Getting Booked Up

The UK-based Archive CD Books Project is expanding its historical book digitization services into the United States partnering with newly formed Archive CD Books USA.

The project, started in 2000, reproduces old, rare books while keeping them intact (it’s not uncommon for digitizers to dismantle books so they can feed pages through scanners), then publishes the content on CDs. The new US affiliate joins branches in Ireland, Australia and Canada. You can access all the affiliates’ Web sites from <www.archivecdbooks.com>.

Bob Velke, president of Wholly Genes Software <www.whollygenes.com> (maker of genealogy computer program The Master Genealogist) manages Archive CD Books USA. “Some of the most valuable resources are out of reach of researchers,” he says. “By cooperating with libraries, societies and other book lovers, we’re pleased to help put that material back in circulation and into the hands of family history researchers.”

Those digitized resources may be even more helpful to you than their paper versions.

For example, A Genealogical Dictionary of The First Settlers of New England by James Savage, originally published in 1860, is text-searchable in its digitized form. That means you can pick up on unindexed ancestral names and places you might overlook in the original work.

From the April 2006 issue of Family Tree Magazine.