Noted Irish genealogist Brian Mitchell recently shared the following announcement about the "Derry Genealogy Centre: 'One stop' shop and point of contact." Derry Genealogy Centre has now added (as of 16 October 2012) an additional 90,000 records to its online database at www.derry.rootsireland.ie. Transcripts of a number of important 17^th, 18^th and 19^th century census returns and census substitutes for city and county of Derry – Hearth Money Rolls of 1663, Protestant Householders Lists of 1740, Religious Census of 1766, Flax Growers Lists of 1796, Tithe Applotment Books of the 1820s and 1830s, and 1831 Census Returns – can now be searched and viewed. Derry Genealogy Centre can now claim to be a 'one-stop' shop and point of contact for anyone tracing roots in North West Ireland. Our database now contains the bulk of pre-1922 civil birth and marriage registers for the city and county of Derry, the early baptismal and marriage registers of 85 churches (the earliest dating from 1642), gravestone inscriptions from 117 graveyards, and census returns and census substitutes dating from 1901 back to 1663. There are two essential aspects to Irish family history research: the search for birth, marriage and death events; and an examination of census returns and census substitutes for the locality (i.e. townland and parish) in which your ancestor resided. The online database of Derry Genealogy Centre allows researchers to search all these important historical sources. We, furthermore, now offer a free advice service to anyone tracing their roots in the North West. Be it a query about place names, surname origins, sources to search or record offices to visit, visitors and locals alike are encouraged to forward their queries to Genealogist Brian Mitchell (genealogy@derrycity.gov.uk). In my opinion, many more roots-motivated visitors will come to Ireland if they can track their ancestors down to a locality from sources on the internet (which Derry Genealogy Centre now offers at www.derry.rootsireland.ie) and/or if they can get a personal response, at no charge, to their queries about their family history. Unless you are a very experienced researcher it requires a great deal of confidence and good luck to visit Ireland and know how and where to go about tracing your roots without some. Some 9 million people worldwide have North West roots. The journey for around 9 million of the Irish Diaspora began in Derry, either in a sailing ship from Ship Quay or from the Transatlantic Tender platform, at bottom of Bridge Street, in the age of the steamships. The potential is there to promote Derry and the North West as a pilgrimage destination, as a journey back to a place that is significant in the family/life story of so many people around the world. In the 1920s and 1930s Derry became the gateway to Ireland for North American visitors owing to links forged by mass emigration together with Derry’s position as a premier Irish transatlantic hub.