Conducting family history research

Today many people are using these old records to recover their family history. But most of these records include only technical details of a person's life, such as their birth date, whom they married, the jobs they did, and so forth, but they contain very little about the person themselves such as their likes, dislikes, hobbies, hopes and dreams.

Family history websites and indexes are also useful, and for modern researchers they are often the main source of information. Some offer resources (eg censuses or civil registration records) that have previously only been available in microform or as hard copies; some are designed for individual researchers to share their information with others; some exist primarily to link people who share the same ancestors, or the same research interests.