Those of us who have spent long hours perusing census records on fading microfilm are curious about new ways to access this information quickly, and with a minimum of eye strain.

A smattering of census records is available free on the Web – Aroostook County 1860 being one example. Some of these resources are made from photographs of the records.

Purchasing a membership on a genealogy Web site is one way to gain access to some comprehensive databases, including censuses.

Another path is to purchase records on CD, such as the software available through www.familysearch.org, the Web site maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I first heard about the 1880 U.S. Census on CD from Nancy Battick at last November’s meeting of the Wassebec Chapter of the Maine Genealogical Society in Dover-Foxcroft.

Battick had purchased the set for the entire census, some 50 million names, index included, for $49 plus shipping. I since have purchased the set and like it, and thought I’d ask Battick if we could share her thoughts on using the software.

“It’s an impressive collection of information,” she wrote. “You need to set up – less than 10 minutes – and install viewers for both census and index, but it’s easy and there’s an Install Wizard to help you through.

“The entries are sheer heaven for anyone who’s struggled with microfilm copies of the census – scratched, blurry, often illegible. These are crisp, typed listings and you don’t have to squint – they’re full-size listings with surnames capitalized and your requested subject shows up in bold print. In the full entries you get the person’s name, occupation, sex, married or single, race, age, birthplace and birthplace of father and mother of the individual. That’s a lot of detail.

“I tried it out by looking for a great-grandfather whose census info in 1880 I could never find – and I tried everywhere in Maine. The LDS disk found the entry immediately – luckily, he had a fairly unique name, Wilbert Bragg.

“No wonder I couldn’t find him in Maine. He and my great-grandmother were in Lowell, Mass., working in a cotton mill. And, as a bonus, they had a son with them age 1 year old. This boy is a son no one in the family had heard of – he never shows up again in census, family or Maine Old Cemetery Association records, so probably died young and is buried in Massachusetts.

“I would never have found this entry, and I don’t believe I’d ever have known of young Fred Bragg without this set,” Battick wrote, adding that she considered the set “a wonderful bargain for serious researchers and amateurs alike.”

One thing I like about the set is the ability to look up neighbors and then to scroll easily through the census for that area.

And say you call up a rather common name, and find there are 100 or so listings in Maine, for example. Not to worry. Glance to the right of the listings and peruse the county and town of residence for each person by that name. That info helps me narrow down which of the listings I want to look at further for the whole household.

Another thing. The hard drive on my home computer is a bit persnickety, so I had occasion to call technical support in Utah. The person on the other end of the line was very nice and graciously helped me figure out that I probably needed to wipe down a CD with a damp cloth – and I was a happy camper.

Of course, any time you’re working with records that have been transcribed – making them easier to read – you do sometimes wonder if the transcribers have interpreted census penmanship the way you would yourself.

In particular, I want to look at some of the Franco-American names on original microfilm, misspelled as they often were by non-Franco census takers, and compare them to the way they are listed on the CDs.

I’ll get back to you on that, but certainly I have enjoyed using these CDs.

Back in December I wrote about “New Voices on the Shore, Early Pennsylvania German Settlements in New Brunswick,” a book by Mt. Allison University Prof. Rainer Hempel on German families who had settled in the Moncton and Hillsborough, New Brunswick, area. Names included are Steeves, Lutz, Treitz, Wormann, Sommer, Coppel and Jones.

Hempel has donated a copy of this fine book to the Bangor Public Library, and it is currently in the New Books section. Do look it over.

The Mid-Coast Genealogy Group will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the LDS Church on Old County Road. The program will be a roundtable discussion, and all are welcome to bring a problem they would like to solve. Beginners are especially welcome.

Also, Richard Werner will report on the various workshops he attended at the 10th annual Gentech conference last month, hosted by New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston.

For information, contact Marlene A. Groves at 594-4293.

Send queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or send e-mail to familyti@bangordailynews.net.