Visit the Library from the Comfort of Home

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Our library has some useful databases available to local residents who have a library card. These aren’t free, unreliable things that are just out there on the internet. They’re good sources of information brought to you by the library.

Our newest resource is available only to Litchfield and Hutchinson area residents. It’s an online database of newspapers and news magazines from around the country, called America’s News. It includes the past 12 years of the Litchfield Independent Review. You can search for articles on specific subjects in our local paper or browse past issues by date. I was able to go back and easily find articles about the opening of our library building ten years ago. There are no photos or images, and you won’t find ads, classifieds, or everything that’s in the newspaper, but you will find all of the articles.

You can also search recent years of the Hutchinson Leader, the West Central Tribune, the Mankato Examiner, the Duluth News Tribune, and other Minnesota newspapers, easy to find with a link labeled “Minnesota”. If you’re looking for news from your hometown in Odessa, Texas, or your winter home in Fort Myers, Florida, or the article on your nephew in Columbia, Missouri, you can search those newspapers specifically, too, and a wide variety of others.

You can access America’s News one of two ways: You can come into the library and use the computer on the far end of our catalog computers. You’ll see a sign next to it about accessing your local newspaper and icons on the desktop for getting there. If you use the database this way, you don’t even need a library card to get into it. The other way you can get to it is through the Litchfield Library blog. On the right side of our blog, under the links to the catalog and our ebook service, you’ll find links to searching the Litchfield Independent Review and to searching the entire America’s News database. To get in this way, you’ll have to enter your library card number. But then you can access it conveniently from your home or workplace.

Another database offered by Pioneerland to our entire library system is ChiltonLibrary, an electronic version of the Chilton’s auto repair manuals. If you’re a do-it-yourself person when it comes to your car or truck, this is a good way to find step-by-step repair instructions, maintenance schedules from the manufacturer, and wiring diagrams. You choose your year, make, and model, and then you can see what information is available for that vehicle. This is another database that you can either use in the library without a library card or sign into from your own computer if you have a Pioneerland library card. You can find it by going to the Pioneerland catalog, iii.pioneerland.lib.mn.us, choosing “other resources”, and scrolling down to ChiltonLibrary.com, a green button.

Finally, Powerspeak Languages is another database you can find on that same page of the Pioneerland website, a little bit above the Chilton link. It’s an online program you can use to learn Spanish, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, or English for Spanish-speakers. It’s again the same to access it: at the library without a library card or from home with a Pioneerland library card. You create an account so that you can track your progress and get back into the lessons where you left off. If you’ve always wanted to learn German or you’re planning a trip to Paris, give it a try.

I believe that our library should give you access to local information, and I know that many of us like the convenience of getting information from home, no trip to the library required. I hope you’ll take advantage of these resources to look things up in our local paper or other local papers around the country, find out how to fix your transmission, or study a language.

Library now offers database of Independent Review articles

The Litchfield Library has gotten a subscription to a database that includes the past 12 years of the Litchfield Independent Review.  You can search for articles from August 2000 to the present, searching for words in the headline or anywhere in the article.  You can even choose a particular issue to browse.  It does not have any images, so you'll only find the articles.  You can access the Independent Review search here: http://infoweb.newsbank.com/signin/LitchfieldPublicLibrary/MLRB

The database also includes newspapers and news magazines from throughout the United States.  Access the entire database here: http://infoweb.newsbank.com/signin/LitchfieldPublicLibrary

If you use the database on the library computers, you can get right into it without signing in.  If you access the database from home, you will have to sign in with your library card. 

I believe our local library should offer access to our local publication.  I hope you'll find this a useful resource!

-- Beth Cronk

Researching Your Family History

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Have you gotten involved in researching your ancestors? We get many people from near and far who come into our library to work on their genealogy. The main attraction is our collection of local newspaper microfilm and our modern microfilm reader, purchased last year with a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society. If you’ve had experience printing from microfilm or microfiche on an old reader, you’ll appreciate how nice it is to use a computer and regular printer instead. You can even save images from the microfilm to your memory stick or email them from our computer, if you can access your email away from home.

We have a collection of microfilmed newspapers from 1871 to 2008: Meeker County News, Litchfield News Ledger, Litchfield Saturday Review, Litchfield Independent, and the Litchfield Independent Review. We also have the Meeker County Old Settlers’ Association Papers and a few local census documents on microfilm, adding up to about 140 rolls in our collection. If you’d like to use microfilm of newspapers from other locations around Minnesota, we can help you order those from the Minnesota Historical Society. They’ll loan them out for use in our library.

We have a small collection of local history books for use in the library, also. One that is used frequently is Meeker County, Minnesota cemeteries, compiled by Diane Rosenow, copyright 1993. It’s actually a two-volume index to people buried in Meeker County cemeteries. We have a few other local history, biography, and plat book volumes, mostly stored behind the desk. Ask a staff member for assistance if you’d like to use these or the microfilm.

To get to the real genealogy experts in town, walk a half a block north from the library and visit the Meeker County Historical Society Museum/GAR Hall. They are open Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. They offer an obituary database, a cemetery database, plat books, school records, military records, high school yearbooks, and a fee-based genealogy research service.

If you’d like to learn some general techniques of genealogy research or find some new sources, you can take a look in our library at some books like the following, or just browse the 929 section:

• The genealogist’s address book: state and local resources: with special resources including ethnic & religious organizations. Bentley, Elizabeth Petty. c2009.

• Tracing your Irish family history. Adolph, Anthony. c2009.

• Tracing your family history: The complete guide to locating your ancestors and finding out where you came from. Hull, Lise. c2006.

You can search our library catalog or catalogs in other libraries using subject headings like these:

• Genealogy

• Minnesota – Genealogy

• Cemeteries

• Registers of births, etc.

Finally, there are many good internet resources now, which have made genealogy research much easier than it used to be. The big one is Family Search, http://www.familysearch.org/, which is a massive genealogy database from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s free to use and available to anyone, regardless of religious affiliation. Ancestry.com is another huge collection of genealogy resources, from scans of original census records to family trees that members have created from their own research. You have to pay for a membership, but they offer a free trial, and they have a collection of free records at Rootsweb, www.rootsweb.ancestry.com.

We have a handout listing these resources and more next to our microfilm reader. Pick up a copy if you’d like to find some places to get started with your family research.