Scott Crevier's Family History Scott Crevier's Family History
I've been researching my family history for many years and since I'm kind of a geek, I also like creating technical tools to help me. For now, I'm only sharing one such tool with you, my 'Genealogy Name Search' tool. It's a bookmarklet that makes it VERY easy to search for a name on many websites all at the same time.
If you've never heard of a bookmarklet, it's simply a bookmark in your browser (Chrome, Safari, etc) consisting of Javascript code instead of a website address. When you click a bookmarklet while on a web page, it will perform some kind of function on that page. Sounds kind of techie, but give it a try.
To use the bookmarklet below, there are only two steps:
Genealogy Name Search v0.1 — This bookmarklet asks you to enter a name and then it searches multiple websites for that name. Note the following guidelines:
▶ If you enter one word (i.e. "Presley"), it assumes that's a surname.
▶ If you enter two words (i.e. "Elvis Presley"), it assumes the first word is the given name and the second word is the surname.
▶ If you enter three words (i.e. "Lisa Marie Presley"), it assumes the first two words are the given name and the third word is the surname.
▶ If you enter more than three words, it ignores all words after the third one.
Cool Tip: Instead of entering a name, you can also just highlight a name on a web page and then click the button. If you've already got the bookmarklet on your bookmarks bar, go ahead and try it; just highlight one of the sample names provided above, then click the bookmarklet.
In this version of the bookmarklet, it searches the following sites:
▶ WikiTree.com
▶ familysearch.org
▶ geni.com
▶ geneanet.org
▶ newspapers.com
▶ general name search with 'family tree' appended
IMPORTANT: If you know of other sites that you'd like this tool to search, please let me know. I'm happy to add more.