THE WEB THEORY OF RELATIVITY

Diane Runnels types in a Web address on her terminal at Clas Computers in Cape.

A few more keystrokes.

A point, a click, a point, a click.

On the screen appears the image of the original land patent of one of her ancestors, Asher Pipkin.

Genealogical research has changed a lot in the Information Age. Used to be, to get the information you wanted you pored over heavy hardbound tomes retrieved from the musty vaults of a county courthouse. Or you scrolled through a country mile of newspaper microfilm. Or you wrote a library or historical society or government agency to request the information, then waited by the mailbox for the response.

These methods are still important, but the World Wide Web has, in some instances, made the search for one's family tree much easier.

"It's wonderful," Runnels said. "I just can't imagine anyone doing it (the old) way anymore.... It would be ludicrous."

In the first week she was on the Internet, Dawn Detring of Jackson overcame a serious obstacle in her family research. She was unable to find the name of the mother of an ancestor who came to Cape Girardeau County. But through the Internet she found a distant cousin who was working on that mother's family. Through that cousin and then confirmation through other records, she discovered that mother was a Cherokee Indian.

"That was the best-kept secret in my family," Detring said.

There are a lot of places you can start searching. Perhaps one of the best is www.cyndislist.com, which is a clearinghouse with links to more than 61,000 genealogy sites. About 49,000 of those are categorized and cross-referenced. The dozens of categories range from "Acadian, Cajun & Creole" and "Adoption" to "Wills & Probate" and "Writing Your Family's History."

Even if don't find what you want, you might have an interesting trip across Cyberspace.

Clicking on the "Cemetery and Funeral Homes" category brings up a list of related Web sites. Clicking on the Arlington National Cemetery site will put you in contact with links to Civil War archive sites. Back up and try the Associated Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Seattle, and you find a searchable database of burials. Click on the "Census" category, and you find a multitude of sites that have put census information up. Want to check the residents in Effingham County in Illinois in 1850? There's a site for it.

Reliability and costs

There are limits to what you can do on the Web because of one thing: The information is not always reliable.

Not because of fraud, but because some people may put incorrect information online thinking it to be true. You can get two people with different versions of the same family tree, Runnels said, yet each will "swear and be dare" theirs is the correct one.

That happened with her own family tree, when someone published information on the Internet claiming Runnels' grandmother's name was Elizabeth Virginia.

It wasn't. It was Minnie Virginia.

Mistakes may also creep in as the information is typed up. There are "tons of errors" out there, Detring said, adding that that can't be emphasized enough.

"You can't just go and download your family tree for four generations," she said.

Still, Detring estimated using the Internet can cut down on research time by 25 percent, perhaps more, because you can find out what county an ancestor came from. That is almost as important as the person's name because once you know where they're from, you know where the records are that may mention them.

Many sites are free, at least up to a point. Others charge a subscription fee from the get-go. The yearly rates are usually cheaper than subscribing by the month, but if you know you can do all your research in one or two months, it might be cheaper to go monthly. (Another thing to remember you have to unsubscribe from sites, else they will keep charging your credit card.)

On the other hand, if you can download a scanned image of a land deed, that saves you the $10 it would cost to write the government for a copy.

Organization

Runnels recommended that someone starting research online get a software program to handle genealogy information. She herself has used BrothersKeeper for years. FamilyTreeMaker is another good program, and using that program will get you more access at some sites than if you didn't have it, she said. Legacy is a "fantastic" program, though she expects the manufacturer will be bought out by FamilyTreeMaker.

Whatever program you use, it's all for the same reason a software program will let you manage genealogical information much, much more easily.

Runnels' own database comprises 20,093 names and 7,226 marriages.

She typed in her granddaughter's name, Lainey Brown, and a spreading tree of ancestors with Lainey as the root popped up on the screen.

If she typed in the number 19,000, Lainey, the 19,000th name in her database, would again pop up, again with ancestors provided.

Detring also said a software program was, if not necessary, at least a great convenience. She has two filing cabinets of data at home, but you can find what you want more quickly on the computer, saving you the time of thumbing through a drawerful of pages.

Another advantage with computers is that you can trade entire databases with people via e-mail, rather than by photocopying and mailing.

Neither Runnels nor Detring had a best strategy for starting genealogical research.

"Just jump in and do it," Detring said.

A few sites to get you started

www.cyndislist.com -- A warehouse of 61,000 genealogy Web sites. Most are categorized.

www.familysearch.org -- The site of the Church of Latter-day Saints. You can search by last name with or without first name and with or without parents' names. You can also search for birth, death and marriage records.

www.kindredkonnection.com -- This site has a database of 374 million names, searchable by last name.

www.rosecity.net -- Cape Girardeau's Web site has several links to area genealogy sites, which in turn have links to other Missouri and federal sites.

www.genforum.genealogy.com -- A genealogy newsgroup site. You can post questions to the group.

ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com -- This has the Social Security Death Index, 63 million names updated monthly. You don't need to know the person's Social Security number. Hits provide birth and death dates, last residence (though not always) and the state the SSN was issued.