My thanks to Barbara Nichols, a member of the Langston Family Mailing List for the following information about a website with immense research potential that is online and explained by Cynthia Van Ness ...
--------
... I just learned about an underpublicized website that has great potential for genealogists. Those of you who know the Library of Congress's website inside and out are already way ahead of me on this one, so I beg your patience.
I heartily recommend visiting the "National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections," also known as NUCMC, at:
<
The print version, which we librarians call "nuck-muck," has been a reference standby for years. I didn't know it was available online, and boy, did I print out reams of records from it.
So why should you be interested in NUCMC? First of all, let me explain what a "union catalog" is. A union catalog is what you call the result (whether in print, microform, or online) of recording and describing the holdings of multiple libraries, archives, or similar repositories. For example, I worked in a public library that had a county-wide union list of periodicals, which enabled us to refer patrons to another local institution (college, university, historical society, etc.) if our library happened not to subscribe to a certain periodical (magazine, journal, etc.) and someone
else did.
Now, most of you know that the colleges, universities, historical societies, archives, and libraries across this country have all sorts of one-of-a-kind items, usually from people, places, and things that aren't there anymore. People who are deceased, companies that are defunct, charities that folded, and so on. Items such as:
* family bibles
* family papers
* business records
* church records
* charity records
* ethnic organization records
* arts & cultural organization records
* photographs
* political and advocacy organization records
* maps, posters, charts
* architectural plans
* letters, correspondence, diaries
What NUCMC did was survey these repositories large and small--across the entire US--and publish the results in many, many large volumes, which are still available in libraries. And now NUCMC is online, meaning that you can
do a search on your family names, place names, and institutions connected with the people you are researching. You can search the companies they worked for, the clubs, societies, and fraternal organizations they belonged to, the churches they attended, and so on.
Now, there's *never* any guarantee that the records you seek were given to a proper repository instead of going in the furnace or dumpster, or that an ancestor left important papers, but try a simple search on your (US) hometown and see if you were familiar with half of the stuff that turns up. Then try a search on "_______ family" (your surname). Those with Anglo names will probably have the most success.
I did an easy word search on "Buffalo, New York" and got over 500 hits, several of which told me that some religious charities' records are now held by an archive elsewhere in the state; that the papers of a few prominent Buffalo citizens are likewise in out-of-town repositories.
Every record in NUCMC gives a detailed description of the item and identifies the institution that owns it, either using a code or, in most cases, giving the full name and address. The institutional ("RLIN") codes are available on the site.
IMPORTANT distinction to keep in mind: the original documents (letters, diaries, photographs, maps, etc.), are NOT online at NUMCMC--just a detailed, written descriptions. What we in the library biz call catalog or bibliographic records. To get copies of original documents, you must contact the institution that owns them or, if you hit a gold mine, plan a research trip.
Other goodies at NUCMC include links to conservation and preservation information, a perennial question on the genealogy newsgroups.
Happy digging!