Week 5's topic of "At the Library" is well fitting for me as I spent 37 years working in academic libraries. I started as a Student Assistant at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada while I was still in high school and continued while a student at that university. When I dropped out of university in my second year, I was hired on in a staff position. During the next 10 years, I worked my way up through the ranks to a position of Circulation Co-ordinator of one of the libraries. A few years later, I took a Leave of Absence to relocate with my husband in Regina, Saskatchewan and was hired to work in the Interlibrary Loans section of the John Archer Library at the University of Regina. One of my junior positions at Queen's University had been in the Interlibrary Loans unit of the Health Sciences Library. Needless to say my workplaces have served me well when I became obsessed with genealogy.
Working in an academic library system in the 1990s, I was in place to be on board with the explosion of personal computers and the internet as well as having the advantage of purchasing computers for home through payroll deduction. The Documents unit of Queen's University Libraries is a depository for Government of Canada publications and the collection included microfilm of the Canadian census. I spent many lunch breaks and after work time cranking through reels of microfilm. The creation of Ancestry.ca was a God send to me as I could use its search engine to locate an image of the census rather than cranking the reels and then download that image to my computer. The microfilm readers I had access to at that time were not automated nor were they attached to a printer. So when I had found an ancestor, I would have to hand write the information and then enter the data into my computer at home in the evening.
The Special Collections Unit at Queen's University houses various print documents relevant to genealogy research for Ontario. If I wasn't checking microfilm in Documents, I was checking the Marriage records for Upper Canada, Canada West and Ontario in Special Collections. Again, this pre-dates the availabilty of Ontario marriage records on Ancestry.
Working in Interlibrary Loan units gave me an understanding of how easily one may be able to obtain desired articles and books not available at one's home library. I also understand the reason why not all material is available via Interlibrary Loan. The library housing certain information has an obligation to have the material readily available to its prime users: university's staff and students in the case of an academic library and taxpayers at a public library. In other words, library are not willing to loan Reference material to local patrons and definitely not via Interlibrary Loans which could make the item unavailable to others for at least a month. Such material needs to remain in-house so it is available to patrons. If extra copies, or older edition, of a book is also in the library's collection, it may be available to loan. But has budgets continue to shrink, there is less and less duplication.
Although my only experience of providing reference assistance to faculty and staff was the years I was Co-ordinator of the Biology branch library, I am well aware of the importance to sourcing one's research and citing sources. That knowledge had started in high school as one of my history teachers went out of his way to prepare us for writing university papers. After having to return to the public library and try to relocate the books I had previously returned without properly recording the bibliographic information. Never happened again: when I picked up a book, I recorded the details of the book; when I recorded a fact, I recorded the page number. This practice has served me well for genealogy researching.
Another advantage of being a staff member at a university is access to online databases - either in the library, or accessing from home. I was fortunate when I took an early retirement, I was able to retain my work email and have befinited greatly by accessing online newspapers.
Although I have never worked in a public library, I have certainly been a patron of my local public library. When Ancestry started their Canadian domain, I subscribed to that but was reluctant to spend the extra for the American or British domains and made use of the Ancestry Library Edition at the public library. But I quickly found it wanting: one had to book time on the library computer (or take one's chance of availability) and there was a two hour maximum (unless no one else had booked time on the computer). And at this point in time, the only way to download a found image was to 3.5 inch floppy! Do you know how many floppies I needed to take to the library each trip? So I soon "bit the bullet" and upgraded my Ancestry subscription to World Deluxe and have never looked back. I don't make daily purchases of coffee at my local coffee shop, so I use those funds to be able to download relevant records on the spot to my own computer as I research from the comfort of my home any time day or night - not when the public library is open and has an available computer.
In my hometown, the local branch of the Ontario Genealogy Society housed their collection in a wing of the main branch of the public library. Before I moved away, I spent many a Saturday aand/or Sunday going through non-circulating books and entering data into my laptop. How I wish I had a portable scanner back then. I did make use of my scanner when I did a "field trip" to the Herkimer County Historical Society's Library. After a full day, mostly scanning, I left with a lot of documentation, but only got through one folder of my Schell ancestors. Unfortunately, I've never been able to make a return visit.
During my time in Regina, not only did I make use of relevant genealogy material at the univerisity library, I was also a frequent visitor to the public library as well as the Saskatchwan Genealogy Society's library located in Regina. The Regina Public Library had a Prairie History Room full of genealogy material and the Librarian of that room co-ordinated a series of genealogy workshops during the winter months each Saturday. One workshop was a field trip to the Regina location of the Saskatchewan Archives where we were given a behind the scenes tour. The SGS Library housed a lot of Ontario related material as many prairie settlers had originated, or passsed through, Ontario before arriving in Saskatchewan. My genealogy research greatly benefitted from my two years in Regina.
Obviously I am a great supporter of libraries for genealogy research. Having experienced doing research before resources were readily available on the internet, I can appreciate the benefits of online research. But one needs to realize that
not everything has been digitized and does not need to be instantaneous. The thrill can be in the hunt. There are also benefits to having access to a librarian or library technician/clerk. (Yes, not all library employees are librarians.) Google (or Bing, etc) is not a true replacement for a reference person. For simple questions, maybe, but for more indepth assistance one needs the human interaction. By talking to a volunteer at the Herkimer County Archives Library, I was handed a large file folder of acticles and documents pertinent to my ancestor. If I had tried to investigate the library on my own, I would have wasted a lot of valuable time - even in the one room research facility. Library staff are able to offer valuable, informational workshops for a nominal fee, or even free, as it is considered part of their regular job and not their source of income. Not that I'm discounting the value of genealogy professionals and the work that they do, but if one is lucky enough to live in an area that offers genealogy workshops at their local library, go for it!
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!
No comments:
Post a Comment