Please be aware of this correction for my coverage of the Ashtabula County Genealogical
resources.
Your article profiling Ashtabula County DISTRICT Public Library SYSTEM
(the proper name)was brought to my attention. That library does not hold
the genealogy collection you mention. It is housed at their branch
library, Geneva Public Library, Geneva, Ohio. Would you please make a
correction to that effect? The two towns are about 15 minute drive apart
and it would be wasting a traveling genealogist's time to go to Ashtabula
Library first, rather than coming here in the beginning. We do get a lot
of travelers and despite the fact they have been to many much bigger
libraries with larger collections, many are awed when they enter our
genealogy room. Some years back one woman even wrote a beautiful poem
about it, ending with, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven" (when she
was here).
Your other facts were correct,evidently picked off of our "It's a Keeper"
or "Your Place of First Resort" which are on links on the Geneva website.
It would be ok if you had quoted us more from that fact sheet. I assume
you got to the GPL web site through our ACDL System site, thus the wrong
attributing of where the collection is.
It would be kindly of you to make this correction and to amplify on the
holdings here. We have a large collection of material from other states
(mostly on the migratory path from New England to the Western Reserve as
well as a good collection of western PA and on the Virginias). The
Ashtabula County collection is the most complete and thorough collection
for our area found anywhere (including more than at Ft. Wayne or even Salt
Lake). There is a huge collection of microfilm mostly from the court house
in this county as well as something called "Archives Days" which was
filmed by the Ashtabula County Genealogical Society with their own
microfilming camera and contains Bibles, diaries, photos, cemetery
records, township and church records and much more. Also available are
online databases subscribed to by the library for the patrons use, and an
in-house staff created obit index that lets those from afar order xerox
copies of the actual obits.
The library has a partnership agreement with ACGS to house their
collection and the library itself has purchased or been responsible for
acquiring over half of the collection. The room and its nearby Archives is
dedicated to and named "The Platt R. Spencer Memorial Archives and Special
Collections Area," with genealogy being part of the special collections.
The library provides a paid staff of three and ACGS provides a Mature
Services volunteer as well as ACGS member volunteers when needed.
Two of the paid staff and one of the ACGS volunteers devote all their
time, when not servicing our walk-in patrons, to indexing and other chores
that make researching at this facility very productive. We are very
friendly and eager to assist researchers, pointing them to the materials
of most value to them based on asking them the surnames they are working
on here in the county and where their family resided. We also sometimes
put them in contact with others working on the same lines.
You may quote me (except for the first paragraph)
Louise Legeza, Archivist, Staff Genealogist
Platt R. Spencer Memorial Archives and Special Collections Area
Geneva Public Library
860 Sherman Street
Geneva OH 44041-9101
