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Archiver > GENMSC > 1998-12 > 0913213325


From: R Bishop <>
Subject: Re: Dumb Newbie Question
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 14:22:05 GMT


In article <>,
Vivian Gullickson <> wrote:
>Hmmm......
>
>I've been waiting almost a year to get my books I ordered through interlibrary
>loan. The records I'm searching for are not available at the LDS yet.
>
>Vivian
>
>Cynthia M. Van Ness wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Margaret J. Olson wrote:
>>
>> > Let me play devil's advocate ...
>>
>> [good explanation snipped]
>>
>> > Second ... if this person is saying "Will you all go to your library and
>> > copy everything you can find on Williamson" they are asking you to do
>> > their research. If they say "I need the pages from Dills History of
>> > Greene County, Ohio, would someone with access to that book be so kind
>> > as to look up and send me pages 22-35 and any others mentioning the
>> > Haines family" they've already done some research and need help in getting
>> > copies from sources. If Dills is unindexed, they've really done research
>> > if they know the page numbers!

It's funny how small this internet world is. I know the Greene County (Ohio)
library extremely well. I've done countless hours of research there. It is
one of the best small town historical libraries around. Also, I know many
branches of the Haines family, since they were my neighbors and schoolmates.
One odd thing about the Haines that I know, they all looked very much alike,
even the more distant branches of the family. Fair-hair, broad Dutch faces,
stocky build.....

The sense I got from the post was, this woman had small children, she wasn't
able to go to a library and do her own research and she was repeatedly making
requests for all sorts of help. IMHO, she needed to delay her research until
her children were old enough for her to have free library time.

Sue

>>
>> Just one problem in this otherwise excellent explanation of why someone
>> might be posting demand after demand. I believe that every American is
>> served by a public library in some form or another, even if it is a small
>> county branch that, in a big county, is a *long* drive away. (Perhaps
>> there really are counties with zero public libraries--I'd like to hear how
>> common this is.)
>>
>> Of course these small rural libraries in *your* state don't have any
>> genealogical materials pertaining to *my* state, so librarians solved
>> this problem decades ago with a system called interlibrary loan (ILL), in
>> which a library that doesn't own a certain title can borrow it from one
>> that does.
>>
>> If a researcher is that savvy that she knows the author, title, and page
>> numbers of the material she needs, as per Margaret's example, chances are
>> high that anywhere in the US she can telephone her local library and place
>> an interlibrary loan request. Rural librarians are painfully conscious of
>> the fact that they can meet only some of their users' information needs
>> and are therefore experienced in making use of ILL. They might even
>> request the copies and mail them out with a small bill for photocopying
>> expenses, eliminating the necessity for a trip to the library.
>>
>> Therefore, (big surprise) my sympathies are with the original author. I,
>> too, see certain newsgroup regulars posting demand after demand for
>> look-ups, with little evidence of ever making use of offline resources
>> such as ILL or LDS family history centers, or even the phone call or
>> written request to a repository.
>>
>> -=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-+-=*=-
>> Cynthia Van Ness, M.L.S. | Co-moderator, Buffalo NY USA genealogy page:
>> | http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~roots
>> If information were power, librarians would rule the world. (C. Stoll)
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