Someone asked about this book. Here's a review: The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 1997 by Richard W. Eastman and Ancestry, Inc. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. - Virtual Roots This week I had a chance to look at another brand-new book that lists genealogy sites and resources on the Internet. Virtual Roots is subtitled "A guide to genealogy and local history on the World Wide Web." The book certainly lives up to that claim. Author Thomas Jay Kemp has created a 279-page reference manual that will be useful to many people, especially to online newcomers. The book is almost entirely a listing of Web sites. The author ranks a number of the sites as "Outstanding Sites." After looking at a few of these, I agreed with Kemp's ratings. The book contains a very brief Introduction that barely fills two pages and a Glossary of Internet Terms that lists only 8 terms. All the other pages are filled with Web site listings. In last week's newsletter, I reviewed a somewhat similar book called, "The Internet For Genealogists: A Beginner's Guide." While the two books are generally similar, "Virtual Roots" has a lot more listings of sites dealing with local history. Here is an abbreviated listing of some of the section titles in the Table of Contents: African Americans, Archives, Cemeteries, Census Records, Church Records (divided into 17 denominations), Embassies, Foreign Exchange rates, Heraldry, History, Maps, Mayflower, Military Records, Native Americans, Newspapers, Social Security records, Surnames, a separate section for each state in the USA, separate sections for many countries and finally hundreds of family associations. On the downside, the book seems primarily oriented to readers in the United States. It may be somewhat useful to those researching Canadian ancestry, but anyone outside North America will only find a few useful listings. Next, the so-called "Glossary of Internet Terms" seems to be inadequate, filling less than a full page. I would have expected such a glossary to fill several pages. The book will appeal primarily to online newcomers, who really need a better listing of the terms they will encounter. These are two small drawbacks, however. I would still recommend the book to anyone who is not yet comfortable with finding genealogy and local history information on the Web. Author Kemp has excellent genealogy and history credentials. He is head of the Special Collections Department of the University of South Florida Library in Tampa. Prior to that position he was the library director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He has served as the chair of the Council of National Library and Information Associations, chair of the History Section of the American Library Association and president of the American Society of Indexers. He is a member of the Local History Committee of the American Library Association and is the author of numerous books, including the "International Vital Records Handbook," the "Connecticut Researchers Handbook" and "The 1995 Genealogy Annual: A Bibliography of Published Sources." "Virtual Roots" is available from Scholarly Resources, Inc. The price is $24.95 (US funds) for the paperback edition and $65.00 for a deluxe cloth bound edition. I'll offer a bit of advice here: The information in this book will age quickly like everything else in the online world. It won't be a useful reference 3 or 4 years from now, so don't waste your money on the heavy-duty cloth binding. Buy the paperback. The cheaper binding will last longer than most of these Web sites, and you can pocket the $40.00 price difference. To order the book or to obtain more information, send an e-mail to: market@scholarly.com Fred Rump http://www.k2nesoft.com/~fred 26 Warren St Beverly, NJ 08010 fred@compu.com or 609-386-6846 fred@k2nesoft.com