Using Heritage Quest

Robert Lindsey, Instruction and Reference Librarian at Pittsburg State University did a Kansas State Library Databases workshop for us last year. His handouts remain popular with folks exploring the databases. He has given me permission to post them here so more people can access them. Unfortunately, his screen prints don't transfer to the blog very well, so I have deleted them.

Heritage Quest

• Searching the Census: 1790 – 1930. 1890 has only 6,160 names from 8 states and DC. 1930 is not finished being transcribed yet. Heritage Quest does not search 1830, 1840, 1850. If you have series, roll & page number, or state, county & township you can get to your person for those years. 1850 is the first year the Census lists every name in the household.

• Searching for names: Always look for various spellings. John, Jno, Jon, J; Robert, Rob’t, R, Bob, Bert; Lindsey, Lindsay, Linsey. Middle names were popularly used as the “common” name so look for that also. Sometimes the handwriting or the photocopy is just plain illegible and transcribers made their best guess.

• Search can be done any number of ways, but must retrieve less than 1000 results.

• Once you have a list, you can sort it by Surname, Given name, State, Age, County, Sex, Race, Birthplace, or Location.

• You can view a census form up to 400% zoom.
  

• Can view a negative for hard to read pages. Some names will be on Subpage B.

Printing a census form:

• Print will print the whole page in miniature but with the citation information.
  

• Download will allow you to select the section of the page you want to print, or print the whole page full-size. Chose PDF File.

• Use the Snapshot tool to highlight the section you want to print.

• When printing be sure Page Scaling says Fit to Printable Area.

• After printing, write the Roll, Series and Page numbers on printout.

Searching Books:

• Search by name and/or place.
• Not very neat or easy.
  
• Searches for words from the same search box that are on the same page. For example: in the name search box if you put William Smith it searches for “William” and “Smith” on the same page.
  
• If you search for Place: Independence, Kansas, it searches for “Independence” and “Kansas” on the same page.
• You can use quote marks, “William Smith” but then you might miss Smith, William, or William and Mary Smith, or William E. Smith.
  

• Place can be a city, county, state or institution such as Kansas State Teachers College.

• Keywords: Civil War, mining, railroad, libraries, Progressivism, Baptist, teacher, etc.

• When your list of books appears, you have a choice to View Hits or View Image.
• View Image takes you to the book,
  

• You want to View Hits.

• Click on the number on the left under Hits to see pages where your search terms appear.

• Use the button to go to the next instance of your search term.

Searching PERSI: Similar to books, but no full-text. Just citations. A lot of information.

Revolutionary War: [Includes an estimated 80,000 pension and bounty-land-warrant application files based on the participation of American military, naval, and marine officers and enlisted men in the Revolutionary War.