LIBRARIANS AND LOCAL HISTORIANS DAY

NERGC's Librarians and Local Historical Historians Day will be held 8:45 AM - 4:00 PM on Wednesday, 26 April 2017 at the MassMutual Center, Springfield, Massachusetts. The cost is $40.00 per person and includes lunch compliments of ProQuest. To register for this special day -- or for the full conference -- go to www.NERGC.org, where there are links to the conference brochure and to online registration. Curt B. Witcher, Manager of the legendary Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library, will share his expertise in two presentations. In the first—Making the Financial Case for Genealogical Librarianship—Curt highlights the many factors that are making 21st century genealogical librarianship more valuable to their organizations. The value of family and local history collections, as well as the expertise of the librarians associated with these collections, will be explored. Curt’s knowledge and experience in this area will benefit public libraries, historical and genealogical societies, and repositories specializing in local and family history research. In his second presentation, Curt will share his knowledge of “online resources off the beaten path.” Finding all the evidence for an ancestor is the research goal and bibliographic websites are of great benefit. He points out that the importance of bibliographic collections such as NUCMUC, WorldCat, and others has been de-emphasized with the growth of large information aggregators and the persuasive “just Google it” strategy. The researcher’s access to the data they need will be greatly enhanced by learning about these resources.