Reading records
Read a civil registration record
A birth, marriage or death record was created for a particular administrative purpose. Its registration date may differ from the event date.
Read the guide ↗Guides & methods · InternationalEvery family has a story.
Every family has a story.
Discover yours.
From your earliest memories to archives around the world: clear methods, traceable sources and practical tools to explore your family history.
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54 practical guides19 country guides6 FR · EN · ES · DE · IT · PT
01 / Explore the collectionsView all ↗
02 / Guides & methods
View all ↗Essentials for your next step
An ancestor, a document, a clue: choose your next step.
Origins & migration
Reconstruct a migration journey
Reconstruct migration by linking departure, transit and settlement events. One passenger list is not enough to identify a person.
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Sharing family memories
Identify and preserve photographs
A photograph preserves a scene, not necessarily a certain identity. Notes on the back, the studio and visible objects are clues to document.
Read the guide ↗Choose your next step
First steps
Research siblings and cousins
A dead end may be resolved by researching an ancestor’s siblings. Look for records explicitly connecting people, then return to the original question.
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Establishing relationships
Document an unsuccessful search
Finding nothing is useful when the search scope is known. It prevents repetition and supports choosing another source without prematurely denying an event.
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Sharing family memories
Documentary photographs: what they show
This guide explains how to study a real photograph and its catalogue record. This page’s illustrative image is fictional and is not genealogical evidence.
Read the guide ↗Three more record types to explore
A grave, address or school can open a new lead. These guides explain what to record and the limits of each source.
Reading records
Find a burial and verify identity
A burial, memorial and death are different documentary events. Inscriptions are clues; burial registers and death records help verify dates, place and identity. This general method draws on an Australian guide; its repositories and access rules do not apply to every country.
Read the guide ↗Origins & migration
Trace addresses in Australian electoral rolls
An Australian electoral roll helps trace a registered person’s address at a given date. It does not list all residents or all household members. National Library of Australia guidance explains collections and territorial searching.
Read the guide ↗Reading records
Use school lists to trace a family
A school list can place a child in time and space, sometimes alongside siblings. It does not replace a birth record. Archives New Zealand identifies primary-school class lists as a lead; availability elsewhere requires verification.
Read the guide ↗Four new countries, four research routes
Choose the record’s country to identify repository and method: Finnish tax lists, Austrian administrations, Polish vital records or Luxembourg registers.
Reading records
Read henkikirjat: Finnish tax lists
Henkikirjat supplement family research where parish registers have gaps. Their fiscal and later administrative purpose requires checking who was recorded and how households were arranged. This method concerns Finnish lists; a tax list does not necessarily represent the entire population.
Read the guide ↗Establishing relationships
Austria: choose central or local archives
Choosing the repository comes before name searching. State Archives guidance identifies central administrative traces and distinguishes public career, parish records and residence. These needs do not necessarily lead to the same holder.
Read the guide ↗Reading records
Poland: find vital records by place and denomination
Szukaj w Archiwach specialist search locates creators and registers. Guidance uses locality, denomination and dates without personal names. Turn a family lead into place, event and interval before choosing a volume.
Read the guide ↗Reading records
Luxembourg: move from indexes to full records
ANLux organises civil-record guidance by municipality. A ten-year index locates events; the record remains necessary for people, relationships and annotations. Use the portal announced in 2026 rather than old Query addresses still present in some help pages.
Read the guide ↗Learn to reason with conflicting records
Three exercises separate observation, hypothesis and conclusion. People and data are fictional; each case states limits and the next check.
Find archives
View all ↗Resources to start searching
Three directory entries: open each profile to understand collections, access and limitations.
Gallica — Bibliothèque nationale de France
Digital libraryDigital library useful for newspapers, directories and official publications. Search a person with a place and period, then check the image.
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National Archives and Records Administration
Catalogue and guidanceThe US National Archives offer guidance on federal censuses, immigration, naturalisation and military records. Choose the record category, then locate the collection and access conditions. Guides also help identify other repositories.
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The National Archives
Catalogue and guidanceThe UK National Archives guides cover censuses, migration, military records and repositories. Start with the topic guide, then the Discovery catalogue: a description identifies a record but does not guarantee free online access.
View all ↗External organisations presented for research guidance; no partnership claimed.
03 / International
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