News from Libraries Close to Home and Overseas

This has been an exciting week for our local libraries and we are delighted to help them share their news. We also have a message to pass on to you from a library in Israel seeking family history books.

First, an announcement from Scott Holl, manager of the History and Genealogy Department at St. Louis County Library Headquarters: Those who hold active library cards from the County Library can now access Newspapers.com from home! This is the library edition but still contains many options for those searching for newspaper articles about their ancestors.

Newspapers.com joins a long list of databases on the library's website you can use from the comfort of your own computer. Go to www.slcl.org/genealogy and click where it says "Online Research." Then scroll down to see the collection of databases to which the library subscribes. Start with "Read More" and in the next window, just click on the link to the website. You will be prompted for your library card number and, if you created one, your pin number. Then, have fun!

At long last, the Special Collections department at St. Louis Public Library has an updated and easy-to-find page on the library's website. Special Collections consists of the genealogy department, the local history room, and rare books and manuscripts, all located on the third floor of the downtown branch of the library. Now easily visible are links to their archival and digital collections, local history index, yearbooks, the genealogy blog, and the very popular St. Louis Post-Dispatch obituary index.

You can reach the new page at https://www.slpl.org/special-collections/.  Large buttons and bright colors make the page very attractive, and, for the first time, seeing exactly what is available is possible. A few of the buttons only launch a PDF; for instance, if you click on "Yearbooks" or "St. Louis Streets," you may not see anything on your screen, but you will get a downloaded file. This new page is a wonderful addition to the library's website. Enjoy!

We have been contacted by the National Library of Israel, which is seeking to expand its collection of family history books for those doing Jewish research. Their librarian says that "the library serves as a resource for people researching their Jewish family origins and ancestry, and we have started an initiative to expand our collection of books in this important and growing field." They are looking for family histories of Jewish interest, especially those that are "self-published and not commercially available."

If you or someone you know has written and published a book that might be of interest to Jewish researchers using the library in Jerusalem, please contact StLGS at publications@stlgs.org so we can try to get copies of books of interest to them, if they don't already have those books in their collection.

Visit our website: www.stlgs.org