Harrogate Library

A keen audience of members and guests met at Harrogate Library to hear three speakers.
Firstly, Alison Wheat (Outreach Librarian) who outlined the many resources available in the Library’s Local Studies Collection, and others such as Ancestry, Find my Past and digitised archival Newspapers accessible online in the Library (but only available from home if a subscription is paid).
Paul Jennings spoke about use of the Census (also available online in the Library) and the challenges of interpreting entries. The early censuses had the individual house entries transposed, by officials, into the records we now see- with consequent variations in family and place names creeping in.
Kevin Hales spoke about the use of street directories, newspapers and Google in his research into previous occupiers of his house which included a Methodist minister about whom it was claimed: ‘in the course of his ministry he had never spent fourteen consecutive days at home, and during the last ten years he had slept in 530 different beds’.
We then moved to the Local Studies Room where library staff has set out original newspapers from 1912, street directories and maps so that we could have a hands-on experience of these resources. A number of members remarked that they had not known that the Library provide such a wealth of resources for research. On the strength of this we plan another visit to the Library in the Spring for coffee and a closer look at some of this material, guided by those of our members who know their way around the Local Studies room.