Marshfield, Wisconsin Public Library Wins an Award for its Genealogy Database

By examining newspapers of the 1800s era through the present, volunteers and Marshfield, Wisconsin Public Library staff have created an award-winning archive that contains more than 234,000 records of people who live and have lived in the community.

"Old newspapers are full of information, but there isn't an index for them," said Don Schnitzler, an archive volunteer and member of the Marshfield Genealogy Group that first proposed the project to the library in 1982. "Usually, you need to look at a lot of newspapers to find a piece of information you need," he said. "But this online index of births, marriages and deaths makes family research a lot simpler."

The library recently won the Wisconsin Governor's Archival Achievement Award. The work of the library and local residents was commended "as a wonderful example of how a community can keep recording its own history in new ways," Gottlieb said Sunday.

You can read more about the database and the award in an article by Liz Welter in the Marshfield News-Herald at http://www.marshfieldnewsherald.com/article/20081104/MNH0101/811040406/1980.

The database is accessible at http://engagedpatrons.org/database/MPLGenealogy.

Comments

[Linda Peters]

Check out the more than 783,000 records indexed at
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cowcgs/contents.htm
by the Weld County Genealogical Society. All contributed by volunteers and maintained by the extraordinary J. Glavinick.

[Linda Peters]

Well, duh! I should have also added a huge "congratulations" to the Marshfield Genealogical Society and the Library Staff.. this sort of volunteer effort is at the heart of making genealogical resources readily available.
(next time I'll finish my coffee before posting!)

[Peggy Wehe]

Congratulations to all the volunteers in Marshfield Wisconsin for this award and more important thank you for all the hard work. This area of Wisconsin has some of the best genealogy online sources I have seen. Not only this great source from the Marshfield Library but also all of Clark County Wisconsin at http://wvls.lib.wi.us/ClarkCounty/
My husband's ancestors settled in Clark County Wisconsin so I really appreciate all the hard work of the volunteers of Clark County Wisconsin.
Peggy Wehe
Kingwood TX