First, books are available with indexes, abstracts, and other information for the many counties and states you have to research. There are histories of the counties, cities, and towns. In these many first settlers and pioneers are discussed. One of them could be your family member. Are you looking for a marriage date in Virginia or Texas? It might be in one of the books in our library or another library nearby.
Second, microfilm is available on many subjects. Our library has newspapers from the area like Plano Star Courier, McKinney Democrat and McKinney Courier, Garland News, and Dallas Morning News. We have Texas County Tax rolls that cover up to 1910. We have many Collin County records covering birth, death, marriage, probate, and courts. We also have microfilm for other states such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Many libraries have microfilm that might have original records that will help you. One of our microfilm machines allows you to save the image to a flashdrive.
Third, librarians and assistants that can lead you in the right direction to find your ancestors. Have you hit a brickwall? Maybe we can give you some ideas of how to break it down. We can also lead you to other libraries that will be able to help you.
We provide Interlibrary Loan. This way you can borrow books or microfilm that we don’t have. Often, the libraries will not loan books but they will do a look up and photocopy information for you. Newspapers and vital records are available on microfilm from other libraries. We could help you locate them and borrow to use here.
We offer classes that include “Genealogy 101: How to get started”, “Genealogy 201: How to find birth, marriage, death records”, “How to search the databases”, “Courthouse records”, “How to find your immigrant ancestor”, and several others. We have support organizations that can help you–Collin County Genealogical Society and Genealogy Friends of Plano Libraries, Inc.
We also provide links to databases such as Ancestry Library Edition, Footnote, Dallas Morning News Archives, JSTOR, and the TexShare databases (Heritage Quest Online). Next week these will be discussed further.
Thank you for having these services and for keeping up informed of these services. Normally, only academics has access to these things. Again, thank you.