Tuesday, November 9, 2010

One-Step Web Pages

A One-Step Portal for On-Line Genealogy

By Stephen P. Morse

In the “old days” genealogical research was done by traveling great distances and then going through dusty archives or using microfilm readers. But the advent of the World Wide Web has changed that. Today much of the data useful to genealogists has been put on websites and can be accessed from the comfort of home.

Unfortunately, many of these websites are not easy to use. And those that are don’t always offer all the versatility that is possible. For that reason I have created alternate ways of accessing some of these websites. In addition I have developed some of my own databases and programs to facilitate doing genealogical research. These are all collected together under what I call the One-Step website.

The name “One Step” was chosen when I developed my first search tool, which allowed for searches through the Ellis Island records. A search done from the ellisisland.org website involved many steps, whereas my search tool was able to do it all in one step. Hence I called that tool “Searching the Ellis Island Database in One Step.” Little did I realize that, by choosing such a name, my website would become branded and I would be forced to use One-Step on all subsequent tools. I almost called that early tool “Searching the Ellis Island Database with Fewer Tears,” in which case this paper would be about the Fewer Tears website.

In this paper I’ll present an overview of what the One-Step website has to offer and, in doing so, will introduce other resources that are available on the web.

To continue reading: Click Here.

To go directly to the One-Step Portal: Click Here.

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