For example, my Russian great grandfather didn’t immigrate until 1917, so I exhausted census and immigration records for him pretty quickly.

Then, while looking for something in The Source for work, I found myself browsing the newspaper chapter. I’d never thought much about newspapers; it seemed like such a long shot that any of my people would be listed. But The Source opened my eyes to historical newspapers and showed me ways my great grandfather could indeed be found there.

As it happens, Ancestry.com had just added the Greeley Daily Tribune, the very paper I needed. So, following the guidance of The Source, I searched and sure enough, I found him. Of course, most of the listings were notices that he’d been fined for breaking the law (burning trash), but here was something about my ancestor I would never have found without broadening my horizons.

Since it’s based on The Source and Red Book, the Ancestry.com Family History Wiki is all about helping you broaden your horizons. It’s about helping you find new places to look and about helping you make better use of your current strategies.

So what are you working on right now? Have you checked the wiki to see if it can offer any help?

We don’t have articles on everything (yet!), but there’s a lot there, just waiting to help. For now, our content is focused mainly on record types and locality searches. Below, I’ve linked to some good places to start browsing. Or, you can type a topic in the main search box on the left side of the wiki.

I’d love to hear what you find. In the comments, let me know if you found anything interesting or useful. And more importantly, let me know if you didn’t find anything. That way we can know better where to focus our efforts.

Places to Start

• Browse through articles about record types
• Learn more about research in a specific state
• Explore our county pages
• Try a random page and be surprised

Happy family history.

Before getting into that, however, let me introduce myself. My name is Matthew Rayback and I am a senior editor for Ancestry.com and am the overseer of the wiki. I wrote the silly little Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With, and You Can Too! , but more importantly,  I was one of the editors who worked on the third edition of The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, which is one of the foundational sources of content for the wiki. I’m very excited about this wiki and I hope we’ll all have a lot of fun making it great together.

Now on to the good stuff.

Since NGS, we’ve been working hard and making improvements, both to functionality and to content. Check out these highlights:

• You can now register to use the wiki. Note that if you are already an Ancestry.com member, then you are already registered: if you are logged into your Ancestry.com account, you’re logged into the wiki as well. Make sure you’re logged in before you make any changes or add any content.
• We have created county pages for every county in the United States. These pages use information found in the extensive tables in Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources and are now “stub” articles, waiting to be fleshed out.  User “Tinauofa01″ started this ball rolling by adding some great stuff to the page for Pima County, AZ. For more information about what we’re looking for on county pages, read our suggestions.
• We’ve updated the homepage, making it cleaner and hopefully easier to use. Let us know what you think.

This is just a smattering of what’s been going on here at the wiki and you can expect more changes and improvements going forward, so keep your eyes out for my posts on the Ancestry.com Blog.

And don’t worry. I know there are a number of questions about moderation and quality. These are issues we’re well aware of and have a plan to address. Watch for a future blog post on this subject.

For now, go explore the wiki if you haven’t already. Make some changes. Add some stuff. You can get there using the “Learning Center” tab on Ancestry.com or by simply clicking here.