Persi 3.0: The Next Generation of Periodical Source Index at New Home

Roots Tech conference 2014 class by Curt Witcher

Widely recognized as a vital tool for genealogical research, the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI) helps researchers quickly locate information about people and places in over 2.25 million genealogy and local history articles appearing in publications of thousands of local, state, national and international societies and organizations. Created by the staff of the Historical Genealogy Department of theAllen County Public Libraryin Fort Wayne, Indiana, PERSI is the largest subject index to genealogical and historical periodical articles in the world. Genealogical research and records presented in many of these journals and other publications cannot be found online and, as such, PERSI is a valuable component of a good genealogy research plan.

The new version of PERSI is being hosted by findmypast.com. If you don’t use the this Resource Index you are missing about 30% of possible record indexes available to researchers.

Findmypast.com happily has committed to launch their index more regularly. The old version of PERSI at Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest has not been updated for 2 years. The new version is linked to the general index—makes suggestion of other things—so people realize what is there. There are 250,000+ more subject entries than any other version to date 2.5 million. It is still a beta version and has more searching and narrowing options than the old version. Best of all it is linked to linked to impressive web space—outside PERSI.

This means links to digital images of Periodicals that are hosted on other websites, or that Allen County Public Library is digitizing because the copyrights have expired or been granted public domain.

To get there at the Family History Center, go to Premium Subscriptions, select and then PERSI.

  1. Play with the search options and how to narrow results, reorder result sets.
  2. In the LEGACY LIST you can see where copies of the periodical are located.

For example the New York Genealogical Journal is online and the index will link directly to their articles.

  1. Go to the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne’s catalog that explains the type of article and the OCLC NUMBER. Then you can also use WorldCAt.org which will add your closest library that have this periodical.
  2. Orem and BYU libraries will send for these articles through their INTERLIBRARY LOANS programs. Usually they come for free.
  3. Finally, realize that this resource lets you know about incredibly important journals in the area you are researching. You can read the journal that is in your area and learn what they have published. Many of these journals are at BYU.

A final recommendation is to contact you public libraries have access to the old PERSI through Heritage Quest and ask them to upgrade to Find My Past. Find My Past is working on creating a library edition this year.