Books. Real books. I happen to love the feel of actual books in my hand. Yes, I have Kindle, but absolutely only use it when we are traveling and every ounce of weight counts.
I have a small reference library on the shelves behind my desk, but I keep the little bit of open shelf space available for new “must have” books or vintage books to add to my Rusyn library.
Like many, being retired, I also have a limited budget and choose my hobby purchases carefully.
Through the years, I’ve also come to realize that there are many classic reference books that I’ve used time and again. When we still lived in California, need prompted me to jump in the car and head to one of several fairly local genealogy libraries.
Today, however, many of those classic books are no longer under copyright and can not only be accessed online from home, they can be downloaded in their entirety and saved!
That ability provided the beginning of my home digital library. The greatest part about this new library is that it requires absolutely no physical shelf space nor does it cost any money. That’s a win-win!
What items sit in my digital library? Here are a few examples.
Lyman Chalkley’s 3-volume set Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia: Extracted from the Original Court Records of Augusta County 1745-1800 is one of my favorites. I have returned to Chalkley’s books many times through the years as I am still identifying ancestors who passed through or lived in that area of Virginia. Plus, the title is misleading – there are mentions of Germans and others in those court records.
Another item on my digital shelf is a master’s thesis I found online – “The Slovaks in Passaic” by William J. Dobias, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1983. This item is a reminder to save things when you find them because they might not be available when you look later. At some point, FDU had public online access to masters’ theses and doctoral dissertations, but that seems to no longer be the case.
There are several family histories that I’ve located, one being The Lakin Family of Groton, Mass., published in 1909 by William Manning.
Not everything in this digital collection is a book. When I listen to genealogy webinars and a handout is available, it’s also in e-form and I add it to my library reference collection.
Where can digital books be found? There are multiple sources – everything from FamilySearch to Internet Archive, Google Books, HathiTrust and individual libraries of colleges and universities. It’s less likely that digital books with be stored online at historical societies, but it’s not impossible.
All of the resources I’ve mentioned so far are FREE, but I do want to mention one subscription resource. Disclaimer here: I do receive complimentary copies of their books for review. That said, Genealogical Publishing Company has been in business for a long time and they only publish top-notch work. Several years ago, Genealogical dot com began offering an online subscription service – My GPC Library with three pricing options – $45 for 3-month access to over 800 books, $75 for 6-month access or a year for $135. An additional benefit of this subscription is that almost ALL of their newly published books are being added to the subscription library.
Lastly, how do I organize my digital library? Simple – ABC order works fine for me. It doesn’t matter if it is a book, booklet, article or handout, It’s easy to find and, aside from a very few Word documents, the files are all PDFs. As my digital library continues to grow, I might need to add some sub-folders, say for books and webinar handouts, but that is a two-minute job.
If you haven’t started a digital library of your own, I highly recommend it. Just remember – when you find a helpful publication, download and save it right when you find it.