The Periodical Source Index, produced by the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Centre and billed as the largest subject index to genealogy and local history periodical articles in the world, is being brought home. Here is a summary based on an information session I attended on Tuesday afternoon.
In recent years PERSI has been available through Findmypast. That’s ending. Now it’s available FREE at https://genealogycenter.info/persi/.
It’s not a full-text article search. Neither does it search authors’ names. What it does do is surface articles classified by subject — a surname, location or other subjects. Information returned is the article title, periodical, year published and publisher. There is no link to the actual article, something Findmypast did do for a limited number of articles for which they had access.
If you find an article of interest you may find it at a convenient source, online, or you can order a copy, for a fee, from the ACPL Genealogy Centre.
ACPL folks are still working on the site which is expected to officially launch at the end of the month. Suggestions for improvements already include wildcard and Boolean search capabilities.
PERSI started in 1986. It contains retrospective material and continues to be updated, the work of two full-time cataloguers. Over the years the way subjects are chosen has changed so be flexible in the search terms you use.
Look out for webinars and other communications on PERSI over the next few months.
Good news. Thanks for sharing.