Post-NIGR: books that came home with me

I’m sure it will be no surprise to anyone who knows me that I acquired a few books during my several days in Washington. I carefully weighed my suitcase before leaving so I’d have an idea just how much I could add without incurring a charge for an overweight bag on the return trip, and I still had to shift about four pounds to my backpack when I checked in for my flight home.

I actually didn’t buy too much; my shelves already overflow with books waiting to be digested! But here are the goodies I picked up:

David A. Gerber, American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). While the title claims “very short” and the book is a small 4.5” x 6.75”, don’t be deceived. The print is small but clear, and the text is 135 pages long; not a skimpy book at all. I expected a discussion of immigration laws and the identities of ethnic groups arriving at different times in American history and their reasons for immigrating, but Gerber goes much further than that. Laws are not created in a vacuum of course, and so he explains attitudes towards immigrants as well as politics. Much of it sounds painfully current and familiar. The book is well-indexed. I’m about half-way through this book; it’s the perfect size and weight to carry in a purse or bag.

John P. Deeben, Genealogy Tool Kit: Getting Started on Your Family History at the National Archives (Washington, D.C.: Foundation for the National Archives, 2012). One of our NIGR lecturers brought this one to our attention, but noted that it’s “very basic.” I browsed through a display copy and decided to get it (p.s. NIGR attendees get a 20% discount at the NARA bookstore, in case anyone needs more incentive to attend the institute). I’m still taking a close look at it, but I rather like it. While it assumes that the reader is new to genealogy, and it apparently covers only records at NARA, I think it will be especially useful to those like me who are unfamiliar with or weak on military records. Stayed tuned; I hope to write another post about this book soon.

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Random House, 2008). I don’t know whether to be tickled or aghast that my close friends, upon reading a book about death on a massive scale, would think (correctly) “oh, Julie would love this!” Sad but true. Actually, my interest tends to be in community responses and recovery to said unhappy events, as well as (or more than) the causes. A friend and fellow NIGR attendee brought this book to my attention, and I am looking forward to reading it especially because my research that week was focused on Civil War records. I’ve been forewarned that it can be somewhat depressing reading.

One print item that I was glad to find and bring home was a single sheet of paper, “Exploring the Library of Congress via the Internet: Quick Reference Guide to the Library of Congress Web Site.” I find the web sites of both NARA and the LOC rather overwhelming, so this double-sided paper is a huge help. You think there’d be a link to it right up front on the LOC website, but you’d be wrong. The only way I was able to find an online copy was to google the title; here’s one of the links I found for the PDF: chnm.gmu.edu/fairfaxtah/documents/handout2003.pdf. I’m rather tempted to check out the page within the website titled “Exquisite Corpse Adventure.”

NARA offers a wide variety of useful research and finding aids for their many (many) (many) record groups and series and subseries. Some of them are available on the website; many are available in print, free (my tax dollars at work; yours too). A couple of the NIGR lecturers passed out particular Reference Information Papers (RIP) as accompanying material to their syllabi, and I requested more while I was there. See http://www.archives.gov/publications/finding-aids.html for links to various free and $$ publications. I came away a number of publications including: Military Service Records at the National Archives (RIP 109), Using Civilian Records for Genealogical Research in the National Archives Washington, DC, Area (RIP 110), Black Family Research: Records of Post-Civil War Federal Agencies at the National Archives (RIP 108), and Research in the Land Entry Files of the General Land Office (RIP 114).

Now to find a place for these new books on my already-full shelves….

NIGR: wrap-up

Well, NIGR is over and I did not meet my goal of blogging about it every day. The days were full!

We had a similar schedule each day. We started at 9 am on Monday, but thereafter at 10 am so that those who wished could do an hour of research before the first lecture. We always had fifteen minutes between lectures and an hour for lunch. There’s a small cafeteria in the basement; leaving NARA to get lunch was an option, but most of us tried to minimize the number of times that we had to go through the security process and so stayed inside the building. If there was an optional evening event such as our visit to the DAR Library, there was enough time to get dinner between the last lecture and the event. NARA is open until 9 pm Wednesday through Friday, so research was another option those evenings. There are some wonderful restaurants quite near the Archives, providing the opportunity to end the day with a very nice meal.

Our classroom was actually the Archivist’s Reception Room (which explains why it was so beautiful). We were allowed to leave our NIGR notebooks and any papers in the room overnight, so that we need not carry them back and forth. I opted to take my notebook back to the hotel and just brought the syllabus of the day with me each time, and I think a few others did the same. There was always a good variety of drinks and snacks available in the room, which was much appreciated. I was surprised at how cool the old building was kept in the heat; several of us kept sweaters and shawls handy.

I was so impressed with our lecturers’ knowledge and presentation skills; there was only one instance where I felt that the lecture’s take-aways were rather elementary and the discussion of records anecdotal rather than systematic.

Figuring out the NARA security rules of the day was always interesting: did they want my laptop in or out of bag going through the machine? could I use a clear plastic bag for carrying laptop, cellphone/camera, and mouse into the documents room or not? It could be frustrating.

As I think I mentioned in my first post, I was initially glad that I had brought the Genie Guide to Research at NARA with me; but honestly, once the course began I did not consult it again. It will remain an important reference book on my shelf, but I don’t think I’ll need to bring it on future research trips—the research guides and record experts in the Finding Aids Room are the on-site resources for figuring out which records are pertinent.

Speaking of the experts—Navy experts don’t like to be asked about Army records; Army experts don’t like to be asked about Navy records. You’ve been forewarned!

One thing that surprised me was that I didn’t need to know all that “record group-subgroup-series-file unit-record item” stuff in order to request a record. I was even more surprised to find that my requested record did not come neatly labeled with all that info! (Call me naïve.) It kind of made sense when I saw the pull slip returned to me—it notes the physical location (stack, shelf, etc.) rather than the original administrative categorization. But this meant that creating a citation for my requested record entailed, you know, work. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Shown Mills’s recent post on just this issue: https://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-4-nara-citations-finding-aids. [1]

Most of my research this trip was in Civil War records, although I also made use of the microfilmed newspaper collection at the Library of Congress for some non-military research. Since I had the luxury of some extra days in Washington, I took time to go through the records I’d ordered rather than just quickly scanning them and going on to the next set of records. I spent most of my research time one day in looking at a three volume set of the Regimental Descriptive Books (Civil War) of the Sixth Michigan Heavy Artillery. I knew that my guy would only appear at the end (I was right) and that I was unlikely to find new info about him (right again), but it was very interesting to see what all was contained in those three volumes, and the number of different places that individuals (including civilians) were named.

I’m so glad that I was able to get to NIGR this year. I learned a lot, met interesting people, and enjoyed being in Washington. I’m eager to use my new perspective on federal records at the nearby Boston branch of the National Archives, and look forward to some future trip to Washington to do more research.


[1] For some reason, my footnote didn't come through. It should be:
Elizabeth Shown Mills, “QuickLesson 4: NARA Citations & Finding Aids,” Evidence Explained: Historical Analysis, Citation & Source Usage (http://www.evidenceexplained.com/content/quicklesson-4-nara-citations-finding-aids : 24 July 2012).

NIGR: the firehose of information

Oh. my. goodness. Trying to take in everything at NIGR is like trying to drink from a firehose. Our first speaker on Tuesday morning explained that her one-hour lecture would be a condensation of a four-hour presentation. And then she was off and running, talking rapidly as we tried to keep up.  This was followed by another one-hour presentation by the same speaker. Followed by more speakers, each attempting to distill years’ and  years’ worth of experience into a useful package to enable us to navigate the 500+ record groups in the National Archives system.  This is key: the National Archives does not rearrange or combine the records that come to them. So, service records for a Civil War soldier are in one record group, his pension application in another, his medical records (if he ended up in a hospital due to wounds or illness) in another, and I refuse to even think about bounty land right now.  Anyway, we need to know that all these sets of papers are in different places and need to be requested separately.  Notations on papers in one set might well refer you to another set of papers… if you know how to interpret these things. Hence the firehose of information.

I’m beginning to feel less ignorant about military records—as in, I’m getting an idea of what I don’t know, which is the important first step. We have lectures on basic military records, Civil War medical records, pension records, discharge papers for the War of 1812, and Fold3’s military collections. Much of my own personal research time will be in the Civil War military and pension files of two or three men, supplemented (I hope) with some regimental histories. 

We had the DAR Library to ourselves for three hours last night with the undivided attention of four staff members; quite a treat! I found a North Carolina county history that I’d not come across before.  And then I found that the classmate sitting across the table from me was reading up on the same religious community in the same North Carolina county.  Gotta love the connections we make with other researchers attending NIGR! The DAR Library, by the way, is an amazingly beautiful space. I remember years and years ago when my family was taking the train cross-country and we changed in Chicago, our parents took us out on the street and we craned our necks at the skyscrapers, and Dad laughed at us little hicks awed by the city. Well, some things never change; decades after leaving farm country, I’m still awed by these things that we never saw amidst the forty acres of this and forty acres of that in rural Michigan. And so at the DAR Library I grinned to myself like a hick in the city, soaking up the beauty of the place.

NIGR: Day 1

I can’t believe today has only been one day long. Six content-rich presentations delivered with rapid-fire speed, NARA, Library of Congress (LOC), dealing with security at federal buildings, trying to remember the names of 41 other attendees (well, ok, I knew 3 or 4 already)… and now I still need to figure out what documents I want to order tomorrow.

Today’s take-away: just getting an understanding—or the beginning of an understanding—of what all is at NARA and LOC, how/where to find descriptions and finding aids, how to drill down to find the materials themselves, what all is online (whether info or digitized materials), and constant reminders of how to think outside the box when looking for info on people, places, and events. 

Things I’m still struggling with: The heat, occasionally. How to get from point A to point B (poor sense of direction!) Where in NARA and LOC I can take a tote bag or papers and where I can’t. 

Things that surprised me: How beautiful our classroom is (crystal chandeliers!); it’s well-air-conditioned too, thank goodness. The small size of the cafeteria at NARA (um, tad disappointed in options there). A lecture on military headstone records can be interesting. The Library of Congress takes the world’s worst ID photos; seriously,  makes the DMV photographer look like Annie Liebowitz. 

Things I wish I had known: I should have brought a lanyard for the two clip-on name tags I have to wear (awkward!). The Genie Guide to NARA is available in paperback—I’d bought it in hardcover. (PS—I’m glad I brought it with me on the trip; I was using it last night to refine one of my research plans.)

Tomorrow’s line-up includes military records (one of my weak points) and an evening at the DAR Library.