I wish I could keep up with everything in the great big genealogy universe, but I can't. So, when fellow historical society member, Judie Huff, shared the news with me that PERSI, aka, the Periodical Source Index, was now back home and searchable for free at the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, IN, I couldn't wait to share the news. You see, for a number of years, to search PERSI you had to be a subscriber to whatever paid genealogy website was hosting PERSI at the time.
The Genealogy Center of the ACPL houses the second largest collection of family history related materials in the United States. PERSI is the crown jewel of this collection. Created in 1986, PERSI is an index to over 11,000 magazines, journals, newsletters, etc., related to genealogy and history. Included are publications from the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and Ireland, To date the index contains over 2.7 million indexed entries and that number continues to grow.
When you go to search PERSI at
https://www.genealogycenter.info/persi/ you can search by surname, keyword, location, or about research techniques. A very important thing to remember about using the Surname search is this. Only articles with a particular surname or person in the article's title included in this portion of the index. While using the Surname search is valuable, you are likely to find more information on your ancestors by using one of the location searches and drilling down to where the family of interest lived, e.g., United States > Missouri > Iron County.
Now, before you get too excited, remember, PERSI is ONLY an index to the articles, not the actual articles. But, once you have the article and publication information, there are multiple ways to retrieve a copy of the article. You can go through
ACPL and request up to six articles at a time. The fee for this service is currently $7.50 per order form, which is paid up front, and an additional 20 cents per page copied that will be billed to you. Alternatively, you can plan a visit to the Genealogy Center of the ACPL and make your own copies. Using the PERSI index, you could create your own list of the articles you want to copy well in advance of your trip to Fort Wayne and save a lot of time in the process. Of course, these days, you need to check first to make sure the library is actually open. You can also find the publications in libraries closer to home and go there to make your copies or write to the publisher of the periodical about obtaining a copy. You might also be able to obtain the publication through interlibrary loan.
The bottom-line, if you have never used PERSI, you need to give it a look. I can't even begin to tell you how far articles that I have found in PERSI have helped me in my own research. Not only that, but when those articles reference the original records, other potential new sources are also revealed. Good luck and happy hunting! Thanks again, Judie!