{"id":2792,"date":"2018-07-01T13:11:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T13:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/?p=2792"},"modified":"2019-01-16T20:22:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T20:22:19","slug":"link-sites-and-the-family-history-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefhguide.com\/blog\/link-sites-and-the-family-history-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Link Sites and The Family History Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost every family history website, including The Family History Guide, has links to other helpful sites and resources. Based on the number of those links, you could categorize a “link” site as small, medium, large, or extra large. Although The Family History Guide is not primarily a link site, it would likely fall into the “medium” class, with a few thousand links in all.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a look at a few of the best-known link sites, and then we’ll compare and contrast them with The Family History Guide.<\/p>\n

Cyndi’s List<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cyndi’s List<\/a> is perhaps the best-known link site for family history. According to Wikipedia, the\u00a0 website was founded\"\" by Cyndi Howell in 1996 and has been growing ever since. It has numerous categories of links, including Ethnic Groups, Immigration, Localities, Military, Records, and many more. On Cyndi’s List, The Family History Guide appears in the Tutorials and Guides section, and The Family History Guide has numerous references to Cyndi’s list, notably in country and U.S. state pages.<\/p>\n

There are currently over 330,000 links to family history resources on Cyndi’s list, making it an “extra large” links site.<\/p>\n

Kindred Trails<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kindred Trails<\/a> is smaller in scope than Cyndi’s List, but it’s well-organized and easy to navigate (let’s put it in the \"\"“large” category). Where Cyndi’s List is divided into more separate pages with a larger font size, Kindred Trails goes with a smaller font and more vertical scrolling. It has useful categories for Resources, Databases, and “Freebies”.\u00a0 The Family History Guide points to Kindred Trails primarily for Location resources, such as country and U.S. state pages.<\/p>\n

Linkpendium<\/strong><\/p>\n

Linkpendium <\/a>is\u00a0being developed by Karen Isaacson and Brian (Wolf) Leverich, founders of \"\"the\u00a0RootsWeb<\/a>\u00a0genealogical community site. In operation since about 2000, the site claims an astonishing 10 million<\/em> links to genealogical resources, making it a truly colossal link site. It also has a very effective search engine for other genealogy sites and materials. There is an interesting overview of Linkpendium on one of Amy Johnson Crow’s blog sites\u2014”A Surprising Source to Find Millions of Genealogy Websites<\/a>“. The Family History Guide references Linkpendium in a number of places, especially for county research in U.S. states.<\/p>\n

The Family History Guide<\/strong><\/p>\n

So is The Family History Guide a link site? Not really, in the traditional sense. While it does have several thousand links, most of them are not \"\"collected into categories as with Cyndi’s List and Linkpendium. Instead, they are woven into a comprehensive learning system<\/em> for family history. Here’s a summary of how links are used in The Family History Guide:<\/p>\n