As we head into summer here in the NCGenWeb project we have been busy working on resources to help facilitate your family history research.    Here are two new resources for the NCGenWeb Project that you should explore:

• NCGenWeb Digital Bookshelf — brings together full-text books available for free online that have relevance to NC genealogy.   Initially, this focuses on books at the Internet Archive, but over time will expand to be more inclusive.  Check the pages for resources for your county of interest.   The inspiration for the layout of the site is drawn from the ever-so-useful deathindexes.com.  Expect to see more items added in the upcoming months. Subscribe to the blog feed to stay up-to-date.

• North Carolina Yearbook Index – yours truly graduated this past May and as graduation approach I began to direct my available free time to complete phase I of the North Carolina Yearbook Index.   We’ve posted before about the North Carolina yearbooks being added to the Internet Archive by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.  To date, hundreds of yearbooks from the 1800-present have been added.   However, even though it is great to have access to such a wonderful resource, finding all those students from any particular county is a daunting task. Therefore, I created an index of students (mostly seniors at this point) listed in these yearbooks.  Phase I’s focus of this project are on the 1930 and earlier yearbooks. To date, more than 16,000 names are in the searchable database.   Phase II will include the integration of 1931-1940 yearbooks – look for more news within the next couple of months.  Look for county-specific links to be added to various NCGenWeb project pages during the upcoming weeks.