The Library Is Your Free Genealogy Center
Do you want to trace your family tree without having to pay for a subscription?
Explore your ancestry without hitting a paywall.
There’s something about the urge to know where we came from and who came before us that’s innately human. We want to know how we got to the place we are now, and the struggles that our ancestors overcame to get us here. For many people, this human desire for knowledge and understanding has led them to study their genealogy.
If you’re interested in studying your own family tree, the library can help! Here’s why you should set up camp in the library to use it as your genealogy center.
The Problem with Genealogy Databases
There are plenty of people who’d love to learn more about their ancestry, but there’s one main problem with typical genealogy databases: they’re prohibitively expensive. The majority of detailed genealogical archives you can find online are locked behind steep subscription fees. While genealogy is certainly fascinating to research, let’s face it: Very few (if any) things are interesting enough to justify those kinds of costs.
Unfortunately, this puts many people off of an interesting topic that could one day become a full-fledged hobby. If you’re discouraged by the price tag on most ancestry databases, though, there’s no need to worry. Your public library may offer you access to genealogical information for free.
Sign the pledge to vote for libraries!
Libraries and Genealogy Services
Like everything else they do, public libraries offer important genealogy information to curious patrons like you at absolutely no cost. They’ll typically do this in one of two ways. The first is granting access to one of the online databases we mentioned earlier. While the subscription fees can be prohibitively expensive to an individual, public libraries can often afford large-scale plans that give their entire facility access.
Visit your local library’s website, give them a call, or just talk to a librarian in person to check whether or not they have access to a genealogy database. If they do, simply visit the library, use the login information they provide, and explore the database to find the information needed to piece together your family tree.
The second method libraries use is providing access to their in-house archives. This isn’t quite as common as online databases, as not all libraries have genealogical archives to begin with. However, if any library near you has these archives, we’d strongly encourage you to use them, especially if your family has lived in the same area for a long time.
You’re most likely to find in-house archives at state libraries, so you may not live near one unless you’re in the state capital, but if you’re ever within striking distance, be sure to pay a visit!
Take action today to support libraries!
Libraries to Check Out
So, which libraries have access to genealogical databases? We’d be here for a while if we tried to list all of them, but here are a few examples:
- The Texas State Library and Archives Commission allows librarygoers to access countless historical records through their archives, including genealogy. If your family has lived in Texas for several generations, you’re sure to find a wealth of information.
- The Mid-Continent Public Library in Missouri offers patrons free access to Ancestry Library Edition. Your library may have the same access, so be sure to check!
- The DeKalb County Public Library in Georgia, like many others, offers access to HeritageHub. HeritageHub can be used to search obituaries, death notices, and the like.
- The Free Library of Philadelphia offers a large and constantly growing list of genealogical resources on its site.
As we mentioned, this isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, so we’d encourage you to look in your area for similar resources.
If you’d like to learn more about the library’s role in providing Americans access to important historical information, feel free to visit our Lifestyle feature page today!
Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries.
#librarymarketers: Enjoy this story? Want to use it for your library newsletter, blog, or social media? This article is published under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International and is free to edit and use with attribution. Please cite EveryLibrary on medium.com/everylibrary.
This work by EveryLibrary is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0