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Or, if you want to browse my own Genealogy Database go to my Database page.
Links to Articles Below
How to Search the Heritage Quest Library Version
This is just a start to my articles...Check back soon for more articles as I add them.
How to Search the Heritage Quest Library Version ©
By Dan Volkmann
Using
Heritage Quest online via the King County Library System Website.
There are various
Databases available through the King County Library System, either free, or
paid for by the library system. To
access these databases via the web site, click on the "Databases" tab
on the Library website. Currently, there
are two Genealogy databases available, on the Database page, click on
"Genealogy". The first one, AncestryPlus is only available from the library systems
computers. The second, Genealogy &
Local History Online is available from either the library computers, or from
your own computer via the Internet.
The HeritageQuest
database, owned by ProQuest Information and Learning
Company, contains not only census information but various books relating to history
and genealogy, which have been scanned and indexed. You can search on these books by name, place
or by browsing the publications. Click
on the "Read more about this collection" link on the website, once
you log in, for more information.
For
Census information, click on the "Search Census" link. This brings
you to the "Search Census" page.
If you are interested in the 1790, 1800, 1810, 1870, 1890 or 1910
census, you can use this page to search by name. If you are interested in the other census years,
they are not name indexed yet, but the images are available, if you know how to
search for the correct image. To get
into Browse mode, click on the Browse link at the top of the page.
"Search Census"
The Search Census page
has three sections to it, the Basic Search, Advanced Search and Find by Page
Number.
I will start with the
Basic Search.
The simplest step to
searching for a person here is to enter the persons Surname and Given name and
press Search. This will find all occurrences
of the in the indexed census years. If
you have a more common name, and you know which state you want to search in,
you may want to select that state, but it is not necessary at this step.
The Census Results page
is then displayed with a list of the census years where the name was found, and
a count of how many occurrences of that name, in that year. You can either click on the census year to
view the list of those occurrences, or if you want to further break down the
list by state and/or county, click on the Expand by State link. Once you have expanded by State, you can then
Expand by County.
Once you are at the level you would like, click on the appropriate
geographic area, or the main census year link, to display the list of
names. This list will include various information about the person to help you choose which names
to view in detail.
Once you have clicked on
a name, the Census Image page is displayed.
This page contains various information about the image
file, the microfilm roll and page, and the image itself. (Note: sometimes you have one of two images
to look at for you name, if you do not find it on A, then click on B at the top
of the image to display the other image.)
Find the name on the
image to see if it is the person you are looking for. If this is the image you want, you have
various options at this point. You can
print the image, download it to your computer, adjust the size and notebook it
for later use. (Note: if you notebook
this image, the notebook is only saved for the current session you are logged
into the Heritage Quest database.) I
would recommend ALWAYS downloading the image, because usually to print the
whole image, it may not be large enough to read. This way you will always have the PDF image
to look at later. [the PDF format is Adobe
Acrobat. You will need Adobe Acrobat
Reader to view the images. You can
obtain the Acrobat Reader for free from Abobe. For the link to Adobe, click on the Help
section on the download screen, then click on the
Adobe Acrobat Reader image.]
Other options you have on
the Census Image page are to scroll to other images that are previous or next
to this image, either by Image Page, or the next name in your list. You can also look at the negative (reverse)
image of you image. This may help in
viewing an image if it is hard to read.
The Advanced Search has
further options for helping you find the correct person you are looking
for. If you know the County, and/or the
location within the county, the persons age, gender, race, or where they were born,
the Advanced Search page can narrow your search for you. The location within the county can be either a city, a ward or precinct of a city, an Enumeration
district and various other breakdowns within a county. Once you select your State, the drop down list
for County contains all the valid counties for that state. Similarly, once you select your County, the
drop down list for Location contains all the valid locations for that county. After pressing Search for the Advanced
Search, you would precede as described above in the Basic Search to find the
correct person you are looking for.
The Find by Page Number
search is used when you know which Census (Series) you want to search in, and
which Roll and Page your image is on.
This will bring you directly to the image you are looking for. You can scroll forwards and backwards through
the images and/or pages from you result as well. [Images are the individual census pages. There may be multiple census pages on one
Microfilm Roll Page.]
visits and counting since July 14, 2005.
Site last updated July 14, 2006.
