Written by: Nancy Massey, Indiana Room Coordinator
November’s genealogy roundtable was all about genealogy gratitude. In keeping with HEPL’s Season of Gratitude celebration now through January 15, 2021. I thought I would share some of the genealogy gratitude discussion with you.
We are grateful for the generosity of Ancestry.com and ProQuest for allowing HEPL and other public libraries to offer our cardholders remote access to Ancestry Library Edition through the end of 2020. Ancestry Library Edition is an awesome database and to search it at home is even more awesome for our genealogy patrons.
We are grateful for HEPL’s subscriptions to the other genealogy databases, which are available through remote access. These would include my personal favorites, Newspapers.com, Fold3, and Heritage Quest Online. Check them out at our Genealogy and Local History Databases page. The only genealogy database that is still in-library use is American Ancestors which leads me to another gratitude mention.
We are grateful that the Indiana Room, which houses a specialized collection of invaluable genealogy and local history resources, is open by appointment during library hours. Call ahead to make an appointment and we will be ready to assist you as you search American Ancestors or any other genealogy database. You can print any information you find on your ancestors. Our newspaper microfilm is available. More importantly, our Family Histories File is available and that is not online. However, you can access the index to those files to see if there is a file available on your Hamilton County ancestors on the Indiana Room page.
We are grateful for the Indiana Room webpage which can be accessed from home. It has several links to online resources including the Sanborn maps and the HEPL collection on Indiana Memory. If you haven’t accessed our virtual Indiana Room, now is always a good time to find some very useful resources and information. Just scroll up and down the page to find links to some great resources.
We are grateful for our ancestors, the lives they lived, the choices they made, and who inspire us to find out more about them so we can know more about ourselves and from where we came. Knowing how to get started researching our ancestors is helpful. We have a class for that! Our Eight Step Approach to Genealogy class on January 9 is a great way to discover (or rediscover!) the joy of genealogy research and to see what is new and now available online to help you in your ancestor hunt.
As for me, I am grateful for genealogy patrons who are new to this wonderful hobby and who ask questions about getting started. I am grateful for the experienced genealogists whose hobby became an obsession. They are most willing to share their experience with those who are new. This is why I am grateful for the genealogy roundtable which meets the second Tuesday of each month at 2pm. New and experienced researchers gather for an hour virtually to share and discuss a different topic each month. On December 8, we will discuss Journaling for Your Descendants (won’t they love to know how you are dealing with the Covid crisis!) and on January 12, we will discuss Genealogy Goals for 2021 and share news about any upcoming virtual genealogy conferences and webinars to inspire and stimulate our desire to hunt ancestors. You will need to register for the roundtables so that we can send you an invite to join us. This an informal genealogy discussion group and we would love to have you join us.
There were so many other mentions of genealogy gratitude ranging from new technology to make more resources available online, as well as, organize our research to family members who are so willing to share their memories, photos, information, and fabulous family stories.
So I have to ask: What is on your genealogy gratitude list?