A Word in Your Ear: Climbing the Family Tree

Ed: Robyn, the Dunedin Society has been working with Dunedin Public Libraries for a number of years now. Could you tell us more about the partnership?

Robyn: The aim of our Branch of the NZSG is to promote and encourage the study of genealogy and family history, so the Partnership with the Library has enabled us to further that aim. We entered into a formal agreement with the Library in 2012, when we relocated a significant part of our genealogical resources to the City Library, making them available to the wider Dunedin community. Through the partnership, NZSG volunteer researchers are able to provide assistance to members of the public with family history enquiries.

Ed: So, Malcolm, if someone comes up to the Heritage Room and says “I don’t know where to start but I’ve been told this is a good place to begin”, how does it work?

Malcolm: Well, normally I try and tease out some basic information initially, like grandparents’ names, and cemetery information, birth, marriage and death certificates, which often give you good leads to follow up on. It’s useful to see any documentation they might have, or any notes that they’ve taken, if they’ve started to research. Armed with that, I then take them through to the Genealogy Room and show them all the different resources available to us.

Ed: And what sort of things can they find in there?

Malcolm: Births, deaths and marriage fiches, as well as online resources, electoral rolls, and all the cemetery books for the Otago region. We have access to various databases, like Ancestry Library. We have a Directory collection, so you can trace people’s movements through streets and different houses. And we have a newspaper index, which is unique to the region, with the Otago Daily Times, the Evening Star, and Otago Witness. We have online newspaper records too, so we do have an invaluable resource in that. And we also have the McNabb book collection - direct family members are often mentioned in a book – and a massive collection of school centennial publications, and school magazines, rolls of teachers, we’ve got all these things, including photographs, that can be useful. There are far too many things in the Genealogy Room for me to list them fully here! And of course we also have the New Zealand Society of Genealogists’ library in there as well.

Robyn: Yes, the Genealogy Society has specialist resources, such as school records, memorial inscriptions, burial records, historic publications and indexes. And our experienced volunteer researchers are available in the Genealogy Room on Wednesday evenings from 5pm until 7pm, and between 2-4pm on Sundays, to complement and expand the assistance already provided by library staff.

Ed: Do people need to make an appointment to see one of the staff or volunteer specialists?

Malcolm: No, we’re always able to help anyone who comes in during library hours. And if we’ve got someone who wants to have an extra-long session with some personal help, then we can refer them to the Genealogy Society.

Ed: What can people expect when they drop in to one of the Genealogy sessions, Robyn?

Robyn: It depends where they are with their research. Some have specific questions and some are beginners.

Ed: So it’s also useful if someone who has been researching their family history for a while hits a plateau and can’t get any further. You can offer suggestions about what else they might want to look at?

Malcolm: Yeah, it can take a while to get into using the research tools available, becoming a family history detective.

Robyn: Many of our research volunteers have expertise in specific areas, too, such as Ireland, Shetland and Australia. All our volunteers have extensive knowledge and can guide people as to where to go to continue their search for information. Our volunteers also help with family history workshops at the Library, on subjects such as putting a family tree together.

Malcolm: Yes, we’ve just run some successful sessions in April which provided a basic introduction to New Zealand-based genealogy, and we’ll continue to run sessions throughout the year periodically. The idea is to give people a hands-on introduction to genealogy research, getting people actually doing things. So anyone who wants to come to a workshop, we ask them to fill in a basic family tree with their parents and grandparents, and anything in addition to that if they can.

Ed: Where can they get that form from?

Robyn: They can download a tree template off the NZ Society of Genealogists’ website.

Malcolm: Our workshops are free, and last about an hour. We limit them to just 10 or 15 people, and we have some computers set up, so we can talk people through how to do some basic searching for birth and death dates, and how to look at online cemeteries, Papers Past, find things in old newspapers. We do a bit of work on finding more substantial material through other sources, like archives and letters, all those sort of things. And at the end of the session they should go away with a much better understanding of just how to go about some basic research, and knowing what questions to ask so they can start building their family tree.

For more information on the Dunedin Branch of NZSG visit dunedin@genealogy.org.nz or call in to one of the genealogy drop-in sessions at the City Library. The Society offers members a bi-monthly newsletter and monthly talks at the City Library, to which members of the public are welcome.

Keep an eye out for regular seminars and workshops throughout the year, particularly during Family History Month in August.