A Town Without a Library is like a Body Without a Brain.

I love Libraries. They are my number one resource when looking for what is available in a small town.  I always stop and visit when driving in an unknown area to me to see what they have.  I had the following experience when visiting the Fremont County Library in Landers, Wyoming.  I arrived with only 30 minutes to research in their genealogy department. They had a wonderful Wyoming collection.  Because of a small staff, they were unable to be with me, the books are locked in cases to protect the collection.  They would have to come pull a book, leave me in the room.  I would then have to go get them, and do the process over again.  It has to be an awful challenge to them, leaving what they are doing and helping in another area.  They were nice, and tried as best they could to be helpful.  It was evident time was not on my side, I told them what I was trying to accomplish regarding my great grandfather.  They immediately said you need to visit the new museum.  They called on the phone and found that it would be open another hour, so they gave me the directions. Their help ended up with my finding out where the burial records were sent for my great grandfather.
A Town without a Library is like a body without a brain.  
Now you know why I back the Support Your Local Library... Read on.

FIND A LIBRARY NEAR YOU

FIND YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY
INFORMATION INTEGRATED
WITH GOOGLE MAPS

DATA SOURCE:  IMLS

Sources:

• ALA Library Fact Sheet
• Bureau of Labor Statistics - Data
• Bureau of Economic Analysis
• Northwestern University Libraries information
• MIT Library Data
• Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Census.gov - Public Libraries in the U.S. 2009
• ALA - Funding Technology Access Study
• Volunteer Match - Engaging Volunteers
• Pew Internet - Libraries, patrons & ebooks

• ALA Quotable Facts - American Libraries
• Harrison County Library - Facts and Figures
• Stanford University - Library Facts
• Library of Congress - Fascinating Facts
• Libraries for Real Life
• Houston Library - Facts
• Library Journal - Annual Library Budgets Survey
• ALA - State of American Libraries Report - 2012
• NationalService.gov - Benefits of Volunteering
• ALA - Library Operating Expenditures

Thank you to StateStats.org

for providing this infographic and other free web guides and tools.

Serving Others.

Clayton Library for Genealogical Research in Houston. Having an activity on how to preserve photos. 

Today, I was having some fun on Pinterest.  It is a place I save things I want to go back to later. I have repinned some provident living things that I knew would be helpful for making sure I would not be found wanting.  In doing so, I began to see a trend of people posting things to help themselves against disasters.  I did not see any one posting things that would be serving others, thus I have started a board called "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You".  I decided to start sharing and keeping places that people help each other.  Here, I will emphasize Genealogy service.  I can not share one of my favorite sources twitter, because it is too wide a river of information. There are many who share helpful genealogy information all the time. I give a big shout out to all my gen friends on Twitter.  I will share some Genealogy helps I have come across.
Facebook has a new version of RAOGK  They also have many genealogy research communities and research groups.  If you are interested in helps for Genealogy Societies, and tips on research, We Tree  is an example of genealogy service.  There are several technological helpers in the blogging genealogy community 4YourFamilyStory ,  Modern Software Experience , and geneabloggers.com are examples.  If you just Google 'genealogy societies bulletin', or something similar, you will find a wealth of genealogy societies that have websites and information on what they have to share.  I only shared a very small example of awesome bloggers of genealogy helps.
I am glad I am in the genealogy world. I love the way they help us learn, and research. It is uplifting to watch how they encourage each other to continue their research. Other areas of society would do well to watch and learn from them on how to build people up.
If you are interested in helping this link is about volunteering.  Check with  your local genealogy library they can use volunteers too, as their budgets may have been cut reducing their staff.

Treasure Chest Thursday

When I started my family history research, libraries were my treasure chest.  They still are to a certain extent.  I love packing up my notebooks, and driving into the Genealogy library of Montgomery or Clayton Library of Houston.  I know that there are so many pages of books that I haven't even scraped the edges of.  My favorite thing to do is to walk down the aisle of the State I am interested in and let a book reach out an grab my attention.  So many times, in an obscure place of the book, will be a clue or even an answer about my ancestor.

Today, I have a new treasure chest that I love and have to watch out that it doesn't become instead a Pandora's box and overcome my senses and time.  It is the internet, twitter, Google search, Ancestry,
and Family Search to name a few.   Tonight, I received a treasure from The Olive Tree Genealogy .  Well technically it was Twitter, Lorine had twittered a piece about finding ships lists.  When I went to look, I was brought to remeberance of Stephen P Morse's One-Step-Webpages for searching the ship arrivals and lists.  I love that site! It had been bookmarked on my computer that crashed (a good reason for back up [Wiggling of eyebrows and a big smile]) and I had forgotten it because my focus has not been on immigration.  I have been caught up in the Mexican War.  Thanks Lorine! And a great big thanks to those that have developed such a wealth on information links for genealogy.