Allen County Public Library – Genealogy Mecca – My First Visit

Time for some library fun!  Can “library” and “fun” be in the same sentence?  I think so if you enjoy hours and hours of researching a library, rich with genealogical resources. Like the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN.  It’s the second largest genealogy library in the United States, and the biggest collection in a public library.

This library has been on my bucket list for over 10 years, and I finally drove the four hours to Fort Wayne this past weekend.  I belong to a genealogy group, CAGGNI, which planned a three day, two night outing, Thursday-Saturday. Besides reserving library time and tour, the group arranged the hotel, which was just two blocks away. We received a group hotel discount, free breakfast and free parking. We had a speaker come for a CAGGNI meeting who gave ideas on how to best use the library about 2 months before. She suggested looking at YouTube for videos with more ideas, which I did.

ACPL! What a wonderful place to research! I prepared a couple of weeks in advance by going on the library’s website, aptly named: http://www.genealogycenter.org/  where I used the ACPL catalog to find books I’d want to use in my research. I mostly searched by place names or surnames. Call me old fashioned, but I printed out the list of books I wanted for each location and brought these lists with me. I had about a dozen subjects for which I printed out the books titles and call numbers.

On Thursday, after checking into the hotel, I walked two blocks to the ACPL arriving at about 2:30 PM. With me was my laptop, the lists, a laptop lock, notebook and plenty of pens. Using the map that the speaker provided (there are plenty at the library too, on pink paper – very helpful) I took a cart (a suggestion from the YouTube video) and filled it with books from Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Found a table, took out my laptop, locked it to a table leg,  and started happily hunting for ancestors. Soon a couple of others from the CAGGNI group joined the table. Then I started seeing other people I recognized scattered throughout the library.

The library is in a modern building with plenty of windows. Most tables have electrical plugs. Allen County Public Library covers a city block and it is large bright. The genealogy information is on the second floor and takes up two large rooms. One houses the microfilm, and books on states east of the Mississippi. In the other room, the biographical genealogies line the large room. There are many city directories, general genealogy books, and books covering states west of the Mississippi and countries outside of the United States.

Thursday night the library is open until a glorious 9:00 PM. Snacking in the lobby on fruit that I’d brought, I and one other club member stayed until closing. I made it through about a third of my book list and had a general idea of where to find the various materials. With the time change, and long summer days, it was still very light outside walking back to the hotel.

The next day the CAGGNI group met at 9:00 AM in the genealogy room for a group photo and a tour, by John Beatty, Genealogy Librarian, whom I recognized from the videos. The website has his impressive resume; he’s worked there since 1984. Dressed in a pressed suit, he gave us a wonderful tour and some interesting historical information.

Some historical highlights are that in the 1960’s a librarian manager who was NOT a genealogist, recognized that there would be more traffic if more genealogy books were added to a collection of under 1000 books they had. His name was Fred Reynolds, and when he left more than a dozen years later, they had thousands of books through some creative ideas. He asked another library, Newberry Library in Chicago, if the ACPL could make copies of their books. The story goes that college students drove station wagons full of books, back and forth between Chicago and Fort Wayne. If I understood correctly, ACPL made two bound copies of out-of-copy-right books, one for ACPL and one for Newberry. It was a win-win situation. Newberry Library, got the fragile book returned, a copy of a fragile book for patrons to use and ACPL received another copy of the book. There was also trading of duplicate books between several libraries.

The library also gives an option to make two free bound copies of someone’s genealogy work, one for the writer/researcher and one for ACPL. They have thousands of these genealogies, in alphabetical order – some wonderful, some not so much. You can use the index at the library to find surnames not listed in the titles.

One other large collection is of Polk City directories. The ACPL worked out an arrangement that they received a copy of many of their city directories starting in the 1960’s. These are mostly used for real estate research but would be helpful to genealogists also.

Other collections include microfilms of ship manifests, censuses, some newspapers and many other items. Several online subscription websites are available if you are in the library – either on a laptop brought in, or on the many computers available for researchers. Of course, ACPL is known for the creation of PERSI. The library has a large collection of many historical and genealogy society periodicals. They are indexed similar to the Periodical Research Guides we used in high school for magazines. PERSI was a creation of ACPL, and the index is currently on http://www.findmypast.com/ . All the periodicals are at the library.

Okay, so back to Friday morning’s tour. After that, we all settled into our chairs and started more research. I and a few others stayed until the library closed at 6:00 PM and then we all had an enjoyable dinner at a local popular restaurant. Yummy and fun to find out what everyone learned.

I stayed at the library until noon on Saturday. Three joyous days of research. Learning so many new pieces of information about my family. The drive back was longer than expected, but I was so happy, it didn’t matter. Also, I stopped and filled the car with gas, which is much cheaper in Indiana than the Chicagoland area. A good tip if you live where gas is expensive.

What else did I learn? I did have one somewhat embarrassing situation with the genealogist librarian help desk. I happened to go to the help desk when Curt Witcher, who is the “face of Allen County Genealogy Library” and its manager was there. My question? Where do I fill money on the plastic card needed to make copies?  I did not see the white machine on the white post. (Can they paint the post another color to make it easier – like green?) So one of the most famous genealogists walked me to the post and showed me how to use it!

I had everything I needed on the trip. But I wish I would have brought some of those sticky notes or tabs to mark pages where I wanted to copy pages. For bookmarks, I ended up tearing blank pages from my notebook instead. Rather messy, but workable. I did not have time to research the PERSI information or the items on microfilm. The former index is on Findmypast, which they have at the library. Eleven pages of information about using the print and microfilm indexes is on the ACPL website at the bottom of pathfinders>getting started page. It really helps you find information that might be hidden otherwise. Currently the link is: http://www.genealogycenter.org/docs/defaultsource/resources/microtextguide.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Or for microfilm only: http://genealogycenter.info/search_microtext.php

Fort Wayne is a family town. Lots of restaurants near the library. If you bring your family, there is a zoo, and science and firefighters’ museums. They have a baseball team, the Tincups that are very popular and well attended. Fireworks on Friday nights. Lots for families to do. Can’t wait to go back!