A few weeks ago, I participated in a panel discussion about PERSI (the Periodical Source Index) through the National Genealogical Society’s MemberConnects! event. I invited Dawne Slater, Jeanette Sheliga to join me to discuss PERSI, learn about how to best use it for your research, and how to access the articles it indexes. You can view the video recording on NGS’s YouTube channel here.

I’ve written about PERSI in the past on this blog. The most recent series starts here. But if it has been a while, I hope you’ll watch the video and read the previous blog series. PERSI indexes articles from local genealogical societies’ journals and quarterlies sent in to the Allen County Public Library. In my opinion, PERSI is one of the most underutilized resources available to genealogists. We have become spoiled by the internet and the instant gratification that it often offers. However, IT’S NOT ALL ONLINE, though everyday more and more does become available.

PERSI is an index created by the Allen County Public Library, beginning in the late 1980s. The first versions of PERSI were published volumes. You can still find them in libraries today.

I go into more details about PERSI, how to use it, how to get copies of articles, and so on, in my previous series, so I won’t repeat myself. Those steps are the same today as they were in 2022 when I wrote those posts.

A new article was published in the January-March 2026 issue of the NGS Magazine (available to NGS members or possibly through your local library), written by Adam J. Barrone, current supervisor of PERSI at ACPL. His article has a lot of fun history about PERSI and he offers tips and techniques for using PERSI effectively.

There are to main things I always want to impart about PERSI anytime I talk about it. First, PERSI is NOT an every name index. Do not show up to PERSI, type in your ancestor’s name, find nothing, and then walk away thinking PERSI has nothing for your research. PERSI is primarily a subject/keyword index. When searching PERSI, think about what kinds of things your ancestor may have been involved with or included in. Second, there are multiple ways you can obtain copies of the articles you find in PERSI. Don’t let the extra step of needing to obtain a copy stop you from using PERSI. There are many things you can do to get a copy. I’ve written about them before, but the one that is coming up soon is to travel to the Allen County Public Library yourself. This year, the NGS Conference is being held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, blocks from the library.

PERSI can point you to articles that could be vital to your research. The information that local genealogical and historical societies collected in their journals and quarterlies could be the only place that information can be found because the originals were lost or destroyed or from personal collections. It is worth the effort!

Many, if not all, major genealogical websites have some sort of catalog that allows you to see their holdings. This allows you to drill down to specific databases for a given location or topic. Effective searching when working on a specific research problem will hinge on utilizing the catalog.

At Ancestry, from the home page, you’ll see some menu items along the top, to the right of the Ancestry logo. One of them is “Search.” When you click on that, a dropdown menu appears. Select “Card Catalog.”

You will then get a full list of every individual database at Ancestry. At the time of writing this post, the total is 33,274 collections.

In the image above, you can see some tools on the left. At the top are title and keyword search boxes. Below that are a series of filters. Usually, I type in a word or two in either the title or keyword box (sometimes I do each separately depending on what kind of results I get). For example, “Kentucky death.”

There are two items that come up with Kentucky death in the titles. You can also use the filters below to narrow down the database list. This is especially helpful if you don’t know exactly what you are looking for and you’d like to see what databases a website might have on a location or topic. Let’s say I want to see if there are any newspapers or obituary collections that might apply to Thomas Carroll Mitchell. Click on Newspapers & Periodicals, then Newspapers, then filter by location. In our case, we are looking for Missouri and Audrian County.

There are four databases from Audrain County (the neighboring county to Montgomery) that contain obituaries, one of them covering the year when Thomas C. Mitchell died in 1914. So, I will add this to my research plan. (Or, let’s be realistic, we’ll just jump in and search for Thomas.)

We will look at some more tips for using Ancestry’s catalog next time.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that our 2023 NGSQ study groups are now forming.

These are hosted by either myself or Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List). We will read and discuss one National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) journal article per month as posted on the website NGSQ Study Groups. We will study these articles with a focus on principles taught in Mastering Genealogical Proof (MGP) by Tom Jones. We will discuss topics on the genealogy standards, evidence analysis and correlation, writing, citations, and more.

For more detailed information, the schedule, fees, and to sign up, visit this page.

The registration links are also below:

• NGSQ/MGP Monday 1:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cyndi Ingle – Register Here
• NGSQ/MGP Monday 3:30 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cyndi Ingle – Register Here
• NGSQ/MGP Tuesday 1:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cari Taplin – Register Here
• NGSQ/MGP Tuesday 7:00 pm Eastern Sessions, with Cari Taplin – SOLD OUT

If this doesn’t fit into your schedule this year, sign up to be notified when the 2024 NGSQ study group registration is open, add your name to the list.