Genealogist's Home Library (National Institute)

Basic Needs for a Home Library
As a family historian, you have probably already acquired, over time, various books and reference materials for ancestral areas, materials that made your searching faster and more focused. Joy Reisinger’s chapter “The Essential Library” in Professional Genealogy gives good advice on choosing both general and more specific publications. When adding to the backbone of your collection, choice should not be predicated on which of two or three similar books has the lowest price. Keeping up with book reviews in major journals is a good way to make some judgments—and we mean critical reviews, not the “book notices” printed in many newsletters that are called reviews.

Books
Most of us had one or two how to books at the beginning and the other materials came as our experience broadened. You may want to re-evaluate or update these choices from time to time. As a professional genealogist working for others, you need to acquire a few standard works on methodology as well as keeping current with news via memberships and the Internet. Again, the book Professional Genealogy is to date the best inclusive publication of distilled wisdom for both business and professional practice.

You may also want to take a course or purchase some books that help you plan for field trips to resource centres and repositories that you do not visit on a regular basis―for example, the Planning a Research Trip Including Preparing for Salt Lake City course offered by the National Institute for Genealogical Studies. Institutional guides to the National Archives of specific countries and how to access their collections are available. Good advance planning means efficient use of time on site!

Software
Very useful items have been an up-to-date computer manual, and the same for any programs or software you are using, because we may not fully explore all the capabilities of our technology to enhance our written work. The trend now is to include Help sections in the program itself, although often better manuals have been written by user groups.

Writing Helps
In the writing department, a style guide, a citation guide and a good dictionary are indispensable. A thesaurus is also handy.

Specialty Interest Areas or Subjects
This collection is the next obvious target. See below for choosing your research focus. Since records may have been produced at national, province/state, county and town jurisdictions, you will need guides for all applicable levels. Consider the following more specific categories, and think how best to arrange them for your personal satisfaction. If you specialize in a country, you should decide initially whether to create sub-categories like states or counties.


 * At least one history of the relevant areas: you need that background knowledge of local development—political, social, economic, legal, and so on. More than one is even better, since different authors can interpret historical events and issues by their own biases.


 * Maps, atlases, gazetteers: you simply can’t do without maps or atlases (for different time periods) to understand geography, migration routes, place name changes, boundary changes, census districts, religious jurisdictions, etc.


 * Resource centres: as with national level guides, it is good to collect what you can on the repositories you use most often. You need to know what their hours are, if you need an appointment or user card, what you can bring into the facility, if they charge a fee, and so on.


 * Indexes, finding aids, catalogues: these guides to precise records or collections can save you so much time in research preparation. While some repositories create their own finding aids and catalogues, you need to be aware of individuals or societies who are compiling indexes and other aids. Fortunately, many libraries and archives are posting online catalogues and descriptions.


 * Specific sources: you will want to add books that give information and guidance to certain groups of records or documents such as passenger lists, military records, probate or religious collections.


 * Journals, newsletters, magazines: your collection of subscription/membership reading material will grow fast. You will want to flag certain articles for reference, or photocopy them for a particular topic binder or file folder.


 * If need be, foreign language dictionaries will be helpful (or search for the helpful international “Word List” in the FamilySearch Wiki

We strongly recommend you keep a shelf list of your library collection, and a wish list. This will change, naturally, as you make acquisitions. Attending a conference is a wonderful time to explore what’s new in the way of books. However, the budget-conscious will also learn to find secondhand book dealers, thrift shops and how to use eBay!

Your Desk
We don’t need to say a great deal about this. Some of us start out with the dining room table as a work space, but ideally we want a good size desk with some drawers and enough room for a work surface plus a computer keyboard and monitor. Management training companies will tell you that too much clutter on the surface is distracting and slows your efficiency and productivity.

A few suggestions from the experts in management training:


 * Have only one client file or project on your desk at a time: the one you are working on. Put all the rest away out of sight.


 * Put away telephone messages and reading material (magazines, journals, letters) in a special place to act on at a designated time. Keep them off your desk until you attend to them.


 * Have your library and reference books handy, but off your desk when you’re not using them. • Keep your filing cabinet drawers closed.


 * If using cardboard filing boxes or accordion files, don’t use several when one will do the job (that’s why dividers were invented). Also keep it/them off your desk.


 * Maintain only one comprehensive calendar or day timer for easier, more efficient tracking of appointments and events, scheduled research days and personal engagements.

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online courses offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about these courses or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

We welcome updates and additions to this Wiki page.