Gladstone City Library’s Local Collection Room houses the local history collection and family history resources, including microform materials; information about our onsite resources is on our History & Genealogy page.
Ancestry Library Edition is available from the desktop icon on any of the public computers in our library branches, including the two in the Local Collection Room.
Below is some information to assist you with your online family history research. There are sites and resources for beginners and advanced researchers. Do you have some family history questions? Click on the orange ‘Ask Us’ button, fill in the form, and we’ll try to point you in the right direction (please allow a few days for a reply and don’t forget to add your contact details).
Family History from Beginner to Advanced
Browse these useful sites for one that suits your needs! Each one has tips, guides, and resources for family history research. Experienced at researching your family history but stuck? These may help you get on your way again.
A Queensland Government page with information about Family and Community History has links to a wide range of sites and services.
State Library of Queensland provides guides and resources to research your family tree.
State Library of Queensland: Resources for Family Hiistorians
Who’s Your Mob? First Nations Family History
AIATSIS includes a Family History kit to help you get started with your research. It contains resources specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family research.
Cora Num’s website has plenty of resource links and helpful guides whether you’re starting out or an experienced family historian.
Judy Webster’s website has some tips on Queensland research. Check out the FAQ pages too!
Genealogical Society Gladstone has an array of links and tips for researching your family tree.
Queensland Family History Society has a wide variety of links for you to begin or continue researching your family tree.
Alternatives to Ancestry.
Tip: use a variety of records and online databases to build facts and to vary search terms.
Some online databases have different records but even those with the same ones index them differently so your search results may vary. Using multiple sources can provide more details to retrieve a different result in a source you have previously searched.
Family Search has information from around the world, including transcriptions from many parish/church records that can help you find the illusive piece of information to help you get back on your family history journey.
FreeBMD as well as FreeCEN and FreeREG are great sources of UK information.
Find My Past is similar to Ancestry but it has some different record sets and also indexes differently. It allows you to do some searching and often see previews of records for free, only charging to access the full record. It even includes Northern Territory records, rarely accessible online!
There are many organisations and institutions that provide access online, in-person, or by request to records that assist with family history. Text Queensland is a great site for researching some historical background information or perhaps discover a family member in the digitised books and records.
