The Ozarks Genealogical Society Library in Springfield announced it is closing its building and moving its collection to the Emerson Local History & Genealogy Center in St. Louis.
Reasons for the move, the library explained in an email to its members, is in part due to “an obvious trend that in-person use of our brick and mortar library has diminished as people access genealogy information online.”
OGS, however, will continue to provide free genealogy help through its programs and classes and member opportunities.
Micki Dischinger sat at the small desk in the Ozarks Genealogical Society Library on Aug. 1 watching fellow OGS members pack up books from the shelves into boxes. It was the desk she has sat at every Wednesday and Saturday for more than a decade.
She will no longer be at the library, which will be sold soon. The books and periodicals that lined the shelves are being sent to the Emerson Local History & Genealogy Center in St. Louis.
While the move makes Dischinger sad, she understands the reasons for the change. When she started volunteering at the library she would see three or four people each day. “Now we are lucky to have one person in a week,” she admitted. “There was a time when we would have a whole line of tables here and they would be full.”
One of the main reasons for those changes is the way people access genealogical information today with many increasingly turning to various online sources.
“Before the internet, genealogists were entirely reliant on either in-person visits to the locales where their ancestors lived or the published books that contained abstracted information from important records. Now that we have access to genealogical resources on the internet, our research has shifted,” explained Patti Hobbs, OGS president, in an email explaining the move to members.
While in-person visits to local courthouses and archives are still essential and published books that provide information are not always available online, having the new Ozarks Genealogical Society Collection available through inter-library loan will serve those needs, Hobbs added. Among those resources are probate records, land records, court records, tax records and military records, she explained. “The information abstracted into the books provide a shortcut to the research, particularly when traveling to the location is difficult.”
When OGS opened its library in a former church building on West Catalpa in 1985, it provided those important resources, including abstracts of those records. The building also served as a location for classes and conferences.When it is sold, the proceeds will go toward education and helping people with their genealogy and possibly providing additional database access, things OGS has been unable to do because its funds were devoted to supporting the aging building, Hobbs said.
Joe Fry knows firsthand about the needs and cost of maintaining the library building. An OGS member for 20 years, Fry has done much of that work. As an electrician, he installed the lighting. But he also did basic maintenance for years. He also did a lot of work on research for others. In fact, he is what is known as a “DNA Angel,” helping adoptees find their birth families through DNA and genealogical searches.