Family History and the Internet

familysearch.org offers access to 4 databases and is a great resource available to those seeking to research their family history. The biggest challenge for family history research today is getting the word out and making those resources more accessible and easier to use. I found the resources helpful when researching my own family history. The confusing part is deciding which database to search and understanding the results and limitations of each one. Searching ancestral file will bring up several pedigree charts for the same person. These charts may each contain different branches from a given family. The IGI is helpful for putting all these charts together into one big list. It's difficult sometimes to find what has already been researched in a given area and where more research can be done. More improvement could be made in family history forums and making them more searchable. A lot of work has been put into these databases and hopefully improvements will continue to be made towards improving the user interface and facilitating collaboration among individuals.