In previous posts, various Internet sources of old genealogical books have been noted here. The use of Worldcat and other sources to find old paper books has also been discussed here. Sometimes these appear by simple luck, as discovering a previously unknown relative in one of those cheesy family history books.
A major resource exists that was touched upon in the review of Cradled in Sweden. That post was here. However, Amazon has far more power to uncover those oddball family history books than you might imagine.
Recently, I returned from a trip to deal with family farm aspects in
Nebraska. While there, I stopped in at the local library in Wisner. To make a long story short, my Great Grandaunt's son donated the building for the library and I thought the librarian might have more information. Well, it turns out there is not one, but TWO different town history books that feature my family.
The first was a Centennial book from 1971. The librarian then produced another book produced for the city's 125th anniversary. She did not have any circulating copies and I never saw anything previously. A search of Worldcat revealed a single library repository for each of the two books. Google Books had nothing on either. The newspaper that printed one of the books said they had NOTHING.
I was resigned to financing digitization of one or both books. That isn't inexpensive, but it would preserve these histories. On a whim, I did a search of Amazon. Who knows? Well Amazon found not one, but BOTH of the books. It didn't have them in stock, but it had a photo of the cover of one book. What's more, I recalled finding another family book on Amazon previously.
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| Local Oddball Books Found on Amazon |
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| Another Oddball Book Found on Amazon |
Luckily for me, when the librarian talked to her board, it turns out the local history society has already digitized both of the Wisner history books and a very affordable CD was soon on its way to me, complete with both books in a searchable pdf format.
