Society of Genealogists - On-Line Catalogue

Society of Genealogists On-line Library Catalogue - Introduction

What's on this page

Titles and subjects

For each item in the catalogue there are entries for the title, author, publisher, series, location in the library, etc. and also one or more subjects. The subjects are taken from a standard list of terms specific to the Society of Genealogists library. A term may be a topic, a surname, the name of a place or institution or organisation. If it is a surname, the word "surname" is in brackets after the name. Subjects for a country or county are sub-divided into topics, e.g. "Kent - Poll books". For more see structure of subjects.

Types of search

The system we are using for searching the catalogue is used in a number of different libraries. In this introduction we describe the facilities most useful in searching the Society of Genealogists library catalogue.

A browse search shows subjects in alphanumeric order starting from a word you type. Against each is the number of items in the catalogue with that subject. Choose a subject, the titles are displayed. You can change the sort order of the list.

On a power search you can choose which parts of the catalogue entry to search, e.g title, author, subject. Choose "words" to search all parts of the catalogue entry. Up to three sets of keywords can be combined with "AND", "AND NOT", "OR". Initially words within one box are combined by "match all keywords", there are options for "match any keyword" and "exact phrase".

How to start

For a surname, parish or town, organisation (e.g. school, university, military unit), use a browse search, type in the first few letters of the name, view the list of subjects.

For a parish within a town, put the town name first. "Saint" is abbreviated as "St." in subjects throughout the catalogue. Thus an example search is "Lincoln St Mark" which gives a list starting "Lincoln (St. Mark), Lincolnshire"
For most place names starting South, Old, Great, Nether etc the catalogued subject puts the next word first, e.g "Shoreham, Old".
Each county or country in the list of subjects is followed by a list of narrower and broader terms. For a county this provides a convenient list of parishes and places for which there are catalogue entries.
For a surname which can also be a place or topic, put the name followed by "surname", e.g "Kent surname" or "Wills surname".
Surnames with variant endings may have subjects with the alternative final letter in brackets. For example Smyth and Smythe both appear under subject "Smyth(e) surname". If the browse search does not find what you want, try the shortest variant, or try a power search with a wildcard ending, e.g. "Smyth*".

For counties, countries and topics, see our section on structure of subjects, click on the title of the document which seems closest in topic to the ones you want, look at the subjects to see how they are catalogued.

Structure of subjects

Much of the library is organised by topics within geographical areas, and subjects reflect this.

Some examples are:

Kent
Kent - censuses:1851
Kent - censuses:general
Kent - general:bibliographies
Australia:Victoria - censuses:1891
Scotland(Fife) - censuses:1851

Within each county or country there are the following major headings:

censuses
directories
general
local
monumental inscriptions
periodicals
poll books
registers

Within "general" are many topics - e.g. "biographies", "clergy" - with some particular to the area, e.g. "Scotland - general:clans".