When researching our family genealogy, we will all reach a point where we feel we have exhausted the records that are available to us. . . and maybe we have. But when we reach this point in our research we should not yet throw in the towel, but rather start to think outside of the box. You see, chances are, even if you feel like you’ve reached the end of the road, it is still likely that some records exist somewhere which name your ancestor that you have never considered or maybe have considered too inconvenient to pursue. Additionally, there may be resources out there which may NOT directly name your ancestor but could help to give a much fuller picture of their life and times. So how do you learn what records are out there, and perhaps more importantly, if you are geographically separated from those records, how do you go about accessing them? Here are a few tips I’ve learned over my years as a genealogist.