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?  Has it been at least a year with a whole truckload of formerly copyright protected, now freely available, materials out there since you stopped to search Internet Archive or your state digital program 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 and a native of Manchester, NH, Central High Class of ’64 and UNH Class of ’68 (is great!). 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, organized two extremely popular seasons of the Local and Family History series and developed the Intermediate Genealogy Summer Lecture series.   Linda is past Secretary and Civil Records Director for Federal Records for the Massachusetts Genealogical Council and a member of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists (MSOG), the Essex (MA) Society of Genealogists (ESOG) and the Essex (Eng.) Society for Family History.  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 MSLIS at Simmons College.  

Linda 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.