This book is a great all rounder covering all aspects for researching your family history in the UK. It covers and gives you insight into all of the records out there rather than just the main stream ones. The book is much more than just a reference book and can be read from cover to cover without feeling like you've read a telephone book. If you're just starting out then this book gives you the low down on what you should know and can save you a lot of time and rework. Even existing Family Historians would find this book useful with details of record types they may have no yet considered. Plus at the back of the book is a list of useful addresses.

All in all a great book!

Title: Collins Tracing Your Family History
Author: Anthony Adolph
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
First Published: 2004
ISBN: 0-00-721483-9

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Need guidance and examples for citing the sources for your genealogical data? Then try this book, it covers fundamentals of citing and analysing your sources and provides many examples of citation formats for different types of sources. Although they do tend to be for US sources rather than for UK sources. I used the examples as the basis for my own source citations and created my own citation templates to best suit my needs. I found this book to be a great reference when citing sources.

Title: Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian
Author: Elizabeth Shown Mills
Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc.
First Published: 1997
ISBN: 0-8063-1543-1

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Using the Internet for your genealogy research? Have you ever struggled to find what you're looking for? This book covers just about everything you ever likely need to look up on the Internet for genealogy research. It covers online sources, libraries, projects, forums, etc. for the Genealogist. This even covers publishing your research on the Interent. There's even a supporting website for the book that gives all the URLs included in the book (including those where the URL has changed). This is a must have book for me.

Title: The Genealogist's Internet - 3rd Expanded Edition
Author: Peter Christian
Publisher: The National Archives
First Published: 2005
ISBN: 1-903365-83-X

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I have used quite a few different genealogy programs for my PC since starting tracing my family tree, but found Legacy to fit my needs best. Other programs like Family Tree Maker were not flexible enough and prevented me from doing what I needed and wanted to do. While others like The Master Genealogist that had the high level functionality were too complex and not very intuitive to use. I found that with Legacy you could jump straight in without a major learning curve. For the beginner they have hidden functionality away so you're not overwhelmed with all the features. While the more advanced users can make use of the extra features easily as and when needed. Although you might need a bit of help finding them all.

One feature that I really like is the ability to link media (picture, sound, video) files to individuals, families, events, sources, addresses - just about anything. Plus you are only linking the files not embedding them in your genealogy program file.

Plus I can use Legacy files directly with the following software without the need for GEDCOM files:

1. Pocket Genealogist - Genealogy program for PDAs
2. GenSmarts – Research guidance tool/software

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