By Suzann Holland

Monroe Public Library

A visit to the Monroe Public Library is a great way to jumpstart your genealogical research and perusals of local history. You may be surprised by what is available within our building as you seek out your mysterious ancestors.

Before sharing the resources held by the library itself, we want to stress that you should consider the Green County Genealogical Society your best starting point. The society was founded in 2001 and has blossomed into a very active organization. A research center is housed in the library’s basement level. Friendly, experienced genealogists stand ready to assist you in using the center’s wealth of materials. The main holdings are Green County. Both Rock County and Lafayette County are well represented along with several other counties, states, countries and ethnic groups. A large collection of newspaper clippings which includes births, marriages and obituaries is also available. You can visit the society’s website at greencogenealogywi.org.

Monroe Public Library offers databases to help you along the way. Our collection of digitized Sanborn fire insurance maps can help you learn the history of your home, and pinpoint locations within your neighborhood to see how they evolved. The entire state of Wisconsin is available, and the collection is available from home. You can also access the rich records resource that is Ancestry.com for free within the library, but not from home. You’ll want to check out HeritageQuest, which has some resources not available anywhere else, such as the US Serial Set and its own 22,000 volume searchable book collection.

Most genealogists, even the novices, are familiar with FamilySearch, a nonprofit organization and website offering genealogical records, education and software. It is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Because the Monroe Public Library is an affiliate, certain records not available to most users are available within the library. 

Although not specific to the Monroe Public Library, you have access to the Newspapers.com world collection through the state-sponsored BadgerLink. The site features a historical newspapers archive from the 1700s to the 2000s containing thousands of well-known regional, state, and small local newspapers in the United States and other countries, searchable in full text.

Speaking of newspapers, we have a run of back issues. You’ll want to check out our microfilm collection. It contains Monroe newspapers dating back to the Civil War; and in some eras, two different newspapers simultaneously published. We also have some newspapers on microfilm for other areas of Green County, including Albany. To read the microfilm, you can choose from our straight-forward analog reader, or our digital reader. The digital reader has more of a learning curve, but puts powerful tools at your disposal to enhance your experience. You can save images to USB drive on the digital reader. Printing is available on both. Our team would be happy to help you get started.

Although genealogy is probably best learned with the help of others, some of us prefer to work at our own pace. We have a small collection of genealogical how-to books available in our regular nonfiction section. You can learn important skills such as locating records, analyzing old photos for clues, and preserving your family documents.

We have a substantial collection of local history books, many of which have duplicates available for checkout. You’ll find M-Book yearbooks, city directories, county histories, family histories, an assortment of indexes, and other relevant materials. If you don’t find the item you need in a run of annual publications, we may have them stored in our rare collection. Just ask for help.

What if you want a family history book or a reel of microfilm that the Monroe Public Library doesn’t have? Sometimes, but not always, we can get it for you through a process known as Outerlibrary Loan. This system reaches out beyond the South Central Library System to the rest of the country to try to borrow material for a patron. It isn’t always successful, but it doesn’t hurt to try. The service is free to all Green County residents. You can even submit your requests through the library’s website from the comfort of home.

We do want to reiterate that the Green County Genealogical Society in the library’s lower level has a fabulous research center and experts at hand to guide you. The library has some unique resources, and the two entities’ collections complement each other very well. We’d love to help you along the way.

— Cover to Cover is provided by the Monroe Public Library and is published monthly in the Times