
In this example let’s choose “Cemeteries.” PERSI categories for Illinois From the topics list, I choose the one that most closely covers what I am looking for. I personally like to leave it at the state level for this kind of search, but you could narrow your search down to a particular county if you wish.

Instead, PERSI can help with this.įirst, use the “United States” button and narrow down to which state you are looking for, in this case Illinois. I wanted to check that journal for a variety of topics, but didn’t want to sit there and pull out each volume to check its index. I was sitting in the Clayton Library in Houston (a fantastic genealogical library with one of my favorite librarians, hi Sue!), and I noticed that they had a run of the journal Saga of Southern Illinois which covers Hardin County, where I had some collateral ancestors move off to. Once you’ve done that, you can then search those results by the journal title.
#SEARCHY PANTS HOW TO#
If you read last week’s blog, you know how to get a set of results for a geographic area, with a keyword or subject. So, you have to pull out each annual index and look for your item, subject, name, or keyword of interest…for EVERY year, for as long as that journal has been in publication.


They very rarely combine them into one larger index. Many genealogical society journals provide an index, annually. I often would find myself in a smaller public library with a genealogy and local history section, and find that they would have a run of a a particular journal, or several. One of the ways I love to use PERSI is for looking for articles in a particular journal.
