Findmypast.com, the home of the new PERiodical Source Index, is pleased to partner with the Internet Archive to provide digital images of family history periodicals online for the first time.

The PERiodical Source Index (PERSI) enables you to easily locate key information about people and places. It contains over 2.5 million entries from thousands of historical, genealogical and ethnic publications, making it an invaluable, comprehensive family history resource. PERSI provides a simple way to access articles, photos, and other material you might not find using traditional search methods. This can help to build the historical context around your personal research, and the world your ancestors lived in. Most of PERSI's articles are from periodicals covering the United States and Canada, but you can also find thousands of genealogy and local history entries (in both English and French) from Britain, Ireland and Australia. Articles fall under twenty-two different subject headings, or record types. These include biography, cemeteries, census records, church records, court records, deeds, institutions, land records, maps, military records, naturalization records, obituaries, passenger lists, probate records, school records, tax records, vital records, voter records, and wills. Article about three or fewer specific families are arranged by surname. PERSI is crucial in identifying research, records and transcriptions that might not be found in any other print or online source. It also is key to locating “orphan” data – information relating to locations distinct from the periodicals they appear in.

Never underestimate the value of genealogical and historical content from periodicals as a research tool. The fantastic resources available on PERSI contain over a third of the data available for discovering specific research, building contexts, and providing leads for further investigation.