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Genealogy is a hot topic. Hence, requests for obituaries, genealogical inquiries, and historical books in libraries are fairly common. Highlighted below are helpful free resources accessible online that can assists patrons in their genealogical quests.
Finding obituaries
Knowing the date of death, birth date, or burial location can help pinpoint when and what newspaper an obituary was published. The following resources can help patrons find this type of information:
- Find a Grave provides lots of useful information such as burial location, death date, birth date, and names of other relations.
- The St. Louis County Death Records Index provides names and dates of death as well as death certificate number for residents of St. Louis County between 1870-2000. The site also indexes marriage and birth records.
- Duluth Area Obituary Index contains names and dates of obituaries printed in the Duluth News-Tribune from 1958 to present. It also includes a small selection from the Duluth Herald.
- The Dalby Database contains obituaries as well as cemetery locations.
- Minnesota People Records Search through the Minnesota Historical Society provides birth, death, and census records.
Finding full text genealogy books, historical books, and periodicals:
Most print genealogy books and historical items are non-circulating or inaccessible to patrons. However, many of these items are being digitized and can be found via the following resources.
- Internet Archive contains millions of books that are free to the public.
- Making of America contains both books and journal articles on America social history.
- Chronicling of America contains digitized copies of America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1949.
- Library of Congress Digital Collections contains a plethora amount of material digitized by the Library of Congress.
- Periodical Source Index contains entries from thousands of historical and genealogical publications and can be useful for finding information about people and places.
- Google Books.
