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19 December 2016

Great Finds at the Library


by Lorna Wallace, Member & Volunteer

As a long-time Desk Volunteer at the California Genealogical Society’s Library, I would like to encourage you to come in and use our wonderful library resources in Uptown Oakland to search for your ancestors. 

Whether you come in-person, or request a “look up” via the Research Committee, our library catalog is the place to start.  If you start with Research, then it's best to send an email first and ask what can be done for you. However, I recommend that you “play” with our catalog, which is part of WorldCat, because you may be surprised to find what we have!

Let's start a search
As an example, if you were interested in the first topic in last month’s eNews, Thanksgiving and Pilgrims, you could search our catalog using the “subject keyword” for “pilgrims” or “Plymouth”, which for me brought up 143 and 79 hits from the catalog, respectively.  Sticking with the theme, when I used “Puritans” as a subject keyword, I got 308 findings which included books, microfilm, maps, and over 200 article titles! 
I hope I’ve given you a reason to try a search in your favorite topics and see what you can discover.  Want to understand what's actually happening when you search our catalog using WorldCat?  Try WorldCat's tutorial page and soon you'll be a search expert.

We hope to see you in the library exploring our great resources in 2017!



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