Explore Ancestry's Card Catalog

When you are starting a research project in a new location or just wanting to expand your knowledge of what collections of records, or databases are available on Ancestry.com, take a closer look at their card  catalog. Knowing Ancestry's content and what has been added recently will simplify your searching. Most people search using the "search all" category, but this won't yield your best results. You are searching for "a name" that is attached to "a person" in a collection of records. To better understand the results of your search, you need to know,

• the origins of the record
• who recorded the information
• who supplied the information in the record
• how the information was collected
• where Ancestry got the collection 

From the main menu, let your mouse hover over the "search" selection and when it drops down, click on "card catalog". The result is 30,044 databases offered. This is impressive, and a little daunting to new members at Ancestry. At the top of the list is the selector "sort by" that can reorder the list be title, popularity, size, recently added or updated. I like to examine this list often with the selection "recently updated", to see what has been added. 

As it's still difficult to scroll through over 30,000 titles, let's look over to the left side of the screen to the filters. There are 4 major filters, by record type, location, language and dates. I will use Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA as an example of an area to focus on. I don't want to filter the date, or record type. Philadelphia is  one of the major ports for immigrants through out its history, so I won't filter any languages. Filtering by location, I first click "USA" and then "Pennsylvania" and have 10,142 databases left. Selecting "Philadelphia" drops the total to 49 collections, the largest being "Philadelphia Passenger Lists, 1800-1945". Surprisingly, there are only 4 newspapers, but one of them is an index to The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent obituaries, 1887-2006 with over 46,000 entries. Changing the filters to Pennsylvania and newspapers resulted in 133 newspaper collections.

Explore the record collections and look at some that interest you. On the left, under the search area is the source information for that particular collection, plus a brief explanation of the record, how it was collected and how it may help you. Most of these descriptions are written "in house" by Ancestry employees and they are full of interesting material. On the right, links to other similar collections are provided. Even if you never progress past the US Federal Censuses, read the descriptions of each and learn their unique qualities.