Tracking down family roots.?

Question:

Tracking down family roots.?

I've always wanted to do something like this, and I have no clue where to start.

My paternal grandparents are from Italy, and they died before I came around. My maternal grandparents are from Ireland, and my grandfather had a stroke and couldn't communicate on deeper levels, possibly even didn't remember. He died a few years ago. And my grandmother refuses to discuss things like that. At this stage in her life she can't remember much, so even if she would talk the details are probably foggy.

Is there any way to use the internet to get family records? Any advice you can give me to get started?

Is there any way I can do this keeping costs at a minimum? I'm curious, but not so curious that I will invest a bunch of money into an online website that might not even work.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: There are web sites, Ancestry.Com, Genealogy.Com, FamilySearch.org. However there are family trees on these sites. Please take the information you find as clues not as absolute fact, even though you might see the same information over and over. There is a lot of copying being done and a lot of the information is not documented.
Check to see if there are any family bibles with records. Get copies of the death certificates of your grandparents that have died. They usually provide you with the name of both of the deceased's parents, including the mother's maiden name and place of birth.
I have a friend of Italian descent. She has gone to the National Archives in Washington more than once and has found a lot of records on her family.

Good luck