Preparing to go to the Fiske Genealogical Library

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1 First some facts about the Fiske Genealogical Library in Seattle. The library is run by the Fiske Genealogical Foundation, a non-profit educational institution. The foundation is the successor to the Fiske Genealogical Center which was founded in 1971 by Arthur D. Fiske, a professional genealogist. The Fiske Genealogical Foundation has two major goals: o o to provide on-going education in genealogical research techniques. to build a library of genealogical materials not readily available, especially for those townships east of the Mississippi River. The library s holdings are included in WorldCat, the world's largest network of library-based content and services. The Fiske library is rated among the top 6 places in the world for researching New England genealogy. 4% of the books in the Fiske library are NOT HELD AT ANY OTHER LIBRARY using the WorldCat system. 30% of the books at the Fiske library are held BY FEWER THAN 12 OTHER LIBRARIES using the WorldCat system. When you search the Fiske holdings in WorldCat from the Fiske internet site you are getting a search optimized for genealogical research. The library is located on the lower level of the Washington Pioneer Hall at rd Avenue East in Seattle, just south of Madison Park on the shore of Lake Washington. A stairway on the North side of the building leads down to the entrance. The library is open different hours each day so check their website for specific details. ( There is a $5.00 per day fee to use the library or you can pay an annual fee of $50.00 to use the library whenever you wish. All the books in the Fiske Library are listed in WorldCat.org using the classification system developed by the Library of Congress. Most academic libraries use this system, while other libraries use the Dewey Decimal System. As far as WorldCat goes, the member libraries use whatever system is in place at their library to number their materials so you cannot assume that a call number in one library will be the same in another. Important! The library holds materials for all 50 states as well as for quite a few foreign countries. In addition, it categorizes some materials by region (i.e. Pacific Northwest, New England, Mid-West, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, etc.) When using WorldCat from the Fiske Library s website, the search results are optimized for genealogical research.

2 The home screen of the library s website ( currently (as of Oct 2011) looks as follows: The numbers in red above represent two methods to see what is available in the Fiske library. 1. Option 1, browse the library s catalog, is a great way to quickly see if the library holds any materials for the areas or names you are interested in. It takes you to the original list of materials in the library which has been developed over a period of 30 years. It has not been completely updated to include the call numbers for books you may be interested in but as a quick check for what is available for any area it can t be beat. 2. Option 2, search the Fiske catalog, is what the librarians at the Fiske recommend using. It uses the WorldCat directory, to search for the materials you are most interested in. If you need help with WorldCat it s just a click away. Option 3 (in green) will provide you several help options for using WorldCat including a quick reference guide to using WorldCat for genealogical purposes. To get the most out of your visit to the Fiske Library you need to know what you want to accomplish while you are there. Once you decide what your goal is you should begin looking at the Fiske catalog for materials that will help you accomplish it. You ll be much happier with your visit if you spend time at home doing this preliminary work.

3 Now let s get started searching. Click on option #2 - Click here to search the Fiske Catalog and you ll get the specialized WorldCat search for the Fiske Library (i.e. optimized for genealogical research.) Click on the Advanced Search option to access the fullest range of search options. Each of the three options under Enter search terms give you the following fields to search. You may use one, two or all three to define your search. Accession number Author ISBN ISSN Journal Source Keyword Subject Title You may narrow your search further by selecting various options in the lower half of the window. As genealogists we typically search for materials containing information or records about the areas where our ancestors lived or for materials which may have been written about our ancestor s. The two best searches for this type of material are the keyword search which searches for your entry anywhere in the item's record, including: titles, notes, abstracts, summaries, descriptions and subjects and the subject search which searches for your entry in the subject field.

4 Some special notes about searching 1. You can enter words in upper or lower case. 2. If you use multiple words you can enter them in any order. 3. If you are searching for one word or another word use the word OR between the two words. 4. If you want to exclude a word from your search use the word NOT followed by the word you want to exclude (e.g. Paris not France) 5. Parenthesis can be used to create a more precise search. (ex. dog (walking or feeding or grooming)) 6. Wildcards can be used to represent additional characters in a search term. They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. The Pound sign (#) represents a single character. (e.g. Sm#th will search for Smith, Smyth as well as other possibilities.) The question mark (?) represents any number of additional characters. You can include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace (e.g. bu?2er will yield results for buzzer, burner, butler, butter, butterfly, etc.) The asterisk (*) placed at the end of a word, represents any number of additional characters at the end (e.g. securit* will yield security, securities, securitization, etc.) The advice from the Fiske website is to Use simple keywords as you would on a Web search site. Try using words from a title; the name of the author, artist or director; or words that describe the subject matter. If you are trying to find material from the place(s) where your ancestors lived, always start with the smallest jurisdiction possible then work up from there. For example: West Seattle and Ballard are Seattle neighborhoods. If your ancestors lived in one of these areas there may be material specific to these areas that you would miss if you just searched for Seattle Washington. Start your search with Ballard Washington or West Seattle Washington, then proceed from there to Seattle Washington, King County Washington, etc. Searching for Ballard Washington brings up 5 items at the Fiske library. Three of them have the word Ballard in the title. The forth one is authored by a man named Ballard. At first glance the fifth doesn t seem to have anything to do with Ballard but if you click on the title, then scroll down to the details area you find the following under the contents header - Let's dig a trench: [Ballard Locks], When you find something you want to look at while you are at the library: Open a blank word processing document. Type in the reason you want to look at this material (i.e. your objective) Select (highlight) the key information as shown below:

5 Click on Edit then Copy Paste the information into a word processing document Scroll down the web page until you see the Fiske Library s call number. Select (highlight) the information as shown below: Click on Edit then Copy Paste the information into a word processing document below the initial information about the material. You now have all the information about one item at the Fiske Library. Print the document Repeat these steps for each item you want to review while you are at the library, placing each item on a separate piece of paper with your objective listed at the top. When you are done, sort all the papers into piles by objective and clip each group together. When you get to the library pull out your papers for one of your objectives and start researching. If you make copies of pages from books, articles, CD s, etc., clip them to the page with the book information so everything stays organized until you get home. In addition to whatever else you copy from a book, be sure to include copies of the title and/or publication page. You ll need them in order to properly cite your sources. If you do not find anything of interest in the material, make a notation on your paper indicating what you looked for and did not find.