Library Resources

One of the best resources you have is your local public library.  Most have some kind of genealogy room.  Some even host the local genealogical society.

The three libraries I am most familiar with are the ones I will talk about today.  They are the Boone-Madison Public Library, Ritchie County Public Library, and Martinsburg Berkeley County Public Library.

Boone-Madison Public Library is a special place for me.  It is the place I first found others looking into their family trees.  And as it happened they were looking at different branches of my tree.  I learned the basics of genealogy there.  The library is also home to the Boone County Genealogical Society, the group I went to when I first started.  They were, and are, a bunch of knowledgeable, helpful people.

Ritchie County Public Library moved into a new building last year.  The have a nice "genealogy room" on the second floor.  They mostly have local genealogy items, but they do have a pretty good selection of West Virginia historical books.  I even found a book on Pocahontas County there that has some of my relative in it.  If you need documents from the courthouse, it is only about 3 blocks away.  So if your are in Ritchie County, it is a good place to make your base.

This leaves my current local library, Martinsburg Berkeley County Public Library.  Both the library itself and it's online resources make it a good tool for genealogical research.  They have a nice genealogical/WV history room and a fairly large selection of books about West Virginia.  They have a library subscription to Ancestry.com that you can use on a PC in the library if you have a library card.  Using your library card you can also access Heritage Quest's US Census database and images even from home.  The library also has a link to WV Info Depot, which allows free access to archived newspapers in West Virginia, the US and some foreign papers as well.  Contact me if you want the ID and password, or better yet, go to your local library in West Virginia and ask them for it.

The library is one of the best and cheapest sources for a genealogist, not only in the information they contain, but in the work space they provide.  And happy, helpful librarians done hurt either.