LibGuides: Local History: Genealogy

Finding articles

A complete list of all of the library databases is available.

Biography (Gale in Context)
- Why search here?
  Biography (Gale In Context) uses numerous reference works to provide extensive biographical information. This database features many different search options and can be searched according to various categories.
- What's included?
  Includes in-depth, full-text articles from hundreds of periodicals and reference sources. Search for subjects based on one or more personal facts or combine criteria to create a highly-targeted custom search.
HeritageQuest Online (Proquest)
- Why search here?
  HeritageQuest Online is a comprehensive database of American genealogical sources and contains over 4.4 billion historical and genealogical records from the 1700s to present day. It is best used to understand ancestry and a location's history.
- What's included?
  It includes city directories, family and local histories, U.S. Census records from 1790-1940, and military records from the Revolutionary War and other conflicts as well as research aids.
History (Salem Series)
- Why search here?
  Salem Press' history titles cover a wide range of topics spanning American and world history, providing thought-provoking coverage of the most important moments and figures throughout history. Designed for high school, undergraduate and public libraries, these resources promote a greater understanding of how history has shaped the modern world.
- What's included?
  The database access to the Salem Decades, Great Events from history and Innovator series.
U.S. History (Gale in Context) This link opens in a new window
- Why search here?
  Provide students extensive coverage of historical events. This collection contains millions of articles from periodicals and newspapers; hundreds of thousands of topic and event overviews; biographies; and rich multimedia, including images, videos, audio, and weblinks. This invaluable resource provides access to information on diverse topics, such as early America, the Great Depression, and National History Day.
- What's included?
  The database includes Gale's authoritative reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files, and links to vetted websites. These are all organized into a user-friendly portal experience.
World History (Gale in Context)
Gale World History in Context includes information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in World History. Included in this database are reference books, full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites organized into a user-friendly portal experience.

Searching Outside of MCC

These are internet-based scholarly resources that are outside of MCC's database lists and do not require our login.

Boston Public Library eCard
Massachusetts residents can get a free ecard which will allow you access to a wide range of databases (https://www.bpl.org/resource/#azindex) beyond what you have access to through MCC.
Directory of Open Access Preprint Repositories
Directory of Open Source Journals
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent.
The General Index (Internet Archive)
Google Scholar
Search for articles.
HathiTrust
Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
History Hub (National Archives & Records Administration)
We are pleased to announce History Hub has successfully been migrated to its new home!
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Internet Archive Scholar
This fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals though the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web.
JURN
JURN is a free online search tool for the finding and downloading of free full-text scholarly works.
Open Library of Humanities
The Open Library of Humanities journal publishes internationally-leading, rigorous and peer-reviewed scholarship across the humanities disciplines: from classics, theology and philosophy, to modern languages and literatures, film and media studies, anthropology, political theory and sociology.

How do I start researching my family history?

5 simple steps to starting your family history journey
Family History for Beginners
Genealogy For Kids: Building a Family Tree
Genealogy is the study of family history. It includes details about how people are descended from an ancestor, how people are related to each other, where families are from, how they may have traveled from country to country, where they lived, what kind of work they did, and what sorts of lives they led. A family tree is a visual representation of a family's lines of descent. Some family trees include photos and other vital information. Researching a family's genealogy and making a family tree is a great way for kids and adults to learn more about who they are. It also brings history to life in a new way, making it possible to see how historical events impacted one family: the researcher's own. Genealogy is also a great way to sharpen research skills.
Getting Started with Family History (By Starting at the Beginning)
Resources for Genealogists
Start you genealogy research

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