As you grumble about the ever-increasing costs of the commercial databases, do you sometimes admit to yourself that you don’t value free sites as much as you should? With a whole truckload of formerly copyright-protected, now freely-available, materials out there, has it been at least a year since you stopped to search the Internet Archive, the Digital Commonwealth, or the Digital Public Library of America? Let’s revisit these three and a few additional favorites of mine, old and new, to add to your list of: “When did I last go mining for a golden discovery in ...?!”

Linda B. MacIver is an educator, lecturer, librarian, and genealogy researcher. She recently retired from a 27- year career at the Boston Public Library where she inaugurated the BPL patron genealogy classes. She taught the multi-week beginners’ genealogy course for five years. She also organized two extremely popular seasons of the Local and Family History series and developed the Intermediate Genealogy Summer Lecture series. Linda is the former Secretary and Civil Records Director for Federal Records for the Massachusetts Genealogical Council and a member of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists (MSOG) and the Essex (Mass.) Society of Genealogists (ESOG.) She serves as the New England Representative for the Essex (England) Record Office. Linda has a BA in History from the University of New Hampshire, an MEd from Boston University and earned her MLIS at Simmons College. She was the 2018 recipient of the Richard S. Lackey Scholarship to the Genealogical Institute for Federal Records (GEN-FED) and the inaugural recipient of the 2019 Senior at the Center of Excellence Award sponsored by Xerox Corporation and the City of Boston.