The holidays are a great time to gather family records and interview family members about their lives, as we discussed in an earlier blog post.

You can use that information to improve your search results in the library's genealogy tools. These online resources can help you go back through the generations so that the next time you get together with relatives, you can unwrap the gift of your shared history.

Learn more about two of our genealogy databases, Fold3 Library Edition and Ancestry Library Edition, below.

Interested in learning more about your family tree? The library has some great genealogy tools, but your database searches will be even more successful if you do a little homework first.

That's especially true if you have a common last name. If you search for a grandfather named "John Smith" on Ancestry Library Edition, you'll get millions of results. That's way too many to sift through!

But if you can add information like John Smith's estimated birth year, a place he may have lived, or a spouse's name, you'll have a much better chance of finding him in the search results.

If you're getting together with family for the holidays, take some time to gather the basic information that will help build a strong foundation for your research.

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