The most-used room for genealogy research in the National Archives Building in Washington, D. C., is the Microfilm Reading Room. Federal census records, World War I draft registration cards, ship passenger lists, Revolutionary War service and pension records, and Freedmen’s Bureau branch records all appear on microfilm here. Many of these microfilmed records have also been digitized through the NARA’s partnerships with FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, and Footnote.com.But what if you do not know what reel to examine? Or suppose you would like to locate a proper citation for an online record image that originated on these microfilms? Maybe you just want more information about what is contained on a certain microfilm series. For these sorts of questions, you can find your answers on the National Archives’ website, but it is a bit tricky to locate.
The microfilm catalog on Archives.gov is connected to their online ordering system. This will throw many first-time or beginning researchers off.
In the bottom right corner of the home page, there is a navigation box, as pictured here. You will want to click on the link labeled “Order Online.” Don’t worry; you don’t have to buy anything!
From the Order Online page, you will see a link labeled “Proceed to Request & Order Reproductions,” in the section marked “Buy Reproductions & Microfilm.” Click this link. Once again, you will not actually have to buy anything.
A new window will open in your browser. Click on the button labeled “Microfilm.”
On the new page, the upper left hand box contains everything you need. If you know the publication number for which you would like more information, type it here. But this also allows you to search by keyword – for example, “census,” or “freedmen.” You can also click the “Browse NARA’s Microfilm Catalog” button to look at a list at all of the Archives’ microfilm publications, in numerical order.
Once you have located the series of interest, you can click on the link, and it will take you to a “Publication Summary” page.
This page gives you some brief details on the microfilm series, such as the Publication Number and Title, the Record Group Number and Title, the number of reels contained in the series, and some related keywords, as well as which Archives branches possess the microfilm series for viewing. But for those who want more information, on the right hand side of the screen is an Adobe PDF button, with a link labeled, “View Important Publication Details.” When you click on this link, a PDF file will open. This file is a gold mine.
These PDF files often contain an amazing amount of information about the series of interest, including background information about the agency that created the records, a reel-by-reel table of contents, and sometimes even a name index! These files can be saved to your local computer as well, so that you have easy access to them.
And, of course, if you would like to purchase a copy of the microfilm, you can do that here as well. Otherwise, just close this window, and you should be able to go right back to the Archives website to continue searching. Once you have this information, another good idea to obtain more information is to locate archived articles from the Archives’ official magazine, Prologue. Many older articles have been written using most of the Archives’ microfilmed records, and many of these are available online. To find a relevant article, try searching for “Prologue” and the microfilm series number or relevant keywords.
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