Hello again!

So much has happened since I last posted to this site that I hardly know where to start. I guess chronologically would be the easiest, so here goes.


During the late hours of July 29th, the roof on the south side of our library began to collapse. Our director, along with firefighters and several people from city hall including the city manager and the mayor, managed to move every single item out of the Special Collections room and my office. The next morning, after bracing the ceiling up, the decision was made to move the remaining books out of the south side of the building into the north side, so that we could remain open while repairs were being made. Special Collections would be moved into the large meeting room, which was located inside the old Alamo school portion of the building.

We managed to reopen on the morning of August 24th, and remained open until Saturday September 12th. During that night the south side of the building experienced the same thing that the north side had. We were forced to box up all the books and shelves, and put them into storage until a suitable building was found for us.

The staff moved into a building located in the “new town” section of Palestine, where we have been ever since. Looking on the bright side, we have had time to complete several ongoing projects, as well as plan and create new opportunities for our patrons that I doubt would have happened before.

In February of 2010, the city signed the papers for the purchase of the old mall, located on the south side of Loop 256, and is remodeling it to contain our library, a branch of Texas State Technical College, and the Summit High School, which is an early college high school program. It’s all very exciting for our library as well as our city in general. As far as when we’ll open again to the public? We don’t yet know. We hope to be open sometime during the summer, but there has not yet been official word. I’ll post it here as soon as we have the official word.

In the meantime, I thought I would tell you about some of the new things I’ve learned about genealogy. I’ve joined the Association of Professional Genealogists, and we have formed a chapter on Second Life. Let me explain what Second Life is to those of you who have never visited.

Second Life is a downloadable program that creates a virtual world on your computer. You can visit www.secondlife.com to read more about it, but I’d like to stress that it is FREE! (Yes, that’s a favorite word for everyone nowadays!) There are a group of genealogists in Second Life who hold online educational chats and talks about genealogy. I’ve even been a presenter myself! I’ll try to post a few photos from Second Life (SL) on this site so you’ll be able to see what it looks like.

In the meantime, if you’re interested, you might drop by this website: http://brickwalls.ning.com/ . There is a calendar of events for the UGG (Union of Genealogy Groups) for Second Life. There are also other opportunities on that site for networking with others who do genealogy. So check it out!

I know I have said in the past that I would update this regularly, and I’ve been terrible about this, but I will make it one of my main goals to do better. So check back often!!