ROOTS & BRANCHES

Last week’s “Roots & Branches” took my readers to my home library’s bookshelf, particularly the books I keep on the “top shelf.”

Apparently, it struck chord with some of those readers, who made comments about the column as well as talking about their own bookshelves.

Trey Kennedy gave this list: “Elizabeth Shown Mills, Tom Jones, James Beidler, Ernest Thode, Bettinger,” and I told him that was some fancy company to put me in! I have books from all of them, too, and the only reason I don’t place Thode’s German-English Genealogical Dictionary on the top shelf is that I use it so often and want it right on the German shelf along with other language aids!

Then there was reader and blogger Brian S. Miller, who has a small physical library (which he flatters me by including my three German-genealogy titles, The Family Tree German Genealogy Guide, Trace Your German Roots Online, and The Family Tree Historical Atlas of Germany) also has several thousand digital books.

I like the idea of a digital library, even though I’m a pretty “Gutenberg man” who enjoys print over all.

But there’s also some merit in accessing works online even if you have them in your own print library.

For instance, Pennsylvania German Pioneers, the compilation of ships and oaths lists from Colonial times, is a classic, but when I’m not finding an immigrant in the set’s index, I look at the Ancestry.com database of the books, which allows me to search for just a first name instead of only surnames.

And, because the signatures in Pennsylvania German Pioneers are facsimile tracings in accordance with the technology of the time, it’s useful to know that the PA Power Library has high-resolution scans of the original lists.

But back to that top shelf in my home library. As I noted in last week’s column, it’s an eclectic mix.

Longest title on the shelf? That would be M.S. Giuseppi’s Naturalizations of Foreign Protestants in the American and West Indian Colonies (Pursuant to Statute 13 George II, c. 7), which shows the destination documents of Colonial naturalizations (the origination documents are a Pennsylvania State Archives collection).

I also keep on the shelf the other ethnic guides in the same series as my Family Tree German Genealogy Guide, which include books by Lisa A. Alzo (Polish, Czech & Slovak), Melanie D. Holtz (Italian), and Claire Santry (Irish).

 Other readers talked about their “personal library collections policies,” including Carolyn Lancaster, who said, “I have a list that keeps getting longer of books I want to acquire, but I am mostly adding books that cannot be found in libraries within 150 miles of my home and which are not available online.”

A sound policy!