Back at Last - Have You Thought About Your Library As A Resource?

I had a long vacation and just did not get back into the blog writing groove.
Have you thought about the resources your local and university library have for you. I use them a lot.
Local Library Resources -
My local library - King County Library System in Washington has hundreds of data bases. Many that with your library card id you can just log in and use. A few that because of licensing you have to go in to use.
The is usually a category list and many databases under each one. Of particular note is:
Ancestry.com (you usually have to go to the library to use this one)
Newspaper archives including state wide newspapers not found elsewhere.
Obituaries
Heritage Quest
New York Times Historical Articles 1857-2001
19th Century Newspapers
World Wide Vital Records
American Indian History and Culture
and many more sources.

In the University of Washington Library you can search on the UW collections but also on universities world wide. I have found this particularly useful for college yearbooks and masters theses.

The best part of most library websites is the ability to ask a librarian a question and receive a fairly quick response. Some libraries even have chat facilities. They can tell you where to find resources - I recently found that there are commencement lists of UW classes, they will usually look things up and copy material for you - sometimes there is a small fee for material and very occasionally for hourly cost, but they have always been very reasonable.

Most libraries maintain obituaries of people in their area. The Rochester NY library for example has life event lists where volunteers have taken births, deaths and marriages from newspapers and made a large database. It is worth contacting a library in an area you are working on to see what additional resources they have and if you are not a member of that library ask if there is a way you can get access to the information.

Librarians are for the most part great researchers. Use their skills.

Until next time.
Diane