By Nancy Massey
Summertime is a great time to start researching your family history. Well, to be honest, anytime is a great time to start. Once you have caught that interest in exploring your family’s history, you might wonder where to begin your journey of discovery. Here are three suggestions to get you started, the Indiana Room at HEPL, HEPL’s genealogy database subscriptions, and HEPL’s genealogy roundtables and classes.
First, visit the Indiana Room. 0ur staff would love to give you a brief tour of the room. While you are here, pick up a copy of our beginner’s kit. It has several great tips to get you started on your family research and master copies of a pedigree chart, family group sheet, and other forms to help you organize your family research. We have a guidebook to the Indiana Room which describes exactly what is in the Indiana Room, such as microfilmed newspapers, cemetery listings, vertical files, city directories, Noblesville yearbooks, Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, and more. We even have a step-by-step guide to researching the history of your home. You will find a genealogy bibliography of books in our collection. We have some great “how-to” books such as my favorite UnPuzzling Your Past by Emily Anne Croom.
You may want to visit the Indiana Room online. You will discover links to genealogy resources, such as digitized county histories, our digitized collection at Indiana Memory, and more.
Next, try out our subscriptions to several genealogy databases. We have access to Ancestry Library Edition and American Ancestors. However, you must come to the library to use those subscriptions. If you are one of our wonderful cardholders, you will have remote access, as well as in-library access, to Fold3, Heritage Quest Online, Newspapers.com, and Archives Unbound to name a few. These databases are great resources.
HEPL is an affiliate library for FamilySearch.org. This means that some of the restricted views you are unable to access from home may be available to you from the library. Keep in mind, not all restricted views will be available and you may still need to access those from the Family History Center on Sunblest Blvd. in Fishers.
Finally, HEPL offers several genealogy classes and roundtables throughout the year. Join us the second Tuesday afternoon each month for an informal discussion on genealogy topics. This monthly group comprised of experienced and novice researchers alike, who discuss a variety of focused topics, share research discoveries and challenges, and offer helpful suggestions when asked. On the third Wednesday morning of each month, HEPL offers a class on various genealogy databases. These in-depth classes review all the features of each database, techniques for effective searching, and some individual assistance after the demonstration as you begin searching for your ancestors using the database. One Saturday a month HEPL offers a genealogy class on various topics, such as An Eight Step Approach to Genealogy, Maps and Migration Trails, Military Records, Female Ancestors, and coming soon Digitizing Your Family Photos. You need to register for the classes but not the roundtables.
There are several reasons to research your family history. You might just be curious, you might want to preserve the family history for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you might want to join a lineage society, or you saw a genealogy show on TV and want to learn more. By the way, we also have some of those genealogy shows on DVDs in the Indiana Room. There is a great display just as you enter the Indiana Room.
Are you ready to research your family’s history? Won’t you come and see for yourself what treasures are housed in the Indiana Room? We look forward to seeing you soon.