Book Recommendations

[autumngold6]

I've had my Ancestry DNA results and want to use them to research my family history further. Are there any books you recommend to advise me on techniques? I'm in the UK.

If you have the money I would recommend this course which you can do online: www.ihgs.ac.uk/courses-awaken.

That sounds very interesting Saker. What sort of work do you have to do for the assignments? Are the exams online?

I did a course with the University of Strathclyde and used 'The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy' by Blaine Bettinger

Thanks AlphabetDinosaur, I'll try to get hold of that.

www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy

this course. Brilliant introduction.

And this book. It's the Bible of UK genealogy.

www.amazon.co.uk/Ancestral-Trails-Second-Complete-Genealogy/dp/0750941987?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

@autumngold6

That sounds very interesting Saker. What sort of work do you have to do for the assignments? Are the exams online?

So if you just do the Awaken course, they send you all the modules and you just work through them at your own pace. You don't have to submit anything but there are questions and small assignments to do along the way. The sort of thing might be - take the Johnstone family here - they give you some information - find them in the 1891 census, find how many children Henry and Catherine had etc, it's not a huge amount of work. There is an online forum where you can ask for help from the tutors and they are good at getting back to you if you use this. The exams are entirely optional and you can sit them under exam conditions in the IGHS headquarters in Kent, or under exam conditions at home or just do the paper by yourself without getting it formally marked. There are lots of day courses and things you can do in Kent as well I think and recently there have been Zoom seminars that you can sign up for. Definitely after doing the online course I was able to make a good stab at my family trees. There are more advanced courses you can follow it up with, or a full correspondence course which involves sending assignments in etc.

But the Strathclyde one looks good too and is free. I suspect it is less detailed - the IHGS one has 10 modules.