I just returned from three wonderful days in Fort Worth attending the Texas State Genealogical Society Annual Conference and what
a conference it was! It was their largest one yet and featured an old
colleague of our library director’s, Curt Witcher, head of the Genealogy Department at Allen
County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Curt is an absolutely
delightful speaker who I really enjoyed. He did a session for Librarian’s
Day, which was day one. The main point of his talk went along well
with the next speaker's topic which was Give ‘em What They Want – in most
cases that is online access to local sources and databases. Far more of our
genealogy customers, both local and non, do not come into the building, but do
visit our website. Are we neglecting these unseen people? The gist,
of course, is that we need to provide online digital content, ie. local record
databases on our website. Curt said that in his experience, as people
utilize our online records, there is an increase in visits to our brick and
mortar building. This is an area my department really needs to work on as we
really don’t have anything.
Paul
Follett
Genealogy
Librarian
Lawton
Public Library
110
SW Fourth St.,
Lawton,
OK 73501
