Spread the word. Bangor Public Library’s local history, genealogy and special collections room has moved downstairs to the second floor of the library.
The collection is sharing the room with the reference department, but once renovations allow reference to move to its own new location — where circulation is — local history, genealogy and special collections will be able to expand into the space where reference is now located.
In other library news, Director Barbara McDade has announced that Bangor Public Library is closed Mondays and Fridays so that employees can move books around to keep them available.
Here are two things we can do to help staff, construction workers and other patrons during this busy time: Have patience, and ask for help when you need it.
There are a couple of approaches genealogists take when entering a “new” library, and for our intents and purposes, when books get moved, the new arrangement may seem like a new library to many of us.
Even when I think that I’ll be able to find most things in a new room, I like to have a few landmarks to help me, books I seek out so I can be sure that I am indeed in the “family histories” or the “local histories.”
I can find my landmarks more easily if I go online to get the card catalog number through URSUS, at ursus.maine.edu, the website which catalogs items at Bangor Public Library, Maine State Library, Maine Historical Society and the campuses of the University of Maine.
My great-great-great-grandmother was Lovina (Leighton) Moore of the Maine towns of Rome, Mount Vernon and Parkman. So I’ll look up “A Leighton Genealogy: Descendants of Thomas Leighton of Dover, New Hampshire,” written by Perley Leighton in 1989. Bangor Public Library has the book catalogued as 929.2 L533l 1989.
I have a couple of Cummings lines, leading me to interest in Cummings and Comins genealogies. A good one is “Descendants of John Comins: (Ca 1668-1751) And His Wife, Mary, of Woburn and Oxford, Massachusetts,” by Abbott Lowell Cummings. Bangor Public Library has it catalogued as 929.2.C7354d.
Genealogists often call family histories “the 929s.”
Let’s move to local histories for a moment, specifically vital records. “Vital Records of Kittery, Maine to the year 1892,” edited by Joseph Crook Anderson II and Lois Ware Thurston, one of many special publications that the Maine Genealogical Society and Picton Press did together, is numbered 974.19.K6.10 at Bangor Public Library.
Maine State Library in Augusta lists it as 974.1vK62v1991.
Now let’s look up a town history, also of Kittery, “Old Kittery and Her Families,” by Everett S. Stackpole. Bangor’s catalog number is 974.19.K6.1. But Maine State Library’s call number is 974.1 tK62s 1981.
Certainly, “the 974s” are local history, including vital records.
But special collections at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library in Orono lists “Vital Records of Kittery, Maine to the year 1892” as F29.K62v581991.
And MaineCAT, the card catalog for many other Maine libraries, which is accessible by clicking an icon for a book entry on URSUS, says that “A Leighton Genealogy” is catalogued as CS76 L429 1989 at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport.
If you have several resources you’d like to look at in a library, the efficient thing to do is to make a list with call numbers for everything you want to peruse — and while you are there, make a list of each item you do look at, and what you found, if anything. You don’t have to know Dewey Decimal System from the Library of Congress, as long as you have the right number for the right library.
You also may find some good resources just by browsing, walking up and down the aisles. If you don’t know where to browse, use a couple of landmarks to get you to the right section
As I’ve often said, one day I walked into the Maine State Library and stopped at a table where no one was sitting, but one lonely book had been left open. I leaned over the book, only to see a familiar surname and several early generations of one of my family lines in an article in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.
That’s serendipity, and I hope you find many examples of it in your family history searching this year.
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Dale Mower, past president of the Maine Genealogical Society, will present a talk on “The Why and How of Online Newspaper Research” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18, in the Relief Society Room of the Bangor Family History Center at the LDS Church at 639 Grandview Ave., on the corner of Essex Street in Bangor.
This is what I call a bonus meeting, because it also is an opportunity to become acquainted with what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has to offer at its Family History Center. The computers there are very user-friendly. I know from experience. The center also has a nice collection of books and papers, including some you won’t find at other Mane libraries.
For more information on the Feb. 18 meeting, call Elizabeth Stevens at 947-8336, ext. 103, or email esteve@bpl.lib.me.us.
One last note: In last week’s Family Ties about mitochondrial DNA, I intended to credit an article online by the BBC.
For i nformation on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.