Database Search Techniques

Menu.gif

Database Search Techniques

Searching through a database and not finding someone can be a very frustrating experience. On the other hand, when you find someone, especially if you find someone you weren’t really looking for, well that’s like grabbing the brass ring. If you can’t find your ancestor in a database, and you know he or she should be there, then try some of the techniques described below and you may have better luck.

The databases found on the Italian and German genealogy web sites were the result of the dedication of many members from all the local genealogy groups and from the many volunteers found on the Internet, who spent long hours typing and scanning records. A lot of effort was also spent proofreading these records to make sure that the final product was as error free as possible. We wanted the information in that database to match, letter for letter, name for name, with the original documents. However, the original records were often handwritten and in many cases by people with poor handwriting. The records are very fragile, worn, ink stained, have information missing and sometimes a piece of the document was missing. Foreign names were often very difficult to make out.

If your ancestor had a name that was difficult to spell or had many spelling variations, you have to look at all the possible spelling variations. The person who wrote the name on the document may have been a clerk who did not really know how to spell it. The name may later have been copied incorrectly and the information may have passed through several interim documents before getting to that final document.

Here are a few techniques that may help you to get better results.

Wildcard characters

We are now able to use wild card characters. If you would like to search for multiple letters place a * sign in. If you would like to have only one letter be wild you would use the _.

Soundex

All the databases developed by the Long Island Federation of Genealogy Groups will have the surnames soundexed. Using the Soundex Code will yield many more names, but the use of that technique has certainly proven to be extremely useful.

Name switch

Try switching the surname and the given name. This is especially important when a person has a name like George Joseph or any name that includes two common given names. Foreign names were also sometime difficult to determine which was the given and which was the surname.

Report problems with this site t