Many Genealogists Plan Winter Jaunt Down To Salt Lake City

About this time of year, Inland Northwest genealogists find their thoughts turning to taking a research trip to Salt Lake City and the wonderful Family History Library.

Airlines know this thought process and offer special fares as an inducement. If you don’t like to fly, the 700-mile drive, while admittedly long, is scenic and uncongested.

So what’s new in Salt Lake?

The biggest change in recent years at the Family History Center is the opening of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Formerly the Hotel Utah, this stately old building now houses a visitor’s theater, a church meetinghouse, church offices and two genealogy centers.

A short walk through Temple Square from the library, The FamilySearch Center on the main floor has some 200 computer stations where folks from all over the world quickly see how fun and easy it is to find ancestral information.

These computers have tutorial “programs” that actually speak to you in the form of a red-haired lady, and a small army of volunteers stands ready to sit with you and assist in your learning and searching.

Even many well-seasoned genealogists don’t realize that the fourth-floor FamilySearch Center offers a quiet haven for unlimited hours of computer work with more than 15,000 binders containing family group sheets submitted between 1942 and 1978. This collection represents more than 8 million family records.

The 1920 U.S. federal census can also be searched in the east wing, and both county and Soundex films are there along with copy machines for both paper and microfilm.

In the fourth floor’s west wing is a place of peace for “serious” computering. Computers - set at individual spacious desks with comfy chairs - are loaded with Ancestral File, the International Genealogical Index, the Family History Library Catalog and other databases. The Personal Ancestral File program is also available to each computer workstation.

This is where you can thoroughly search the IGI or Ancestral File for your newly acquired names, or generate printouts from the Family History Library catalog to use in searching books and microfilms at the library. The main library’s computer stations, many of which are stand-up stations, are for quick searching.

Ever wonder why there are more than 2 million microfilmed records in the Family History Library? Microfilm is, and will be for some time, the favorite way to store genealogical records. Microfilmed records are designed to last 500-plus years.

That’s why the Genealogical Society of Utah uses microfilm to archive materials all over the world. Currently, teams are microfilming records in Latin America, Europe, South Africa, China, India and the U.S.

Storing and retrieving records was a hot topic at a recent convention of records managers and administrators in Nashville, Tenn., where one person said the problem arises because, basically, people don’t speak digital.

Storing things in nonhuman, nonreadable form causes dependency on hardware and software, which can fail - which means computer storage of records is risky. So it looks like microfilming will continue to be the storage media of choice.

Back to the Family History Library, people are encouraged to use its collections for personal family history research and for professionals to research for clients. But LDS church policy prohibits some instances of use. These include:

Compiling a list of names and addresses of library submitters to solicit business from them or to sell them something.

Searching library databases for a fee without informing clients that such information is the property of the library and is available free of charge.

Advertising services that leads the public to believe certain information is available only through their firm or that it’s available only to paid researchers.

If it’s been a while since your last SLC visit, there’s another change that will pleasantly surprise you: the library remains open until 10 p.m. on Saturdays, too, rather than closing at 5.

If the Family History Library isn’t in your travel plans this spring, then plan a visit to the Genealogy Section of the downtown Spokane Public Library where the collection of genealogical materials just keeps growing and growing.

Folks like Frank Neher of Malaga, Wash., donate their family histories and such additions are welcomed. Neher’s two books on his ancestry (the Riggs and Bourn families, Eastern Washington pioneers) were well researched and are beautifully presented.

Eastern Washington Genealogical Society’s acquisitions budget was increased to $5,000 for 1996, and books by the boxfull are being added - or so it seems to the catalogers. Some of the latest acquisitions include the volumes of PERSI, Virgil White’s compiled military index books and many new census index books.

If you don’t recognize those research tools, I suggest you visit the library’s genealogy section on a Thursday when EWGS volunteer helpers are on duty.

A new computer has been purchased and installed in the genealogy section and EWGS hopes to acquire all of the nearly 100 available genealogy CD-ROM disks. A big thanks goes to Russ Grant of ADR Systems for his help is setting up this system.

If you aren’t already an EWGS member, check out this active genealogical society. Current projects include filming local cemetery records, publishing early Spokane County vital records, a collected Bible records book, and daily clipping of vital records from The Spokesman-Review to compile into bound books.

Membership is nearing the 500 mark, and more than 100 members attend the monthly meetings.

The next meeting will be Saturday, April 6, when Melode Hall will present a program on PERSI.

So, whether you visit Salt Lake or Spokane - both have great genealogy libraries! Donna Potter Phillips welcomes letters from readers. Write to her

, DataTimes MEMO: at The Spokesman-Review, Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. For a response, please include a selfaddressed, stamped envelope.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Donna Potter Phillips The Spokesman-Review