August 2008
State Librarian’s Report
Jo Budler
State Librarian

Discover Your Roots: Genealogy and Local History

This spring, Paul Immel, Genealogy Reference Librarian at the State Library of Ohio conducted nine workshops around the state to help small and medium public libraries develop self-directed guides, staff/patron tutorials and web site guides to genealogy and local history holdings.  Jan Haines, Library Development Consultant at the state library and Paul coordinated the workshops which were based on Discover Your Roots: Genealogy and Local History, a Public Library Association strategic planning service response. 

The workshops focused on providing genealogy/local history services with limited staff time and training.  The following ideas are being shared as a follow-up to the workshops to inspire other librarians to confidently provide guidance when assisting users, to develop self-service guides to easily access collections and to determine the information needed on web sites to help genealogy and local history patrons before they arrive at a library to do research.

Photograph: Normal School, Vanceburg, Kentucky (1896 or 1897)

GENEALOGY  WEBSITES - check out these genealogy sources

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