NORWICH – Area residents interested in tracing their ancestry or assembling an accurate family tree will soon have access to an all-new genealogy database, available at Guernsey Memorial Library.
The downtown library will hold a pair of informational workshops on its newest genealogy database, Heritage Quest Online, from 2 to 3 p.m. Tuesday and 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the library meeting room. Both sessions are free to the public.
“We’re really happy to offer this to our patrons,” said Guernsey Head of Reference Sue Morehead, who added the new technology is an excellent compliment to the library’s existing material in its Ancestry database. “We get a lot of genealogy visitors here and this is something else we can offer for those who prefer to search online.”
According to Morehead, the new database, available to library card holders only, will simplify the search for genealogy records for patrons, giving them the ability to run a complete search of census records, something Morehead said “we get a lot of requests for.”
In addition, the new software “will expand our reference collection,” stated Morehead, and one section of the database will contain complete scans of “thousands of genealogy-related books.”
“We’re hopeful this will be something our patrons will use quite often,” said Morehead, who will be assisted at the pair of seminars by Guernsey Senior Historical Library Clerk Kathy Barton. “We’re always happy to offer new services to the people of this community and this is one of those instances.”
Guernsey Memorial Library is located at 3 Court Street and is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The library is closed on Sunday. For more information, visit www.guernseylibrary.org or call 334-4034.