SONOMA COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY LIBRARY
 
 
NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2021
Volume 3 Issue 1 
Digitized Family History Books 
LINK+ (Link Plus) is a free service that allows Sonoma County Library card holders to borrow material not available at your local library. LINK+ is a cooperative effort among many California and Nevada public, academic and special libraries. Search the LINK+ catalog and place your request! 
 
If LINK+ does not have the material you are looking for, try these resources that offer access to digital editions of out-of-print or rare items.
 
Internet Archive - Text Archive 
The nonprofit Archive.org, known for its Wayback Machine, also hosts over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books, articles and other texts. Collections like the American Libraries Collection include city directories, family histories, yearbooks, county documents, government records, and more. 
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Combines the resources of a number of academic and research libraries worldwide. Search any of the 17+ million digitized items by keyword or browse the Ancestry and Genealogy collection. Note that some titles cannot be fully accessed online, and some of the free content overlaps with Google Books.
 
Family Search Digital Library
Free collection of over 52,000 family and local histories, genealogy magazines, how-to books, gazetteers, medieval histories and other genealogy books online, with search results linked to digital images of the original publication. Updated weekly. 
 
Heritage Quest, GenealogyBank, Ancestry Library Edition
In addition to their record collections, these providers also offer fully digitized and indexed family and local histories gathered from genealogical society collections around the U.S. Available for free from home with your library card.
Smithsonian Libraries Digital Library - World Digital Library - Library of Congress Digital Collection - National Archives - Open Library Project. 
 
SCL Digital Collections News
Sonoma Responds Logo with fires, Black Lives Matter, and pandemic signs
 
In September 2020, Sonoma County Library’s Special Collections launched Sonoma Responds: A Community Memory Archive, inviting Sonoma County residents to join in documenting and sharing their stories. The Sonoma Responds collection is now live on our digital collections page and preserves a local historical record of living through COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, wildfires, the presidential election, and their impacts on everyday life. It will be updated every few weeks with new content.  
 
Please share your story with Sonoma Responds to build the historical record of this time. This story is not complete without your story! English portal - Spanish portal
 
The Press Democrat wrote about Sonoma Responds last month. Take a look!
 
Sutro Library Special
Interview with Genealogy Librarian Dvorah Lewis
Dvorah Lewis joined the California State Library in 2017 as the Genealogy & Local History Librarian at the Sutro Library. She is also a board member of the SF Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Jewish Studies at UC Irvine and her Masters in Library & Information Science at UCLA. She is excited to help researchers learn how to navigate the State Library’s extraordinary collections and resources.
 
Your interest in archives and genealogy precedes your position as a genealogy librarian. What sparked it?
It began when I was an undergraduate at UC Irvine and a part of the Humanities Honors Program, which required participants to write a thesis. Having only known a few lines about my great great grandmother, I knew I wanted to use this assignment as a way to learn more about my family history. Through my research, I discovered records relating to my family existed in the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center at Temple University, so I had the opportunity to research in their archives. This was my first experience in an archives, and being able to see and touch these historic records left a lasting impression on me. This initial spark kindled into a passion, ultimately leading me to earn my Masters in Library and Information Science with an Archives specialization from UCLA. My position now at Sutro Library has brought me full circle!
 
Portrait photo of genealogy librarian Dvorah Lewis in gardenWhich genealogical resources are, in your estimation, completely overlooked?
The ones you wouldn’t think as having genealogical information! These may be located in the closed stacks of special collections and archives, for example annual reports or internal newsletters. Others might not mention your ancestor but can provide historical context. Local histories can be a great resource for contextualizing your ancestor’s life. For example, there is a Wellsburg, PA local history in our collection that has a blurb about the town believing the world was going to end and they met at the cemetery dressed in white. Turns out it was just a solar eclipse! This was a fascinating find, and if your ancestor lived in this area during this time, it may be illuminating for your research. In the presentations I give on the Sutro Library, I try to highlight some of these resources that can be found in our collection and encourage researchers to think outside of the box.
 
What was the most interesting project you have worked on? 
When I was in graduate school, I learned about web archiving - collecting portions of the World Wide Web and preserving the collections in an archival format. A web archive I got to work on was the UCLA Library’s UK European Union Membership Referendum, also known as "Brexit." This collection captured the various campaign sites leading up to the vote in 2016 on whether the United Kingdom should leave or stay in the European Union. I believe our collection has become the standard and possibly is considered the most complete. Even though I haven’t worn my web archivist hat for a few years now, it will always hold a special place in my heart, and I continue to teach people about the importance of preserving the web.
 
Though many of our readers are familiar with the Sutro Library – is there anything they might be surprised to learn about its collection?
They may be surprised to learn that our genealogy collection didn’t start with Adolph Sutro. While there are resources in his original collection that can be used for Entrance Sutro Library, San Franciscogenealogical research, our genealogy collection began after Sutro’s heirs gifted the Sutro Library to the State of California, and we became a State Library. In the beginning, we relied on loans and donations from the genealogy community. Their continued support helps to make our genealogy collection one of the largest west of Salt Lake City. 
 
And - what might someone be surprised to know about you?
People are often surprised when they learn I have written a fantasy trilogy. I started writing it when I was 14 and have continued to work on it. I of course plan to publish one day!          
 
The Sutro Library is located in the campus library of San Francisco State University, 1630 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, and holds the original collection of Adolph Sutro (1830–1898), California businessman and San Francisco mayor. The library has a large collection of publications and items from the 13th to the 21st centuries as well as one of the largest genealogy collections in the U.S. Visit the library's website for more information and to search the catalog.
 
Interview: Simone Kremkau. Photo, top: Provided by Dvorah Lewis. 
 
Meet Dvorah Virtually!
Researching your Orphan Ancestors
Thursday, January 21, 2021
3 PM - 5 PM
Hosted by the H&G Library 
In this talk, as Dvorah shares her own journey, attendees will learn how to trace orphan ancestors through go-to genealogical records like census and city directories, as well as types of records created by the orphanages themselves, from annual reports to internal newsletters. Researching orphanage records is what originally sparked Dvorah's interest in conducting her own genealogical research. Free. Register here. 
 
San Francisco/Bay Area Genealogy Calendar
Did you know that the Sutro Library hosts the SanFrancisco/Bay Area Genealogy Calendar? The calendar is updated every month and lists genealogy, family history and local history events in San Francisco and the counties of Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo. This month, some highlights include a virtual book talk, Women and the Legacy of Imperialism in the Pacific, on January 9, and a virtual presentation on Lou Henry Hoover, Stanford Class of 1898 and the Rights of Women, on January 26.   
 
Virtual Events

 
Saturday, January 16, 2021
1 PM - 2:30 PM
 
Widows and orphans have always had a special place in the law. But it's not always the place that 21st century researchers might expect. Learn more of the ways the law treated widows and orphans and what the records may tell us about them. Register here. 
 
Judy Russell, genealogist with a law degree and her well-known blog The Legal Genealogist, has made it her mission to help researchers under-stand the often arcane and impenetrable legal concepts and terminology that can be important to the study of family history. 
1850s San Francisco: Paris of the Pacific
Sunday, January 10, 2021, 10 AM 
 
Discover the history of the French quarter of San Francisco during the Gold Rush! City Guide Bruce Bennett tells you how the first French community in California established itself around the main square of the young city and played an active role in the city's development. Organized by SF City Guides. Free event. More information and registration here. 
 
Getting Social
In October 2020, the Sonoma County Library's Special Collections - the History & Genealogy Library in Santa Rosa, the Healdsburg Wine Library and the Petaluma History Room - launched a new Instagram account.
 
Follow the handle scl_history to see highlights from our collections, get a behind-the-scenes look into our work and stay informed about upcoming events and new materials. 
Not on Instagram? Like us on Facebook!  
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How to reach the Sonoma County Library's Special Collections
Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library: history@sonomalibrary.org.
Call (707) 308-3212, Tue-Thu 10 AM-5 PM. 
Petaluma History Room: cwilliams@sonomalibrary.org.
Call (707) 763-9801 x0722, Mon 11 AM-7:30 PM; Fri 10 AM-5 PM; Sat 10 AM-1 PM.
Sonoma County Wine Library: mjones@sonomalibrary.org.
Call (707) 433-3772 x0416, Mon/Tue 12 PM-7 PM; Wed-Sat 10 AM-5 PM.
Curbside pick-up of materials available Mon-Sat. 
 
Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library
Mailing Address: 211 E Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Physical Address: 725 3rd Street, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Phone: (707) 308-3212 
Read about us in the Press Democrat
Email the editor: skremkau@sonomalibrary.org