Finding your Past on our New Genealogy Page

Those of you who are looking for your ancestors at the library (not literally, of course) have one more arrow in your quiver with the Rochester Public Library's new Genealogy & Local History Resources page. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that we have now organized all your arrows into the same quiver on our Genealogy page. This page give you a quick rundown of the library's online resources (staggering amounts of information stored in computer databases for your comfort and convenience) , paper resources (those book and pamphlet things), allows you to search the library's catalog under some popular subject headings and more.

Right smack in the middle of the page are links to our fabulous online databases. What is an online database, you ask? (Well, you probably know, but I'm going to pretend for the moment that you don't.) Harnessing the power of the 21st Century to find records from before the 21st Century (sometimes well before the 21st Century), you can search through records from the Census, Immigration records, Military records, local history books and more without having to look at every single page of every single book (and there are lots of books). The five resources on the Genealogy page include Ancestry, HeritageQuest, New England Ancestors, the Post-Bulletin Archives, and the Olmsted History Center. If you were on the playground picking genealogy databases for a basketball team, these are the five databases you would want on your team.

One valuable resource that sometimes gets overlooked in libraries is the venerable "vertical file". Before we go too crazy with the alliteration, let's translate "vertical file" into "pamphlet file" (i.e. all of those file cabinets behind the adult internet terminals on the second floor with lots of pamphlets in them). They are spectacularly unglamourous file folders jam-packed with useful, often historical information. You can find maps, old programs for historical happenings, photographs, and all sorts of evidence that we existed long before the advent of the internet. The key to finding information in those files is knowing what subject headings to look under. That's where the lists under the "Local History Materials" come in handy. Think of the lists as treasure maps that will lead you to historical treasure. (Please note that no actual treasure - at least of the golden or jeweled variety - rests in our pamphlet file cabinets.) Some lists will also mention some other useful resources in the library.

Another handy feature of the Genealogy page is that you can search our catalog by Geographical Region or look through a specific type of Genealogy Guides with the click of a mouse button. We also have links for the list of Genealogy periodicals (journals and magazines in non-library language). And to round out the resources, there are links that have instructions for requesting an obituary form Rochester newspapers or interlibrary loan of materials. Almost hidden on the bottom of the page is a list of recommended internet sites for both Minnesota and non-Minnesota (i.e. U. S. and international) genealogical resources.

Whew, that's a lot of resources at your fingertips and all without a single exhumation!

RPL @ PLA (Public Library Association) 2008

Rochester sent a large contingent of library staff to attend this year's Public Library Association meeting held at the Minneapolis Convention Center. This four-day (or five-day if you came for pre-conference) event showcased some of the best and brightest that the library world has to offer.

In addition to the hundreds of vendors on the convention center floor (selling more than we could possibly ever buy, but would like to), there were classes held on seemingly every library topic under the sun (except the card catalog - some of you are experiencing a sigh, others a sigh of relief).

Representatives from Reference, Administration, Circulation, Reader Services, Technical Services and Children's all took in various sessions to learn how to be better public libraries. And collected a veritable smorgasbord of bags, books, pens and other giveaways for prizes, thank you gifts and whatnot.

During the opening ceremony, several different people (visiting from other states) kept on remarking about how cold it was here. Every single one seemed to. Repeatedly. Okay: One, the temperature is above freezing and it's just lovely. Two, we get it. It is colder here than where you're from. We really get it. But we're not holding the conference in a tent outside or making you go out to hunt your own food in the arctic tundra, so get over it. Thus endeth the rant.

Cold weather aside, the folks at the conference were very friendly, and had lots of great ideas for us to mull over back in Rochester. Changes in the library world have been and continue to be sweeping, and RPL does not want to be caught resting on its laurels. Many of the cutting edge ideas that our colleagues presented at PLA were already being implemented (or are in the planning stages) including "roving" reference service, better signage, downloadable audio, video, and music, and much more. You'll be seeing more in the weeks and months to come

AskMN 24/7 Reference is coming!

What is "AskMN" you might ask? If we said that it was a statewide virtual reference initiative, would you stop reading because that's some mighty boring jargon? In that case (for those who are still reading), let's say that it's reference assistance from a real librarian 24/7 (twenty-four hours a day/seven days a week - not the much awaited Kiefer Sutherland show "24", Season 7). If you can type it, we will answer.

Rochester is getting in at the ground floor of the AskMN project which involves several libraries across the state providing reference service all day and all of the night (and a small royalty check to the Kinks for using that phrase).

Great, you say. When can I use this service? The best answer is soon. We are running vigorous clinical and psychological trials as we speak to work out the bugs (and learn the software) and we hope to launch sometime this spring. As soon as we're live, we'll blog about it and you can start sending us your questions.

Speaking of questions, you might be wondering how Rochester Public Library (or the other MN libraries in the group) are going to staff reference 24 hours a day. Did some of the RPL staff move to Sydney, Australia to cover the overnight hours ? (Not a bad idea, but incorrect.) No, your beloved RPL staff (and also beloved, but more distant MN libraries staff) will only be covering some of the time during our normal operating hours. If you get up at 3:00AM and need to know something, you may be talking to an expert librarian Down Under, but you will be talking to a librarian.

Exciting? Yes. Keep posted to find out more.

RPL's Current Crop of Top Tunes of 2007

Remember when Minnesota Public Radio wasn't the hippest place for the young kids of today to listen to music? No disrespect to musicians on A Prairie Home Companion, the classical music service, the Jazz Image (okay, Leigh Kammen tended to go on a bit, but he's retired now), or other fine standard-bearing MPR programs, but come on.

That all changed in a Public Radio Seismic Shift better known as the introduction of alternative-music-only station The Current.

So why are we promoting MPR on the RPL blog? Good question. Or perhaps the better question is: Got Current artists? The answer is Yes.

Many of you may already know that The Current has published their list of the top 89 albums of 2007 and we're happy to report that many of the titles on the list are owned by our library. Need to get your fix of Wilco, Spoon, the White Stripes, and more? We Got 'em.

You can search for music CDs in the library's online catalog by album title (say, Icky Thump) or performing artist (use "author")(say, White Stripes). Music CDs can be checked out for 14 days (7 days if there are reserves waiting).

If you don't see your favorite album or artist represented in our library collection and think other library users would be interested in it too, you can make a recommendation for purchase by entering your library card number and pin number at this link (you do need to have library card in good standing to make recommendations). You can recommend 12 titles per 12-month period. Any comments about your favorite CDs of 2007? Feel free to post comments below!

Notes from the Big Blue NonFiction Wall: January

It's so very, very cold again and a great time to make sure that you have some very, very good books to keep your mind engaged while we wait for the Earth to get a move on into that warm, sunny Spring-ward tilt that we love so much. Time to take a brief tour of the newest of the new non-fiction gracing the mighty Big Blue NonFiction wall on the second floor of the Rochester Public Library.

Speaking of the Earth, let's start with something a little Cosmic. America In Space: Nasa's First Fifty Years (with a forward by Neil Armstrong - the astronaut, not the biker dude who used to date Sheryl Crow) is a spectacular coffee table book that deals with everything NASA from the pre-Explorer days to the Moon to the Space Shuttle and beyond. There are some truly spectacular images of Earth, spacecraft, and the men and women who boldly went where most of us are unlikely to go. There's even a picture of Richard Nixon laughing (page 195, if you don't believe me)! Whether you remember those heady times of the Space Race with the Soviet Union or you're saying to yourself "What was this 'Soviet Union'?", this book will amaze and delight.

Switching gears from the Heavens to the not-so-funny, but sometimes-funny pages comes the book Art Spiegelman: Conversations edited by Joseph Witek. For those who may not be in the know, Mr. Spiegelman is the acclaimed artist/writer of the graphic novel Maus: A Survivors Tale which tells the story of his father's experience in the Holocaust and won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. It was one of the first works that showed that the medium of comics could be used to tell serious stories and made Spiegelman one of the famous literary cartoonists in the world (admittedly, a small group). This new book is a collection of conversations with Speigelman (hence the catch & accurate title of the book) spans thirty years and serves as a primer on this history and development of comics as a serious art form. Spiegelman is a very smart, funny and candid artist and it is interesting to catch his words at so many different junctures of his career in one place.

For those of you who thought secret Presidential taping was the sole purview of one Richard Milhous Nixon, think again. LBJ was a secret taper par excellence, and some recently released transcripts of his 1964 recordings prove it. Get an insider's view through this amazing collection of phone conversation collected in The Presidential Recordings, Lyndon B. Johnson. Don't worry, once you finish the first one, there are still two other new volumes that we've recently received at the library. Editors David Schreve, Robert David Johnson put the conversations in historical context and give quite the insight into one of this country's more turbulent decades. Secret taping done right.

And finally, the book we've all been waiting to have written ever since cavemen started acting rudely at the Dawn of Time (see the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey for details) : Look, Speak, & Behave For Men by Jamie Yasko-Mangum. This book contains "expert advice on Image, Etiquette, and Effective Communication for the Professional" in a mere 212 pages. If effective, it could be Pulitzer time for Ms. Yasko-Mangum. Bringing together the four elements that make a man a man (Positive Self-Esteem, Polished Appearance, Speaking Intelligently, and Behaving With Pride), this book gives tips for the modern professional man (although not much of it seems to apply to professional wrestlers) in a concise, readable little book. A book hardly bigger than a PDA (and potentially more valuable) could be sitting there for you if you visit the Big Blue NonFiction wall in time. Also available (but probably less necessary) Look, Speak, & Behave For Women.

Until next month, remember to visit the Big Blue NonFiction wall because you'll never know what you might find.

Directory Assistance or Ancestry in the City

When a singer has an incredibly good voice, people will sometimes say that they could "sing the phone book" and it would be good. The underlying thought is that phone books are an inherently boring read and only Ol' Blue Eyes (or insert your crooner-of-choice here) could make it interesting.

Poppycock! Even if you are cursed with something less than a Golden Throat, be assured that you could still sing the words from our collection of Rochester City Directories and put a song in the heart of local historians.

Lets talk about phone books for a minute. Okay, when they're not new any more and start piling up in your garage, they aren't all that exciting. But like John Travolta, if they hang around long enough through a period of pointless direct-to-video offerings, the fickle public once again embraces their charms.

Enter Rochester City Directories. We've got them here at the library going back as far as 1911. What good are they? Well, first off, a City Directory is a little bit more than a phone book. Way back when, in addition to your phone number (and some of the earliest ones aren't particularly chock full of phone numbers as the "telephone technology" hadn't quite caught on yet), City Directories listed the people who lived in the town and also listed their occupations (even if your occupation was "high school student"). If you're interested in local history or family genealogy, your Spider Sense should be fully a-tingle. These books are treasure troves of historical information!

Want to know who lived in your house in years gone by? You can look up any property by its street address and find out who owned (and quite possibly who lived) in it. You can also see what the businesses of the day were.

You want a list of farmers in Olmsted County in 1923 (and, really, who doesn't?), check out the directory. You can see which churches, businesses, and politicians were around at that time.

Lots of this information is not available from any other source (sorry Google, you don't have EVERYTHING yet). Another reason to visit your good ol' Rochester Public Library. Because of their historical significance (and their irreplaceable nature), we do keep our City Directories archived in the Magazine Room (far back left corner of the 2nd floor as you're coming up the stairs or elevator). You can read them while you're here (and we have one of those photocopy machines if you find something good.) The upside is that they are never checked out, so they will be here when you visit.

A whole Historical Rochester awaits!

A Periodic check of Library Periodicals

With all of these recent blog entries spent talking about our online resources, the RPL Reference Blog mailbag has been filled with comments about the actual paper resources in the library. The ones you can read without a computer.

One reader asks: What about the magazines? I hear you have over 600 magazines and newspapers, can that possibly be true? And if so, can you read them in the warm, glorious sunshine on the second floor and take in a beautiful view of the city at the same time at no extra cost?

Yes, my friend, to all of your questions. Looking out at the six vast pillars of magazine spin racks, the mighty plexiglass newspaper stands (pictured above or beside depending on your browser resolution) and the scores of magazines scattered in the appropriate sections on the first floor and on the bookmobile we have over 600 periodicals (which is a boring library word for "something that is published on a regular basis", i.e. newspapers and magazines).

Now you're thinking to yourself: I can't possibly read that many of your "periodicals" every month. No one is asking you to. But if you want to, they're there for you.

By the same token, just because you live in the country doesn't mean that you'll want to read every issue of Country Journal, Country Living, Country's Best Log Homes (hello, Mr. Lincoln), but we have them here. Also, city-dwellers, be aware that you are also free to look at these periodicals without fear of library staff checking to see if you do, indeed, live in the country. Ah, freedom is wonderful!

We've got magazines on Hobbies (Coin World, Doll Reader, Model Airplane News, Rubber Stamper, Wood), magazines on Fashion (Brides, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Seventeen, Vanity Fair), magazines on Art (American Artist, Art & Antiques, Ceramics Monthly, Dance Magazine), and jillions* more.

In addition to two copies of our local newspaper, the Rochester Post-Bulletin, we get several newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Des Moines Register, Investors Business Daily, Minneapolis StarTribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. That's an awful lot of crossword puzzles under one roof (please don't fill in the crossword puzzles, at least not in pen).

But wait, there's more. Along with our American 'periodicals', we have several foreign language newspapers and magazines including Paris Match (French), Haboon (Somali), Zhuan Ji Wen Xue (Chinese), and Bunte (German).

You can check the listings of magazines the library owns by general category by clicking on the type:

• Adult magazines


• Young Adult magazines


• Children's magazines

Whatever kind of periodical you crave, you're bound to find something of interest here. Grab a cup of coffee (with a covered lid, of course, for approved library use) and set up in the magazine area on the second floor and peruse your favorite newspapers and magazines in your favorite library.



* in this case one jillion = about a hundred (this note added to keep our lawyers happy)