State of Illinois Adds Global Search to Its Genealogy Databases

The state of Illinois has a huge number of available genealogy databases at
http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases.html.
In fact, there are so many that it's kind of a pain to search them. But now the state also offers a global search of all its databases at http://www.sos.state.il.us/GenealogyMWeb/globsrch.html .

The global search form allows you to search by just name, with a very specific format if you want to search by first name and surname. A search for Cooper, John found about twenty results. Here's the thing, though; the results you find are not record listings, but rather a list of databases which contain that name. In this cases the databases listed ranged from "Chicago Police Department Homicide Record (1870-1930)" to "Database of Illinois War of 1812 Veterans" to "Vermilion County Coroner's Inquest Files Index (1908-1956)". Clicking on the database name will lead you to the search page for that database, where you'll have to enter your search again.

So you see that even using this search does not prevent you having to do a lot of individual searching, but at least narrowing down the databases to be search takes care of some of the initial spadework.

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