Gale has launched another new project--Genealogical Sourcebook series--and the first volumes look promising. The remaining volumes on Asian Americans and Native Americans will be published this summer. Libraries can order all four volumes for $239 (0-8103-8541-4). Part 1 of each volume consists of informative essays on immigration and migration, basic genealogical methods and resources, and problems specific to ethnic genealogy--such as naming practices, the reuse of graves where families could not afford perpetual sites, and reasons for deliberate falsification of records. Explanations and tips on accessing records specific to these groups, such as those of the Freedmen's Bureau and the Inquisition, records of religious orders, and an overview of newspaper ads and Hispanic heraldry are instructive and pragmatic. Tables, examples, and an extensive bibliography are included. Part 2, 'Directory of Genealogical Information, ' lists libraries and archives, public and private organizations, print resources, and other media that 'hold materials relevant to genealogists whether their focus is on genealogy in general or on a specific ethnic group.' Libraries and archives are listed geographically; those outside the U.S. are in Canada for African Americans, and in Guatemala, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Canada for Hispanic Americans. There are surprisingly few listings for Florida, which has a substantial Hispanic population. Private and public organizations include commercial ventures (publishers, researchers for a fee, bookstores) and nonprofits (genealogical societies, the American Antiquarian Society, etc.). The section entitled 'Print Resources' lists many sources from the 1980s, but there are also current publications. The author and title-organization indexes access only the products and sources listed in part 2. The subject index accesses the essays in part 1. Libraries that hold books such as George R. Ryskamp's Tracing Your Hispanic Heritage (1984) will want to keep them for their scholarly thoroughness. They will want to add these new books for their relative currency and for their simpler explanations of complicated facets of black and Hispanic culture.--BL 05/15/1995.

Over the past two decades, in workshops and personal consultations, thousands of persons have have received the expertise and knowledge of author Frazine Taylor about Alabama genealogical research. In addition, she has taught the art to hundreds of students. As Dr. James Rose notes, all genealogists looking for the family tree in Alabama sooner or later come across Frazine. And now they have her book, Researching African American Genealogy in Alabama: A Resource Guide. In the book, she provides the information and guidance to help locate the resources available for researching African American records in archives, libraries, and county courthouses throughout the state. The idea for this guidebook rose out of her lecturing throughout the country and having noticed that reference guides on African American family history resources seemed to exist for every state except Alabama. This was regrettable not merely for researchers on African American history in Alabama. In fact, Alabama’s records play an especially important role in U.S. family history research because of the migration patterns of Alabama’s freedmen, first to urban areas of Alabama and then to northern cities, a trend that continued throughout the first part of the twentieth century.

This book "is a selected list of books in the collections of the Library of Congress compiled primarily for researchers of Afro-American lineages. Included in this bibliography are guidebooks, bibliographies, genealogies, collective biographies, United States local histories, directories, and other works pertaining specifically to Afro-Americans. Emphasis is on books that contain information about lesser-known individuals of the nineteenth century and earlier, although Afro-American business and city directories published through 1959 are listed"--Introd.