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During the holidays, many people realize just how important their families are to them.
One of the most lasting gifts you can pass on to your children and grandchildren is a record of their family history. To aid your genealogy project, we encourage you to use our HeritageQuest Online, available free with your Crestview Public Library card.
HeritageQuest Online is a comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sources — rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories and search aids. The collection comprises six core data sets:
•U.S. Federal Censuses feature images of all existing federal censuses, from 1790 through 1930, with name indexes for several decades. The collection covers more than 140 million names.
•Genealogy and local history books include more than 7 million page images from 28,000-plus family histories, local histories and other books.
•Periodical Source Index, published by the Allen County Public Library, is a comprehensive index of genealogy and local history periodicals. It contains more than 2 million records of titles published around the world since 1800.
•Revolutionary War Records contains images from pension and bounty-land warrant application files. These can help identify more than 80,000 American Army, Navy and Marine officers and Revolutionary War era service members.
•Freedman’s Bank Records, with more than 480,000 names of bank applicants, their dependents and heirs from 1865–1874, can help trace African American ancestors prior to and immediately after the Civil War.
•LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set records the memorials, petitions and private relief actions made to the U.S. Congress back to 1789, with more than 480,000 pages of information.
In addition, videos in the new Learning Center cover many topics in genealogy research for beginning and intermediate searchers.
The clues are out there waiting. Let HeritageQuest help you to find them.
Just go to our library web site, cityofcrestview.org/library.php, choose “Electronic Resources,” scroll down to “HeritageQuest Online” and enter your 14-digit library card barcode.
UPCOMING
The public may attend the next Friends of the Library general meeting at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 17, when newly elected Okaloosa County Commissioner Nathan Boyles, District 3, will be the guest speaker.
STAFF PICKS
Instead of a New Year’s resolution for 2013, maybe we should all consider a “happiness project” this year.
Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun” was published three years ago and is still on the New York Times Book Review’s “Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” best sellers list.
In it, the author consulted science, ancient wisdom and pop culture in a hunt for happiness.
In her new sequel, “Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life,” Rubin offers “elegant musings about the nature of happiness combined with concrete ways to make the place where we sleep, eat and watch TV truly a home.”
Sandra Dreaden is the Crestview Public Library’s reference librarian.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: CHECK IT OUT: Comprehensive genealogical resource and new books