Friday I was able to work in the Local History and Genealogy Department located in the Biloxi Library. The department head is Jane Shambra. Jane showed me around the department and talked about the recovery from Katrina. Many items were lost permanently and new items are always being added to the collection. The library provides assistance with research and instruction for patrons that need help searching on www.ancestry.com, www.genealgybank.com and www.familysearch.com The library has access to these sites and will let you search for your ancestors. They are presently gearing up for the release of the 1940 census as they are expecting huge interest in this census. The Historical Society has asked if they would allow volunteers to use the library to help with indexing the census once it is released.
Part of my day there was spent searching for a birth announcement in January and February of 1940 for a patron trying to prove what year she was born. I was unable to locate the announcement for this particular patron but ran across many interesting items, like a J.C. Penney's ad for "Frocks for $7.95." Some others were quite interesting for grocery stores- .07 cents/lb. for pork. Very interesting.
Since Fridays are short days, I am going back another Friday in April to spend some more time in the department. I do love doing research. In my past jobs I was always the one to do the "digging" when something needed to be found.
Saturday I spent the afternoon going through the Children's collection checking for Newberry Award winners and Coretta Scott King winners. I located what we had in the collection, even found one that wasn't labeled and then gave Liz the list for what we needed to complete the collections, when they are able to order books again.
I will going back Wednesday and Thursday of the coming week as the Magic School Bus is making a visit to the library this week. Let you know how that goes.
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