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Family history in early U.S. state documents
Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 529 – 547
Family history in early U.S. state documents Deborah R. Hollis Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Colorado at Boulder, 184 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0184, USA Received 30 November 1999; received in revised form 30 January 2000; accepted 23 November 2000
Abstract The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) owns a large collection of historic publications from all the states of the U.S. and territorial governments. Many of these 19th century resources, such as personnel directories or U.S. state agency reports to the legislature, contain name and address lists that provide information about early state inhabitants. Collection analysis was the basis of a Title III Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) grant proposal to create electronic bibliographic records for these resources. The project was funded to promote materials of interest to the state’s genealogical community. Three-quarters of the collection consisted of serials and a search of OCLC indicated that most of these historic titles had cataloging copy. This demonstrates the need and continued importance of funding retrospective conversion projects. The criteria for selection are reviewed and key state agencies that report details about early individuals are identified. Limitations of these publications are discussed. A focus group of genealogists evaluated the project. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Genealogy; Family history; Retrospective conversion of bibliographic records; Public records; State government publications
1. Introduction A retrospective conversion project at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) received grant funds to improve access to materials of interest to the state’s
E-mail address: [email protected] (D.R. Hollis). 1352-0237/01/$ – see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 3 5 2 - 0 2 3 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 3 4 4 - 1
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genealogical community. With the current focus on the World Wide Web and other electronic access, lost is the significance of uncataloged and inaccessible historic materials owned by research libraries across the country. Many academic, public, and state libraries collect their own state’s government publications yet librarians responding to a recent questionnaire perceived the use of state documents as limited (Yang & da Conturbia, 1998, p. 263). CU Boulder is a depository of Colorado state government publications and also owns an impressive uncataloged collection of early state publications from the other 49 states and territorial governments. Long neglected and little used, this collection was only noticed by those who discovered it by accident. The library’s online catalog did not contain many records for these materials. This Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) project recognizes the importance and need for retrospective conversion efforts in order to provide access to valuable historical research materials. Family historians are in pursuit of a paper trail that can identify, locate, and track early ancestors. In this effort, genealogists turn to well-known public resources such as state or county birth, death, and land records, to name a few examples. In her 1983 Reference & User Services Quarterly article entitled ‘‘Getting to the Source: Government Documents for the Genealogist,’’ Betty Jean Swartz (1983) stated: Genealogists are looking for one thing: PEOPLE. The United States government has kept a record of its people for two centuries. People are born, go to school, work, serve in the military, migrate, die. At each event some kind of record is made. Some of the early records are sparse; recent records are confidential. But many of these records have been published; and, as a result, the government documents collection of any library is a potential treasure house for genealogical research. ( p. 151)
Swartz proceeds to highlight useful U.S. federal government publications that reference librarians should note and recommend to genealogical researchers. Susan Fales and Michael Monahan (1987), experienced in genealogical reference service and collections, explained a genealogist’s interest in government documents this way: Why are government publications valuable sources for family historians? . . . there are numerous records within a documents collection that deal directly with individuals who have had some relationship with the federal government. Individuals who have served in the military and are due a pension or a bounty land warrant are often represented in the pages of government documents. ( p. 496)
Family historians, knowing that a relative was a government employee, are in search of the ancestor’s name in government agency records, reports, or staff directories. This type of information helps verify the relative’s employment status and may provide clues to the person’s job experience. Fales and Monahan’s (1987) article entitled ‘‘Missing Links: Family History and the Document Collections,’’ published in Government Publications Review in 1987 aimed at genealogists not librarians, and focused on useful federal publications for family history research. Discussion of government publications for genealogical use has cycled through various library journals over the years yet the focus was on useful federal-level publications. Early state documents are a little-recognized
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source of family history. The lack of indexing for many of these sources is the foremost obstacle to their use, but the publications have much to offer. State publications can provide additional information about the life of an early ancestor who may have been, for example, an educator, student, miner, or someone who sought water rights. Salary information for teachers and comparable pay in other states is often reported in early Department of Education reports to the governor and state legislature. This type of information is key to satisfying the historian’s interest in the living wage of an ancestor. In some Southern states such as Georgia, salary information is segregated and reported for White and African American teachers separately. African American students attended segregated schools but annual reports to the governor included budget information and inspections of the ‘‘schools for the colored.’’ Lists of enrolled students (White and ‘‘colored’’) are often published in education reports (Fig. 1). The manner in which this information is presented can be of interest to social and education historians.
Fig. 1. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina (1881 – 1882, p. 148).
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Further examples of special information in state sources are seen in Fig. 2, which provides the names and ages of employees killed in mining accidents in Pennsylvania’s Mining Commissioners’ Report. The Report of the State Engineer of the State of Wyoming not only listed a roster of registered professional engineers and land surveyors, but also included the names of applicants for water permits as shown in Fig. 3. While social historians are aware of the usefulness of these resources academic and public librarians may not realize that these materials can serve a variety of research constituencies as well as the state’s genealogical community. Faculty from the education, history, political science, and economics departments are just a few who might want to use these materials to reconstruct life in early U.S. communities. Promotion of historic state publications to a wider audience beyond campus faculty can galvanize support for higher education throughout the state. Encouraging genealogists to use the university library collections can help dispel the notion that taxpayer funds are used solely to support obscure disciplines in the local state funded institutions.
2. Project background The University Libraries at CU Boulder have long owned an extensive collection of publications from states other than Colorado. This collection is strong in reprints of early colonial documents for some states and reprints of materials from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These materials are housed in the basement of the library far away from the government documents reference desk located on the third floor. Before this project, Chinook, the University Libraries’ online catalog, only contained bibliographic records for holdings from 1989 to the present and even those were very incomplete. Few of the earlier titles were reflected in the online catalog. A shelf list was the only key to these early state publications and it was only accessible by library staff. In Colorado, the State Department of Education administers federal funding for library services and programs. Title III of the LSCA funds programs that encourage interlibrary cooperation and resource sharing (Colorado Department of Education, 2000). In August 1996, the CU Boulder state and foreign documents librarian was awarded a Title III LSCA grant of US$20,150 from the Department of Education for her project, ‘‘Retrospective Conversion of Social and Family History Research Materials.’’ A search of OCLC showed that catalog copy was available for many historic state documents so little original cataloging was required. By making the Colorado genealogical community aware of these materials, the university would be able to share its resources more widely with state citizens. The grant application requested funds to hire temporary staff who could search and retrieve records from OCLC to add to the CU online catalog thereby also making these materials available throughout the state and region via interlibrary loan. Full and temporary records were created. Temporary serials records were created until staff from the Serials Department could review the work. This was an agreement made between the Government Publications Library and the Serials Department to ensure quality control of the cataloging
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Fig. 2. Report of the Department of Mines: Part II. Bituminous for Pennsylvania (1916, p. 896).
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Fig. 3. First Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of Wyoming (1891 and 1892, Appendix xxv).
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records. Item records were attached to the temporary serials records allowing patrons to identify, access, and check out volumes immediately. Subject headings that would assist a genealogist in identifying a potential source as valuable were added to the temporary records. By identifying genealogical content that was not apparent in the cataloging records, their usefulness could be enhanced.
3. Selection criteria Selection and identification criteria were developed for LSCA materials, which were reviewed and chosen based on content. Monographs and serials needed to contain any or all of the following in order to qualify for inclusion in the conversion project:
Lists of names — e.g., lists of certified teachers, students, National Guard members, attorneys, prisoners, state, county, or local government officials. Lists of businesses, factories, coal mines, railroad companies, banks. Lists of local newspapers and periodicals. Registers of institutions, e.g., state schools, colleges, and universities, state hospitals, orphanages, prisons, etc. Biographies of people relative to state or local history or in the state or county government. Demonstrate social history value — e.g., histories of early settlers, military regiments or state, county, or local histories.
Any publications that listed the personnel of state and county agencies, boards, commissions, committees, or professional organizations were selected for this project—directories and registers were deemed significant to social and family history. Many state libraries and historical societies published monographs about various periods of history in the state or territory. What follows is the type of publication, usually a serial, selected for the project:
agency directories personnel: e.g., state employees, elected or appointed officials, members of the National Guard. professional associations: licensed or certified professionals such as architects, engineers, or dentists in the state. state agency annual reports to the state legislature or governor. executive documents, aka public documents (bound state agency annual reports). special reports produced by state agency or a governor’s appointed commission regarding specific populations such as American Indian tribes, ethnic populations, minorities, children, women, the elderly, prisoners, etc.
Once these materials were selected, the LSCA project staff conducted a search for OCLC cataloging copy.
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4. Specific state agency publications There are patterns to the kinds of information in these documents that would help librarians become familiar with the publication contents. If the adjutant general in one state publishes a regimental history, it is likely that other states did the same. Key categories of state agencies are highlighted below. While social and demographic information is prevalent in annual reports to the governor and state legislature, many reports also contain employee names or brief summaries of individuals who had business with the state agency (e.g., prisoners, patients in state hospitals, letters from farmers to county agricultural officers, etc.). Descriptions of individual level data for sample states are provided to highlight the potential use of these agency publications. 4.1. Adjutant General’s Office This office was in charge of state military forces including the National Guard and published registers of soldiers and officers (usually organized by regiment). Some states provided the hometown and county of the soldier. The annual or biennial reports to the governor can include regimental histories. Example: Iowa’s 1863 Adjutant General’s Office report included a list of soldiers rejected for service. Persistence is often required to utilize fully such historic works. 4.2. Department of Agriculture Reports This agency differs from the agricultural experiment stations. Most states published the names of agricultural officials at the state and county level. Example: Kansas included county demographics and history and identified local newspapers by title in the 1860–1893 publications. Some years included the number of churches in the county. One can find a list of awards at the Illinois State Fair in the 1872–1874 Illinois publications. By 1948, Illinois published names of the leaders of the Boys and Girls 4-H clubs by county. 4.3. Department of Corrections and Charities (or State Penitentiary) These publications vary in content by state but many list the county jails and poorhouses and report results of the annual inspections of these facilities. Example: Iowa’s 1890 ‘‘Report of the Pardons, Commutations, Suspensions of Sentences, and Remissions of Fines’’ is a part of the states’ Public Documents series (Fig. 4). 4.4. Department of Education (or Public Instruction etc.) Early annual reports of many states include rosters of state college and university faculty, and primary educators. Some states have lists of graduating high school seniors with high grade point averages. School curriculum is discussed and researchers can see what an
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Fig. 4. Report by the Governor of Iowa of Pardons, Commutations, Suspensions of Sentence, and Remissions of Fines (1892, p. 5). Bound in legislative documents submitted to the Twenty-Fourth General Assembly of the State of Iowa (Volume III).
ancestor may have studied. Architectural plans for new schools can be included in annual reports as well as photographs of school buildings. In the case of the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, annual reports provide student and parent/guardian information as well as names of the teachers and staff at the school plus their annual salaries. Example: ‘‘Educational Survey Series (By County) in Georgia 1915–1916.’’ This survey was conducted under the direction of the state Department of Education and is unique since similar surveys could not be found for other U.S. states. The series surveyed the schools of each county in Georgia. Photographs of the schools are included with a brief summary identifying the principal and teachers, the school’s location, size of the school grounds, who held the land title, availability of toilets, value and condition of the building, available
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equipment such as a school library, and school organization. Photographs of Negro schools in the county are published without the same level of reporting as the White schools. 4.5. Department of Public Welfare (aka Charities and Public Welfare) Rosters of state hospitals, boards of public charities, orphanages, asylums, almshouses, various health care facilities, and charities can be found in these reports. Some states include reports of the correctional facilities under this agency. These reports can be included in the bound public documents for some states. Example: The 1927 report of the Illinois Department of Public Welfare listed all hospitals in the state. The 1918 report listed doctors, nurses, and other employees. 4.6. Office of the Governor or Advisory Commissions to the Governor These are generally reports about social, historical, and economic issues in the state and are good resources for information ranging from race relations to state history. The Commission on Civil Rights or Human Rights or Interracial Commission as they were called in some states, published reports on the condition of various minority groups and women within a state. Example: The Minnesota Governor’s Human Rights/Interracial Commission published a series of reports from 1945 to the mid-1950s. Titles included The Negro Worker in Minnesota, The Negro and His Home in Minnesota, The Mexican in Minnesota, The Oriental in Minnesota, and The Indian in Minnesota. The Indiana War History Commission published Indiana at War in 1951, which is a rich source of information about local citizens. 4.7. Public or Executive Documents Series The series are bound sets of all state agency annual reports submitted to the state legislature or general assembly or governor. The compilation of documents covers the spectrum of state agencies and could include any of the following agency reports: Adjutant General, School for the Blind, lunatic asylums, State Auditor, etc. Many bound annual reports include registers of state employees. Example: Minnesota’s 1892 Executive Documents includes reports from the State Historical Society, Soldier’s Home, Board of Corrections (which included a ‘‘List of Convicts Released from Prison by Virtue of Pardons Issued During the Year Ending July 31, 1892,’’) and the School for the Deaf (which had a list of ‘‘Female Pupils in Attendance.’’) Wisconsin’s Public Documents included registers of businessmen, bank directors, and stockholders. 4.8. Secretary of State This agency published information about government officials. Many states reported elected or appointed executive, judicial, and county officers. Example: Pennsylvania’s Smull’s Legislative Hand Book, 1883 is a legislative directory that includes state statistics, lists of post offices, and county officers. The 1906 edition of
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the Register and Manual of Connecticut listed notaries public, and county and town officers. The 1882 edition of the Wisconsin Blue Book provides a list of Wisconsin newspapers and periodicals organized by county and town with the names of the publishers. 4.9. State Auditor Local businesses that contracted with state government to provide goods or services can sometimes be found in the annual report of the state auditor in conjunction with the amount of money received or owed, and the goods or services rendered. Example: Delaware’s 1892 report of the State Auditor included ‘‘Payment to Witnesses Before the Justices of the Peace’’ by county. Salaries of the officers and employees of the General Assembly were provided as well. 4.10. State Engineer Many states published directories of state engineers and land surveyors and some named the engineers or firms contracted for public works projects. Example: In 1851, New York lists ‘‘Bids for Work’’ in Albany. In the 1897 agency report, the contractor and engineers who worked on the Erie and Champlain canal are listed. See Fig. 3 for Wyoming’s State Engineer Report, which lists individuals requesting water rights. 4.11. State Mining Commission Reports for some states include a list of accidents that occurred in the state with victims’ names, and whether they died because of their injuries. Example: Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania for 1916 included a ‘‘list of companies that had fatal accidents inside the mines.’’ ‘‘Fatal and non-fatal accidents inside and outside mines’’ are listed by date of accident and provide victim’s nationality, occupation, age, marital status, name of mine, county, and the nature, and cause of accident in brief. The Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report entitled ‘‘Industrial Accidents in Illinois for the year ending December 31, 1911’’ and included accidents reported in coal mines, railroads, stone quarries, and factories. A list of ‘‘Non-Fatal Accidents’’ included the employee’s name, occupation, residence, nativity, marital status, number of children, character of injury, and cause of the accident. 4.12. State Railroad Commission Some states list train accidents that occurred in the state and identify victims and cause of death. Legal proceedings involving citizens unhappy with railroad companies may be published in the agency’s annual report. Example: The 1900 Iowa report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners has decisions of the Commissioners that involve complaints by individuals. Complaints ranged from
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overcharging or excavation near a highway, to the condition of fences along the railroad tracks. It also contained a section entitled, ‘‘Mileage, Officers, and Directors of Railroad Companies.’’
5. Source limitations — gender and race Librarians and researchers should keep in mind that only individuals who had contact or business with a state or county agency appear in these publications so that women and the poor of any ethnic or minority background may not be mentioned. The poor can sometimes be revealed in public welfare and charities reports or State Auditor reports but not all states listed individuals by name. Skimming early Secretary of State publications shows few women’s names listed as government officials. The same is usually true for membership in professional associations, although many female names appear in early Department of Education reports. Adjutant General reports track men and it can be assumed, unless stated otherwise, that the men are White. Men who died in Pennsylvania mining accidents are listed by name and ethnicity with a brief description of the cause of death. Southern states’ segregated information about state citizens by race in the late 1800s and early 1900s throughout various state agency reports, which speaks to the social conditions of the time.
6. Data integrity As with any telephone or personnel directory, entries can contain typographical errors or incorrect elements of information such as address, age, ethnicity, and marital status. A family historian cannot verify how accurately the information was collected, recorded, or transcribed yet it is still significant to see what kind of information a state agency tracked in earlier years. Genealogists are aware of the need to verify information through other record sources.
7. Format The reporting format can vary from year to year within an agency’s publications, thus some state agencies may only report information at the individual level for one year. Others, for example Wyoming, consistently report the same information for many years (e.g., applicants of water rights from 1892 through 1938). Another example of changes in format is the Ohio Factory Reports. Child labor laws were the focus of the report submitted to the General Assembly of the state of Ohio in 1891. The Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories, and Public Buildings submitted a list of children under 16 years old who were illegally employed. The list is by name, age, job duty, employer, and city or town. By 1893, children discharged due to age appeared in short entries about specific factories. The reporting format changed from a list of children by name and age to a short entry for each inspected factory with a mention of discharged children (Fig. 5).
D.R. Hollis / Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 529–547 Fig. 5. Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories, and Public Buildings to the General Assembly of the State of Ohio (1891, p. 230). 541
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8. Evolution in reporting content A review of these early state publications reveals that the trend to report a certain level of detail about the citizenry evolves and changes over the years. Analyzing publication content was not the focus of this project but some observations were made. One was that in the 1800s and early 1900s state agencies quite freely listed names of individuals, e.g., state contractors or personal data, such as employee address and salary information. Around the time of World War I, the reporting formats began to change and agencies moved to aggregate general reports with census data and discontinued providing specific, individual information. What event or events, if any, could have contributed to this change? A social historian might consider an examination of early public records and agency reporting trends, to compare the development of legislative policy regarding individual privacy and public information and the content of state reports. The current migration of public records to the World Wide Web at the state and county level is reviving the issue of individual privacy versus open access to public documents. Early state publications are a useful resource in examining the evolution of this issue. Early state documents are unabashedly clear in delineating the darker side of American society and history as seen in the presentation of segregated state and local statistics. Data and information about White and African American state inhabitants or employees in the South are reported separately. Discussion of ‘‘Negro schools’’ (more frequently referred to as ‘‘colored schools’’) reveals not only a lack of equal funding for resources but also the conditions of early African American schools as disdainfully reported by educational officials of the time. The reporting format is a voice from the past about attitudes towards communities of color. Again, a social historian would find these materials significant in the reconstruction of early communities.
9. Access issues — indexing When cataloging records for state publications are not electronically accessible, the two major bibliographic tools that state documents specialists rely on are the electronic bibliographic index of recent sources produced by the Congressional Information Service (CIS) and a state’s checklist of publications issued. CIS’ Statistical Reference Index is a selective guide to American non-federal government publications, which includes selective coverage for primarily statistical publications of state agencies from 1980 to the current quarter (CIS, 1993). The limitations of this reference tool are the emphasis on statistical publications and the lack of historical coverage. With regard to checklists, Margaret Lane’s (1981) State Publications and Depository Libraries: A Reference Handbook, provides a useful definition of these reference tools: Checklists serve an organizational function in a library by providing a method of arranging the collection, if documents are in a separate collection. They can also be used for inventory. They often give classification numbers and cataloging data and serve as the index to the state
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documents collection. For non-depository libraries, checklists serve as verification tools for interlibrary loan requests. (p. 33)
Note the emphasis is on checklists’ use as an organizational and classification tool for a collection. Keeping in mind the state agencies identified in this article, a librarian could assist genealogical patrons using checklists from other states. This author could not identify other reference tools that index the contents of pre-1980 state publications. Researchers hope that individual serials contain an index. Many do not and use of these materials must involve skimming the table of contents and the overall publication for information specific to individuals. 10. Web access One criterion for being awarded LSCA grant funds was a demonstration of how the project would be promoted to the public. To enhance access and promote use of this collection, a Web site was created hhttp://www.colorado.edu/libraries/govpubs/lsca/index.htmi. The site describes the collection, its classification scheme, and the contents (annual reports, directories, etc.) and provides lists of resources by state agency. The site is one way to attract the attention of a Web surfer or genealogist who might not initially consider searching the online catalog of a research library. Perhaps by discovering the project’s Web page, virtual patrons will be encouraged to search the library’s online catalog for further holdings information. If a genealogist wishes to search the CU Boulder online catalog for state documents, as of December 2000 it is possible to access Chinook via a telnet client (telnet libraries.Colorado.edu) or the World Wide Web hhttp://libraries.colorado.edui. There is no great difference between the two forms of access yet it is possible to limit search results more than once in a telnet session. For instance, if conducting a word search in a telnet session using ‘‘genealogical’’ the result is 1331 entries. This may be narrowed by limiting these entries to location in the library, in this case ‘‘Government Publications.’’ The result equals 1120 entries and if a patron interested in genealogical resources for a specific state, e.g., Arizona, limits this search result yet again by the subject heading ‘‘Arizona,’’ the result is 33 entries. The Webcat version of Chinook only allows a set of results to be narrowed in scope, or limited, once. Using the same example of a word search for ‘‘genealogical’’ the resulting entries also equal 1331. The limit feature will allow the search results to be narrowed by more than one variable, e.g., location and subject heading, but the resulting list of entries cannot be narrowed in scope any further (see Appendix A). Since the completion of this project in 1996, the author has noted the dramatic expansion of genealogical related Websites. Genealogists, using numerous free and fee-based Websites, are able to access a tremendous amount of information in cyberspace. One well-known site, Ancestry.com, makes many resources, census, and military records to name a few examples, available for a fee. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sponsors a popular Website called FamilySearch at hhttp://www.familysearch.orgi where a Web surfer can search their catalog and access research guides. A very popular Website and extremely useful central clearinghouse for many beginning and veteran genealogists is Cyndi’s List, at hhttp://
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www.CyndisList.com/i. The genealogical resources available on the World Wide Web are too numerous to chronicle in detail, but most interesting and relevant to this discussion of historic state documents is a project called USGenWeb, http://www.usgenweb.com/. USGenWeb is an attempt by genealogical societies across the country to index and abstract local government records for free. USGenWeb . . . was developed to present actual transcriptions of public domain records on the Internet. This huge undertaking is the cooperative effort of volunteers who either have electronically formatted files on census records, marriage bonds, wills, and other public documents, or are willing to transcribe this information to contribute (USGenWeb Project, 2000).
While genealogical resources continue to proliferate in cyberspace it will take time, staffing, and most importantly more funding, before the valuable contents of all the state documents described in this article are made available in full text on the World Wide Web.
11. Focus group As stipulated by the granting agency, a focus group was assembled to evaluate the LSCA project. The group comprised six women and two men, all members of the Boulder Genealogical Society. The age of the members ranged from late forties to early sixties, most were retired and all were Anglo-American. The state and foreign documents librarian led the focus group and surveyed the group’s knowledge of state publications. Samples of state publications were displayed. When asked how they defined a state document the responses spanned birth and marriage records, school census records, land records, National Guard registers, state archives, and penitentiary and coroners’ records. The librarian discussed the difference between public records versus agency publications. Group members stated that they sought state documents when various directories and other resources were exhausted. When asked how they searched for information about ancestors, the majority responded that they started by interviewing family members. They obtained clues from the stories and information gleaned from family members. One person noted that she resorted to county ‘‘brag’’ or ‘‘mug’’ books, which can be helpful for leads. These official county histories offer small biographies of local citizens. Focus group members were not aware that some state agency publications were also good sources of early county histories and biographies of prominent local citizens. When group members were asked where they accessed state documents, some answered that they traveled to the actual state to visit the state library and archives. Others noted visiting the Denver Public Library’s Western History/ Genealogy Department and some answered that they came to CU Boulder’s library. Every focus group member owned a computer. Only one member did not have telecommunications software and a Web browser at the time but even that exception would soon be rectified. With regard to the LSCA Web page, group members responded positively and had suggestions for improvements. They recommended that search instructions be included (which were later added — see Appendix).
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Focus group members expressed concern about the preservation of fragile volumes in this collection. Three members asked if it were possible to designate the state publications a noncirculating collection. The librarian explained that LSCA grant funds were awarded based on access and resource sharing throughout the state. Some were uneasy with this and said that they would not mind restricting the use of materials to within the library. The sentiment was expressed that now that these resources were identified to a larger audience, preservation issues would manifest in the additional handling and use of these fragile materials. The librarian responded that fragile items could be repaired or housed in special clamshell boxes. The group’s assessment of the LSCA project was both positive and supportive. Members were pleased to see their tax dollars used to enhance access to historic materials of interest to them. All members expressed appreciation for the librarian’s efforts and urged her to seek additional funding sources to continue the project. A final group recommendation was that local and statewide genealogical societies be invited to index and abstract names in these state publications. While this would need to be a coordinated and voluntary effort, many genealogical societies are well organized and have indexing committees who would welcome such a project. Members expressed interest in specifically indexing the Colorado publications for the purpose of creating access to historic Colorado level information.1
12. LSCA grant project results Over 2000 full and short bibliographic records were added to CU’s online catalog during the grant period. It must further be noted that over 10,000 item records were added to the online catalog (this means that both the CU community and Colorado state citizens gained access to some 10,000 volumes of historic state information). This is a substantial addition to the University Libraries online catalog and provides enhanced access to an historic and previously uncataloged CU Boulder collection. State documents librarians are encouraged to survey their collections to promote these materials to the genealogical community. Many genealogists are computer savvy and the promotion of early state documents via the library’s Web page is one fast and easy way to draw attention to these resources if a library’s online catalog does not reflect this collection. Still, it cannot be overstated that the funding of retrospective conversion projects is imperative in the preservation of American and family history. Just as information at the individual level begins to disappear in early 20th-century state publications, so too will these publications if library administrators and funding agencies do not appreciate the significance of allocating funds to ensure access to the history contained in these resources.
Acknowledgments The author would like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Patricia McClure, University Libraries, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Appendix
Notes 1. The LSCA project focus group took place at approximately the same time as the USGenWeb project began to organize its local indexing and abstracting efforts.
References Colorado Department of Education. LSTA Statewide Application. Available at: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/ lsta.htm. Accessed November 2000. Congressional Information Service (CIS). (1993, June). Statistical masterfile: SRI, ASI, and IIS on CD-ROM, reference manual. Bethesda, MD: Congressional Information Service (CIS).
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Fales, S. L., & Monahan, M. A. (1987). Missing links: family history and the documents collection. Government Publications Review, 14 (5), 496. Lane, M. T. (1981). State publications and depository libraries: a reference handbook ( p. 33). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Swartz, B. J. (1983, Winter). Getting to the source: government documents for the genealogist. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 23 (2), 151. USGenWeb Project. USGenWeb Archives. Available at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/. Accessed November 2000. Yang, Z. Y. L., & da Conturbia, S. (1998). U.S. state documents in academic libraries. Journal of Government Information, 25 (3), 263.
Deborah R. Hollis is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Libraries. She was hired in 1993 as the State and Foreign Documents Librarian and is currently the Faculty Director of Special Collections. From 1998 to 1999 she served as coordinator of ALA/GODORT’s State and Local Documents Task Force (SLDTF).
Family history in early U.S. state documents Deborah R. Hollis Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Colorado at Boulder, 184 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0184, USA Received 30 November 1999; received in revised form 30 January 2000; accepted 23 November 2000
Abstract The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) owns a large collection of historic publications from all the states of the U.S. and territorial governments. Many of these 19th century resources, such as personnel directories or U.S. state agency reports to the legislature, contain name and address lists that provide information about early state inhabitants. Collection analysis was the basis of a Title III Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) grant proposal to create electronic bibliographic records for these resources. The project was funded to promote materials of interest to the state’s genealogical community. Three-quarters of the collection consisted of serials and a search of OCLC indicated that most of these historic titles had cataloging copy. This demonstrates the need and continued importance of funding retrospective conversion projects. The criteria for selection are reviewed and key state agencies that report details about early individuals are identified. Limitations of these publications are discussed. A focus group of genealogists evaluated the project. D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Genealogy; Family history; Retrospective conversion of bibliographic records; Public records; State government publications
1. Introduction A retrospective conversion project at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) received grant funds to improve access to materials of interest to the state’s
E-mail address: [email protected] (D.R. Hollis). 1352-0237/01/$ – see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 3 5 2 - 0 2 3 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 3 4 4 - 1
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genealogical community. With the current focus on the World Wide Web and other electronic access, lost is the significance of uncataloged and inaccessible historic materials owned by research libraries across the country. Many academic, public, and state libraries collect their own state’s government publications yet librarians responding to a recent questionnaire perceived the use of state documents as limited (Yang & da Conturbia, 1998, p. 263). CU Boulder is a depository of Colorado state government publications and also owns an impressive uncataloged collection of early state publications from the other 49 states and territorial governments. Long neglected and little used, this collection was only noticed by those who discovered it by accident. The library’s online catalog did not contain many records for these materials. This Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) project recognizes the importance and need for retrospective conversion efforts in order to provide access to valuable historical research materials. Family historians are in pursuit of a paper trail that can identify, locate, and track early ancestors. In this effort, genealogists turn to well-known public resources such as state or county birth, death, and land records, to name a few examples. In her 1983 Reference & User Services Quarterly article entitled ‘‘Getting to the Source: Government Documents for the Genealogist,’’ Betty Jean Swartz (1983) stated: Genealogists are looking for one thing: PEOPLE. The United States government has kept a record of its people for two centuries. People are born, go to school, work, serve in the military, migrate, die. At each event some kind of record is made. Some of the early records are sparse; recent records are confidential. But many of these records have been published; and, as a result, the government documents collection of any library is a potential treasure house for genealogical research. ( p. 151)
Swartz proceeds to highlight useful U.S. federal government publications that reference librarians should note and recommend to genealogical researchers. Susan Fales and Michael Monahan (1987), experienced in genealogical reference service and collections, explained a genealogist’s interest in government documents this way: Why are government publications valuable sources for family historians? . . . there are numerous records within a documents collection that deal directly with individuals who have had some relationship with the federal government. Individuals who have served in the military and are due a pension or a bounty land warrant are often represented in the pages of government documents. ( p. 496)
Family historians, knowing that a relative was a government employee, are in search of the ancestor’s name in government agency records, reports, or staff directories. This type of information helps verify the relative’s employment status and may provide clues to the person’s job experience. Fales and Monahan’s (1987) article entitled ‘‘Missing Links: Family History and the Document Collections,’’ published in Government Publications Review in 1987 aimed at genealogists not librarians, and focused on useful federal publications for family history research. Discussion of government publications for genealogical use has cycled through various library journals over the years yet the focus was on useful federal-level publications. Early state documents are a little-recognized
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source of family history. The lack of indexing for many of these sources is the foremost obstacle to their use, but the publications have much to offer. State publications can provide additional information about the life of an early ancestor who may have been, for example, an educator, student, miner, or someone who sought water rights. Salary information for teachers and comparable pay in other states is often reported in early Department of Education reports to the governor and state legislature. This type of information is key to satisfying the historian’s interest in the living wage of an ancestor. In some Southern states such as Georgia, salary information is segregated and reported for White and African American teachers separately. African American students attended segregated schools but annual reports to the governor included budget information and inspections of the ‘‘schools for the colored.’’ Lists of enrolled students (White and ‘‘colored’’) are often published in education reports (Fig. 1). The manner in which this information is presented can be of interest to social and education historians.
Fig. 1. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina (1881 – 1882, p. 148).
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Further examples of special information in state sources are seen in Fig. 2, which provides the names and ages of employees killed in mining accidents in Pennsylvania’s Mining Commissioners’ Report. The Report of the State Engineer of the State of Wyoming not only listed a roster of registered professional engineers and land surveyors, but also included the names of applicants for water permits as shown in Fig. 3. While social historians are aware of the usefulness of these resources academic and public librarians may not realize that these materials can serve a variety of research constituencies as well as the state’s genealogical community. Faculty from the education, history, political science, and economics departments are just a few who might want to use these materials to reconstruct life in early U.S. communities. Promotion of historic state publications to a wider audience beyond campus faculty can galvanize support for higher education throughout the state. Encouraging genealogists to use the university library collections can help dispel the notion that taxpayer funds are used solely to support obscure disciplines in the local state funded institutions.
2. Project background The University Libraries at CU Boulder have long owned an extensive collection of publications from states other than Colorado. This collection is strong in reprints of early colonial documents for some states and reprints of materials from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These materials are housed in the basement of the library far away from the government documents reference desk located on the third floor. Before this project, Chinook, the University Libraries’ online catalog, only contained bibliographic records for holdings from 1989 to the present and even those were very incomplete. Few of the earlier titles were reflected in the online catalog. A shelf list was the only key to these early state publications and it was only accessible by library staff. In Colorado, the State Department of Education administers federal funding for library services and programs. Title III of the LSCA funds programs that encourage interlibrary cooperation and resource sharing (Colorado Department of Education, 2000). In August 1996, the CU Boulder state and foreign documents librarian was awarded a Title III LSCA grant of US$20,150 from the Department of Education for her project, ‘‘Retrospective Conversion of Social and Family History Research Materials.’’ A search of OCLC showed that catalog copy was available for many historic state documents so little original cataloging was required. By making the Colorado genealogical community aware of these materials, the university would be able to share its resources more widely with state citizens. The grant application requested funds to hire temporary staff who could search and retrieve records from OCLC to add to the CU online catalog thereby also making these materials available throughout the state and region via interlibrary loan. Full and temporary records were created. Temporary serials records were created until staff from the Serials Department could review the work. This was an agreement made between the Government Publications Library and the Serials Department to ensure quality control of the cataloging
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Fig. 2. Report of the Department of Mines: Part II. Bituminous for Pennsylvania (1916, p. 896).
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Fig. 3. First Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of Wyoming (1891 and 1892, Appendix xxv).
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records. Item records were attached to the temporary serials records allowing patrons to identify, access, and check out volumes immediately. Subject headings that would assist a genealogist in identifying a potential source as valuable were added to the temporary records. By identifying genealogical content that was not apparent in the cataloging records, their usefulness could be enhanced.
3. Selection criteria Selection and identification criteria were developed for LSCA materials, which were reviewed and chosen based on content. Monographs and serials needed to contain any or all of the following in order to qualify for inclusion in the conversion project:
Lists of names — e.g., lists of certified teachers, students, National Guard members, attorneys, prisoners, state, county, or local government officials. Lists of businesses, factories, coal mines, railroad companies, banks. Lists of local newspapers and periodicals. Registers of institutions, e.g., state schools, colleges, and universities, state hospitals, orphanages, prisons, etc. Biographies of people relative to state or local history or in the state or county government. Demonstrate social history value — e.g., histories of early settlers, military regiments or state, county, or local histories.
Any publications that listed the personnel of state and county agencies, boards, commissions, committees, or professional organizations were selected for this project—directories and registers were deemed significant to social and family history. Many state libraries and historical societies published monographs about various periods of history in the state or territory. What follows is the type of publication, usually a serial, selected for the project:
agency directories personnel: e.g., state employees, elected or appointed officials, members of the National Guard. professional associations: licensed or certified professionals such as architects, engineers, or dentists in the state. state agency annual reports to the state legislature or governor. executive documents, aka public documents (bound state agency annual reports). special reports produced by state agency or a governor’s appointed commission regarding specific populations such as American Indian tribes, ethnic populations, minorities, children, women, the elderly, prisoners, etc.
Once these materials were selected, the LSCA project staff conducted a search for OCLC cataloging copy.
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4. Specific state agency publications There are patterns to the kinds of information in these documents that would help librarians become familiar with the publication contents. If the adjutant general in one state publishes a regimental history, it is likely that other states did the same. Key categories of state agencies are highlighted below. While social and demographic information is prevalent in annual reports to the governor and state legislature, many reports also contain employee names or brief summaries of individuals who had business with the state agency (e.g., prisoners, patients in state hospitals, letters from farmers to county agricultural officers, etc.). Descriptions of individual level data for sample states are provided to highlight the potential use of these agency publications. 4.1. Adjutant General’s Office This office was in charge of state military forces including the National Guard and published registers of soldiers and officers (usually organized by regiment). Some states provided the hometown and county of the soldier. The annual or biennial reports to the governor can include regimental histories. Example: Iowa’s 1863 Adjutant General’s Office report included a list of soldiers rejected for service. Persistence is often required to utilize fully such historic works. 4.2. Department of Agriculture Reports This agency differs from the agricultural experiment stations. Most states published the names of agricultural officials at the state and county level. Example: Kansas included county demographics and history and identified local newspapers by title in the 1860–1893 publications. Some years included the number of churches in the county. One can find a list of awards at the Illinois State Fair in the 1872–1874 Illinois publications. By 1948, Illinois published names of the leaders of the Boys and Girls 4-H clubs by county. 4.3. Department of Corrections and Charities (or State Penitentiary) These publications vary in content by state but many list the county jails and poorhouses and report results of the annual inspections of these facilities. Example: Iowa’s 1890 ‘‘Report of the Pardons, Commutations, Suspensions of Sentences, and Remissions of Fines’’ is a part of the states’ Public Documents series (Fig. 4). 4.4. Department of Education (or Public Instruction etc.) Early annual reports of many states include rosters of state college and university faculty, and primary educators. Some states have lists of graduating high school seniors with high grade point averages. School curriculum is discussed and researchers can see what an
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Fig. 4. Report by the Governor of Iowa of Pardons, Commutations, Suspensions of Sentence, and Remissions of Fines (1892, p. 5). Bound in legislative documents submitted to the Twenty-Fourth General Assembly of the State of Iowa (Volume III).
ancestor may have studied. Architectural plans for new schools can be included in annual reports as well as photographs of school buildings. In the case of the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, annual reports provide student and parent/guardian information as well as names of the teachers and staff at the school plus their annual salaries. Example: ‘‘Educational Survey Series (By County) in Georgia 1915–1916.’’ This survey was conducted under the direction of the state Department of Education and is unique since similar surveys could not be found for other U.S. states. The series surveyed the schools of each county in Georgia. Photographs of the schools are included with a brief summary identifying the principal and teachers, the school’s location, size of the school grounds, who held the land title, availability of toilets, value and condition of the building, available
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equipment such as a school library, and school organization. Photographs of Negro schools in the county are published without the same level of reporting as the White schools. 4.5. Department of Public Welfare (aka Charities and Public Welfare) Rosters of state hospitals, boards of public charities, orphanages, asylums, almshouses, various health care facilities, and charities can be found in these reports. Some states include reports of the correctional facilities under this agency. These reports can be included in the bound public documents for some states. Example: The 1927 report of the Illinois Department of Public Welfare listed all hospitals in the state. The 1918 report listed doctors, nurses, and other employees. 4.6. Office of the Governor or Advisory Commissions to the Governor These are generally reports about social, historical, and economic issues in the state and are good resources for information ranging from race relations to state history. The Commission on Civil Rights or Human Rights or Interracial Commission as they were called in some states, published reports on the condition of various minority groups and women within a state. Example: The Minnesota Governor’s Human Rights/Interracial Commission published a series of reports from 1945 to the mid-1950s. Titles included The Negro Worker in Minnesota, The Negro and His Home in Minnesota, The Mexican in Minnesota, The Oriental in Minnesota, and The Indian in Minnesota. The Indiana War History Commission published Indiana at War in 1951, which is a rich source of information about local citizens. 4.7. Public or Executive Documents Series The series are bound sets of all state agency annual reports submitted to the state legislature or general assembly or governor. The compilation of documents covers the spectrum of state agencies and could include any of the following agency reports: Adjutant General, School for the Blind, lunatic asylums, State Auditor, etc. Many bound annual reports include registers of state employees. Example: Minnesota’s 1892 Executive Documents includes reports from the State Historical Society, Soldier’s Home, Board of Corrections (which included a ‘‘List of Convicts Released from Prison by Virtue of Pardons Issued During the Year Ending July 31, 1892,’’) and the School for the Deaf (which had a list of ‘‘Female Pupils in Attendance.’’) Wisconsin’s Public Documents included registers of businessmen, bank directors, and stockholders. 4.8. Secretary of State This agency published information about government officials. Many states reported elected or appointed executive, judicial, and county officers. Example: Pennsylvania’s Smull’s Legislative Hand Book, 1883 is a legislative directory that includes state statistics, lists of post offices, and county officers. The 1906 edition of
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the Register and Manual of Connecticut listed notaries public, and county and town officers. The 1882 edition of the Wisconsin Blue Book provides a list of Wisconsin newspapers and periodicals organized by county and town with the names of the publishers. 4.9. State Auditor Local businesses that contracted with state government to provide goods or services can sometimes be found in the annual report of the state auditor in conjunction with the amount of money received or owed, and the goods or services rendered. Example: Delaware’s 1892 report of the State Auditor included ‘‘Payment to Witnesses Before the Justices of the Peace’’ by county. Salaries of the officers and employees of the General Assembly were provided as well. 4.10. State Engineer Many states published directories of state engineers and land surveyors and some named the engineers or firms contracted for public works projects. Example: In 1851, New York lists ‘‘Bids for Work’’ in Albany. In the 1897 agency report, the contractor and engineers who worked on the Erie and Champlain canal are listed. See Fig. 3 for Wyoming’s State Engineer Report, which lists individuals requesting water rights. 4.11. State Mining Commission Reports for some states include a list of accidents that occurred in the state with victims’ names, and whether they died because of their injuries. Example: Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania for 1916 included a ‘‘list of companies that had fatal accidents inside the mines.’’ ‘‘Fatal and non-fatal accidents inside and outside mines’’ are listed by date of accident and provide victim’s nationality, occupation, age, marital status, name of mine, county, and the nature, and cause of accident in brief. The Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report entitled ‘‘Industrial Accidents in Illinois for the year ending December 31, 1911’’ and included accidents reported in coal mines, railroads, stone quarries, and factories. A list of ‘‘Non-Fatal Accidents’’ included the employee’s name, occupation, residence, nativity, marital status, number of children, character of injury, and cause of the accident. 4.12. State Railroad Commission Some states list train accidents that occurred in the state and identify victims and cause of death. Legal proceedings involving citizens unhappy with railroad companies may be published in the agency’s annual report. Example: The 1900 Iowa report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners has decisions of the Commissioners that involve complaints by individuals. Complaints ranged from
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overcharging or excavation near a highway, to the condition of fences along the railroad tracks. It also contained a section entitled, ‘‘Mileage, Officers, and Directors of Railroad Companies.’’
5. Source limitations — gender and race Librarians and researchers should keep in mind that only individuals who had contact or business with a state or county agency appear in these publications so that women and the poor of any ethnic or minority background may not be mentioned. The poor can sometimes be revealed in public welfare and charities reports or State Auditor reports but not all states listed individuals by name. Skimming early Secretary of State publications shows few women’s names listed as government officials. The same is usually true for membership in professional associations, although many female names appear in early Department of Education reports. Adjutant General reports track men and it can be assumed, unless stated otherwise, that the men are White. Men who died in Pennsylvania mining accidents are listed by name and ethnicity with a brief description of the cause of death. Southern states’ segregated information about state citizens by race in the late 1800s and early 1900s throughout various state agency reports, which speaks to the social conditions of the time.
6. Data integrity As with any telephone or personnel directory, entries can contain typographical errors or incorrect elements of information such as address, age, ethnicity, and marital status. A family historian cannot verify how accurately the information was collected, recorded, or transcribed yet it is still significant to see what kind of information a state agency tracked in earlier years. Genealogists are aware of the need to verify information through other record sources.
7. Format The reporting format can vary from year to year within an agency’s publications, thus some state agencies may only report information at the individual level for one year. Others, for example Wyoming, consistently report the same information for many years (e.g., applicants of water rights from 1892 through 1938). Another example of changes in format is the Ohio Factory Reports. Child labor laws were the focus of the report submitted to the General Assembly of the state of Ohio in 1891. The Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories, and Public Buildings submitted a list of children under 16 years old who were illegally employed. The list is by name, age, job duty, employer, and city or town. By 1893, children discharged due to age appeared in short entries about specific factories. The reporting format changed from a list of children by name and age to a short entry for each inspected factory with a mention of discharged children (Fig. 5).
D.R. Hollis / Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 529–547 Fig. 5. Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Inspection of Workshops, Factories, and Public Buildings to the General Assembly of the State of Ohio (1891, p. 230). 541
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8. Evolution in reporting content A review of these early state publications reveals that the trend to report a certain level of detail about the citizenry evolves and changes over the years. Analyzing publication content was not the focus of this project but some observations were made. One was that in the 1800s and early 1900s state agencies quite freely listed names of individuals, e.g., state contractors or personal data, such as employee address and salary information. Around the time of World War I, the reporting formats began to change and agencies moved to aggregate general reports with census data and discontinued providing specific, individual information. What event or events, if any, could have contributed to this change? A social historian might consider an examination of early public records and agency reporting trends, to compare the development of legislative policy regarding individual privacy and public information and the content of state reports. The current migration of public records to the World Wide Web at the state and county level is reviving the issue of individual privacy versus open access to public documents. Early state publications are a useful resource in examining the evolution of this issue. Early state documents are unabashedly clear in delineating the darker side of American society and history as seen in the presentation of segregated state and local statistics. Data and information about White and African American state inhabitants or employees in the South are reported separately. Discussion of ‘‘Negro schools’’ (more frequently referred to as ‘‘colored schools’’) reveals not only a lack of equal funding for resources but also the conditions of early African American schools as disdainfully reported by educational officials of the time. The reporting format is a voice from the past about attitudes towards communities of color. Again, a social historian would find these materials significant in the reconstruction of early communities.
9. Access issues — indexing When cataloging records for state publications are not electronically accessible, the two major bibliographic tools that state documents specialists rely on are the electronic bibliographic index of recent sources produced by the Congressional Information Service (CIS) and a state’s checklist of publications issued. CIS’ Statistical Reference Index is a selective guide to American non-federal government publications, which includes selective coverage for primarily statistical publications of state agencies from 1980 to the current quarter (CIS, 1993). The limitations of this reference tool are the emphasis on statistical publications and the lack of historical coverage. With regard to checklists, Margaret Lane’s (1981) State Publications and Depository Libraries: A Reference Handbook, provides a useful definition of these reference tools: Checklists serve an organizational function in a library by providing a method of arranging the collection, if documents are in a separate collection. They can also be used for inventory. They often give classification numbers and cataloging data and serve as the index to the state
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documents collection. For non-depository libraries, checklists serve as verification tools for interlibrary loan requests. (p. 33)
Note the emphasis is on checklists’ use as an organizational and classification tool for a collection. Keeping in mind the state agencies identified in this article, a librarian could assist genealogical patrons using checklists from other states. This author could not identify other reference tools that index the contents of pre-1980 state publications. Researchers hope that individual serials contain an index. Many do not and use of these materials must involve skimming the table of contents and the overall publication for information specific to individuals. 10. Web access One criterion for being awarded LSCA grant funds was a demonstration of how the project would be promoted to the public. To enhance access and promote use of this collection, a Web site was created hhttp://www.colorado.edu/libraries/govpubs/lsca/index.htmi. The site describes the collection, its classification scheme, and the contents (annual reports, directories, etc.) and provides lists of resources by state agency. The site is one way to attract the attention of a Web surfer or genealogist who might not initially consider searching the online catalog of a research library. Perhaps by discovering the project’s Web page, virtual patrons will be encouraged to search the library’s online catalog for further holdings information. If a genealogist wishes to search the CU Boulder online catalog for state documents, as of December 2000 it is possible to access Chinook via a telnet client (telnet libraries.Colorado.edu) or the World Wide Web hhttp://libraries.colorado.edui. There is no great difference between the two forms of access yet it is possible to limit search results more than once in a telnet session. For instance, if conducting a word search in a telnet session using ‘‘genealogical’’ the result is 1331 entries. This may be narrowed by limiting these entries to location in the library, in this case ‘‘Government Publications.’’ The result equals 1120 entries and if a patron interested in genealogical resources for a specific state, e.g., Arizona, limits this search result yet again by the subject heading ‘‘Arizona,’’ the result is 33 entries. The Webcat version of Chinook only allows a set of results to be narrowed in scope, or limited, once. Using the same example of a word search for ‘‘genealogical’’ the resulting entries also equal 1331. The limit feature will allow the search results to be narrowed by more than one variable, e.g., location and subject heading, but the resulting list of entries cannot be narrowed in scope any further (see Appendix A). Since the completion of this project in 1996, the author has noted the dramatic expansion of genealogical related Websites. Genealogists, using numerous free and fee-based Websites, are able to access a tremendous amount of information in cyberspace. One well-known site, Ancestry.com, makes many resources, census, and military records to name a few examples, available for a fee. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints sponsors a popular Website called FamilySearch at hhttp://www.familysearch.orgi where a Web surfer can search their catalog and access research guides. A very popular Website and extremely useful central clearinghouse for many beginning and veteran genealogists is Cyndi’s List, at hhttp://
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www.CyndisList.com/i. The genealogical resources available on the World Wide Web are too numerous to chronicle in detail, but most interesting and relevant to this discussion of historic state documents is a project called USGenWeb, http://www.usgenweb.com/. USGenWeb is an attempt by genealogical societies across the country to index and abstract local government records for free. USGenWeb . . . was developed to present actual transcriptions of public domain records on the Internet. This huge undertaking is the cooperative effort of volunteers who either have electronically formatted files on census records, marriage bonds, wills, and other public documents, or are willing to transcribe this information to contribute (USGenWeb Project, 2000).
While genealogical resources continue to proliferate in cyberspace it will take time, staffing, and most importantly more funding, before the valuable contents of all the state documents described in this article are made available in full text on the World Wide Web.
11. Focus group As stipulated by the granting agency, a focus group was assembled to evaluate the LSCA project. The group comprised six women and two men, all members of the Boulder Genealogical Society. The age of the members ranged from late forties to early sixties, most were retired and all were Anglo-American. The state and foreign documents librarian led the focus group and surveyed the group’s knowledge of state publications. Samples of state publications were displayed. When asked how they defined a state document the responses spanned birth and marriage records, school census records, land records, National Guard registers, state archives, and penitentiary and coroners’ records. The librarian discussed the difference between public records versus agency publications. Group members stated that they sought state documents when various directories and other resources were exhausted. When asked how they searched for information about ancestors, the majority responded that they started by interviewing family members. They obtained clues from the stories and information gleaned from family members. One person noted that she resorted to county ‘‘brag’’ or ‘‘mug’’ books, which can be helpful for leads. These official county histories offer small biographies of local citizens. Focus group members were not aware that some state agency publications were also good sources of early county histories and biographies of prominent local citizens. When group members were asked where they accessed state documents, some answered that they traveled to the actual state to visit the state library and archives. Others noted visiting the Denver Public Library’s Western History/ Genealogy Department and some answered that they came to CU Boulder’s library. Every focus group member owned a computer. Only one member did not have telecommunications software and a Web browser at the time but even that exception would soon be rectified. With regard to the LSCA Web page, group members responded positively and had suggestions for improvements. They recommended that search instructions be included (which were later added — see Appendix).
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Focus group members expressed concern about the preservation of fragile volumes in this collection. Three members asked if it were possible to designate the state publications a noncirculating collection. The librarian explained that LSCA grant funds were awarded based on access and resource sharing throughout the state. Some were uneasy with this and said that they would not mind restricting the use of materials to within the library. The sentiment was expressed that now that these resources were identified to a larger audience, preservation issues would manifest in the additional handling and use of these fragile materials. The librarian responded that fragile items could be repaired or housed in special clamshell boxes. The group’s assessment of the LSCA project was both positive and supportive. Members were pleased to see their tax dollars used to enhance access to historic materials of interest to them. All members expressed appreciation for the librarian’s efforts and urged her to seek additional funding sources to continue the project. A final group recommendation was that local and statewide genealogical societies be invited to index and abstract names in these state publications. While this would need to be a coordinated and voluntary effort, many genealogical societies are well organized and have indexing committees who would welcome such a project. Members expressed interest in specifically indexing the Colorado publications for the purpose of creating access to historic Colorado level information.1
12. LSCA grant project results Over 2000 full and short bibliographic records were added to CU’s online catalog during the grant period. It must further be noted that over 10,000 item records were added to the online catalog (this means that both the CU community and Colorado state citizens gained access to some 10,000 volumes of historic state information). This is a substantial addition to the University Libraries online catalog and provides enhanced access to an historic and previously uncataloged CU Boulder collection. State documents librarians are encouraged to survey their collections to promote these materials to the genealogical community. Many genealogists are computer savvy and the promotion of early state documents via the library’s Web page is one fast and easy way to draw attention to these resources if a library’s online catalog does not reflect this collection. Still, it cannot be overstated that the funding of retrospective conversion projects is imperative in the preservation of American and family history. Just as information at the individual level begins to disappear in early 20th-century state publications, so too will these publications if library administrators and funding agencies do not appreciate the significance of allocating funds to ensure access to the history contained in these resources.
Acknowledgments The author would like to acknowledge the editorial assistance of Patricia McClure, University Libraries, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Appendix
Notes 1. The LSCA project focus group took place at approximately the same time as the USGenWeb project began to organize its local indexing and abstracting efforts.
References Colorado Department of Education. LSTA Statewide Application. Available at: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/ lsta.htm. Accessed November 2000. Congressional Information Service (CIS). (1993, June). Statistical masterfile: SRI, ASI, and IIS on CD-ROM, reference manual. Bethesda, MD: Congressional Information Service (CIS).
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Fales, S. L., & Monahan, M. A. (1987). Missing links: family history and the documents collection. Government Publications Review, 14 (5), 496. Lane, M. T. (1981). State publications and depository libraries: a reference handbook ( p. 33). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Swartz, B. J. (1983, Winter). Getting to the source: government documents for the genealogist. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 23 (2), 151. USGenWeb Project. USGenWeb Archives. Available at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/. Accessed November 2000. Yang, Z. Y. L., & da Conturbia, S. (1998). U.S. state documents in academic libraries. Journal of Government Information, 25 (3), 263.
Deborah R. Hollis is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Libraries. She was hired in 1993 as the State and Foreign Documents Librarian and is currently the Faculty Director of Special Collections. From 1998 to 1999 she served as coordinator of ALA/GODORT’s State and Local Documents Task Force (SLDTF).