-outdated Web sites, though, and other sites don't live up to Genealogy Detective's descriptions. If you click on the link to "Minnesota State Library/Archive," for example, you end up on a page that generally describes Minnesota libraries and has nothing to do with the Minnesota Historical Society.