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The online genealogical arena is overwhelmed with the provisions available to us. Whatever material I share here is a mere fraction of what is available online; and the material that is online is a fraction of the material in existence.

We are limited by our imaginations in the way we use the provisions available and where we look to get a glimmer of information to feed our genealogical habits.

The concept of a One-Name Study, or a surname project is one where the registrant with the Guild of One-Name Studies may choose to gather core material reflecting the name. Having gathered that information, there is no requirement to reconstruct families, though many do, including those with relatively large studies.

Given the registrant is seeking to locate material on a global scale, though there is no time pressures to do so, it can be costly to achieve. Today I have listed a few sites that are worthy of visiting and these are either free, or relatively low cost:

• FreeBMD – provides free access to enable the purchasing of BMD certificates in England & Wales. You do still potentially need to order the certificate, but it is possible, depending on the time period, to locate the parish registers
• FamilySearch
• Guild of One-Name Studies Indexes 
• County Records Offices – Catalogues
• GENUKI
• Facebook Groups – this is a huge resource and there are many, many groups relating to various elements of genealogy.
• Library & Archives of Canada
• Archives Canada
• The National Archives (Kew, England and Wales)
• The National Archives (Australia)
• The National Archives (NARA – United States)
• The National Archives of Ireland
• Public Records Office of Northern Ireland
• National Library of Wales

Next month I hope to share some hints and tips for using these sites to advance any research. Those pertaining to UK and Ireland will be found HERE and those relating to Continental Europe will appear HERE.