Part 1 - Finding Books about a Small Town History

 

Many of us have roots in what are, or were small towns, this is a story about finding books in one such place.

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.

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 in that small town. What's more, looking into things identified even more.

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.

Local Oddball Books 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. Looking back, I decided to look a bit deeper.

The 1971 book gave a result like that below

Clicking on the "Borrow" button led me to something irrelevant, so I searched the University Catalog and found several books, including some "Wisner family history" items. Similarly, I located a library in Nebraska that had the earlier book. While I was at it, it also occurred to me to search for Cuming County, the county that includes Wisner. Before long, I concluded that the choice was either to purchase a paper version of the book, or to get an ebook at a library where I had borrowing privleges.

For paperback versions of "Cuming County," I got the following results, including shipping costs:

• Amazon - $25 new or $10 used. The new price is also available from other sources including the publisher, and Barnes & Noble
• Bookfinder via eBay - $9 used
• Available in Wichita Public Library and other places (card required)
• Available as eBook from a number of universities (all require logon credentials)