Genealogy at Terrebonne Parish Library

This is the first of a weekly blog post about doing your genealogy at Terrebonne Parish Library. The genealogy collection is located on the second floor of the Main Library. The collection focuses on Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, but other Louisiana parishes and other states are represented.

Ancestry.com, Library Edition, can be accessed free of charge to any patron from the computers in the genealogy room – as well as from any public use computer in any Terrebonne Parish Library branch.

To begin your genealogy, write down what you already know about your family, preferably on a family tree chart like the ones provided in the library or offered at this web address: http://genealogy.about.com/library/free_charts/pedigree.pdf

Genealogy has become one of the most popular hobbies in the United States. Come and see why so many people find the quest for their family histories very interesting. Is it learning who your ancestors were, or is it the fun of looking for them? Or both?! Come and find out! More to come….

New Year, New Database Page!

It's a new year, and we've made some big changes to the database page on the library website! Library patrons have access to over 91 databases, containing a world of information that can't be found on the open internet. If you have a library card and an internet connection, you can get thousands of full-text articles from encyclopedias, magazines, and newspapers--as well as maps, photographs, computer tutorials, practice tests, genealogy resources, and even live tutors!

To make all these resources easier to use, we have reorganized the page in three ways:

• We've revised and expanded the database categories, to better reflect different kinds of research questions.
• We've expanded the number of links, so that all the databases available to Terrebonne Parish patrons are can be found right on that page. The links are more direct, so it's no longer necessary to go to the State Library website to log on to state-sponsored databases--just click the link, and it takes you directly there.
• Finally, we've added detailed descriptions of each database, to help you decide which one can best help you find the information you need.

To see the new database page, simply go to the Terrebonne Parish Library website, at http://www.mytpl.org/, and click on the "Online Databases" tab on the left side of the page. This brings you to the new database page:

If you click on one of the headings, the menu expands to show a list of databases in each one, with descriptions. For example, clicking on Biography reveals four databases and their descriptions.


Stay tuned over the next few weeks, because we'll be blogging about some of the great databases in our collection. For more information about our new database page, please check out this video: