Monday, May 26, 2008

Free book AND free military records access

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

I've previously mentioned that Ancestry.com's military records can be accessed for free through the end of May. Go to www.ancestry.com/military for more information about this military records promotion.

They did it last year and I just noticed they're doing it again this year. One of Juliana's 24/7 Family History Circle Blog Extras posts on Friday mentions the availability of a free book download. Currently, the links in her post are not aimed correctly. Instead, click here to download a free PDF copy of Military Records at Ancestry.com.

The Ancestry Store website contains this information about the book:

[In] Military Records at Ancestry.com...Esther Yu Sumner leads you chronologically through the history of American wars, providing you with a brief contextual and historical basis for each war, then listing a variety of Ancestry.com databases that relate to them. Not intended as an exhaustive historical treatise, Military Records at Ancestry.com is nonetheless a handy little tool for navigating the Military Collection on the #1 family history resource on the Internet.

I found the book mildly useful for its brief synopsis of each of 24 American wars from Jamestown conflicts (1622-44) to the Vietnam War (1954-75) and for the links to military resources on websites other than Ancestry.com. But since the book is a year old, it is no longer a comprehensive list of Ancestry databases for each war. Besides, a subscriber shouldn't have to purchase a book in order to find and use Ancestry's military databases. If the website doesn't make that easy enough as is, the website needs to be fixed.

My book review rating: 4 star general at this price.

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