While it’s always exciting to find original records relating to our family, we shouldn’t disregard contextual resources that can help us flesh out our family’s story with details about the “when” and “where” of their lives. Published histories of a people group, region, era, occupation, or migration pattern can shed light on our ancestors’ experiences, even if their names are not directly mentioned. Libraries are an excellent place to search for these resources, and a great place to start in your search is “the world’s largest collection of information about materials in libraries”–WorldCat.
WorldCat is a global catalog of library materials that, according to its website, includes 405 million books, 440 million articles, 6 million maps, and much more. They even have a page dedicated to helping you make the most of WorldCat for genealogy research. You can also explore user-curated book lists, such as “Books that Explore Arab and Arab American Experiences” or “Arab American Heritage Month: A Reading List.”
But published materials aren’t the only things you can find through WorldCat. Manuscript collections, e.g. family papers, genealogies, photograph collections, and more are also included in the catalog. By using the Advanced Search feature, you can limit your search by format to “Manuscript” or “Downloadable Archival Material,” for example, and by language to English, Arabic, French, etc.
Once you find a title you’re interested in, you can scroll down to see which libraries near you own it. (Make sure to update the location at the top right of the webpage.) And if there isn’t a library nearby that owns a copy of the item you want to borrow, check with your local library to see if they can request it through interlibrary loan.
