It looks like the economy and a lack of support on the part of the current library director may cause the North Carolina room – and its collection, to find it has no home this coming fall, when the Orange County Library in Chapel Hill, North Carolina moves..
Despite the county’s economic constraints, representatives of the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society of North Carolina are attempting to rally support for the Orange County Library to keep the [North Carolina] room, which contains local historical and genealogical books and documents, when it moves to the new location on West Margaret Lane in the fall. Currently, there are no plans for the library’s new location to have a designated room.
… in 2000, a library task force convened to define what a new library would entail. In 2001, it recommended to the Orange County Board of Commissioners that the N.C. Room would be increased from 800 to 2,000 square feet in a what was proposed as a Heritage Center. That recommendation was reviewed by the 2002 and 2007 by the commissioners, who again heard it in 2008, she said.
County Commissioner Alice Gordon said that since there is not funding for a Heritage Center, the N.C. Room should find a home in the new library.
“My position is that we need to establish it in the new library,” she said, “and I said that at a couple of meetings.”
Read the full article by Chris Saunders in the March 15, 2009 edition of The Herald Sun. You may have to fill out a “free registration” in order to see the full article – but that just takes a minute or two.
Santa Clara County, CA., faced a similar situation a few years ago, but went ahead and found room in their new library for our collection, and created a website to go with it, and patronage doubled. There is no way to communicate what a ‘heritage center’ or county genealogical collection means to those of us who study history – family or otherwise. All too often people centered in today fail to recognize the importance of those records.
If they currently have 800 feet, an increse to 1,000 is a minor investment for them at this stage. Please find room.
Grace Schmitt, Sunnyvale, CA, with ancestors in Orange county.
When I tried to log on to ours dekstop, a message saying “there are not sufficient resources to load” my account with the default something-or-other came up. The box had a timer that was going to close the box, and then when it closed it would not log me on. I couldn’t turn it off normally so I cut the power. When I turned it back on I logged on fine?
I read here Worcester PC but couldn’t make sense?