So you want to do some digging . . .

The internet has hugely opened up the world of family research beyond old-school microfiche, and DNA testing has opened it further.

But no matter what the advances, Colleen Osmond and Christine Barbour, of the Hamilton branch of the NZ Society of Genealogists, both stress the importance of verifying all information.

Osmond says there are a few big well known websites like ancestry. com, which Hamilton library members can access free for a limited time.

But she prefers familysearch.org because it helps narrow down the search. ‘‘The more details you give, the less results it will come up with.’’

She also recommends Archway, from the National Archives, which may cough up the likes of land transaction records and wills.

Council records and electoral rolls can also be useful, she says, along with shipping records. Put those together with births, marriages and deaths records and you can start to seriously join some dots. Osmond, for instance, discovered her great-greatgrandfather travelled from England to Canada where he met his wife. They had a child before moving to Ireland where they had another child, then back to England. Two further children later, they migrated to New Zealand.

Most records have gone online, Barbour says, though she points out the white pages have lost a lot of value. That still leaves Facebook as an important tool. And of course the phone: ‘‘You ring different aunts, cousins, whatever, and get a phone number, and ring them, who can tell you things.’’

Occasionally a family member won’t be interested, but most are helpful, she says.

Both women say PapersPast can open up a lot of information. But while births, deaths and marriages have also gone online, they have a limitation, Osmond points out. To find a birth, it will need to be at least 100 years ago, marriage 80 years ago, and death 50 years ago. ‘‘Anything more recent than those, you still need to use the microfiche.’’ She has found a lot from using the microfiche records held at Hamilton Central Library.

Osmond also mentions Legacy Family Tree software, which enables people to build an electronic family tree without having to share it publicly on a website.

Multiple organisations offering a DNA test service, Barbour says. In April this year, using such a service, she discovered a close match, a second cousin once removed. ‘‘And I thought, where does she come from, because I had no idea. I tell you, I’ve got thousands of people in my tree, and generally I can tell you where they come from.’’

She emailed the woman and discovered she had been born to an extremely young mother and didn’t know her paternal side. ‘‘So, of course, there again, I can’t resist it, I found her father eventually. I found that he died 40 years ago of cancer, and he was in my family tree.’’

For those wanting to research their family history, members of the Hamilton branch are available to provide assistance on Thursday mornings at the central library.

Be warned, though, should you decide to take your own steps into the genealogical world. ‘‘I do 12 hours a day,’’ Barbour says. ‘‘It’s a bit addictive.’’

The branch has 112 members, holds regular meetings and will next year mark 50 years.