Yesterday, after a couple of busy hours at the desk, I attended C's Genealogy Basics class. I've always been fascinated by the methods here, and by the demographics of the people who get into it. It's something that happens a lot in my home town (where we're 15 minutes from a huge genealogy library), and I figure that if I ever end up near home, I will probably end up needing to know about the resources (most of which also come out of my home state).
Unfortunately, the beautiful fall afternoon and the scarcity of parking cut into our class size. Seven would-be genealogists had signed up, but only one showed up. C gave her a basic overview of the resources, and then we spent some time trying to find her family in the Census. Note to future librarian self: most of the 1890 census is missing because it was destroyed in a fire, so if the information you need is in there, you might be out of luck unless you can find the information in veteran records or in the state census. Tricky.
After our student left, C talked to me about the difficulties of hosting a program, particularly free programs. She said that one program was so time consuming to prepare and so consistently under-attended (despite having full registration) that they started charging for registration and then gave the money back to the patrons if they came. She said most people's theory is that if something is free, it will always be offered again, so it doesn't matter if they skip it without telling anyone.
Another interesting tidbit I picked up while helping C clean up: a county official had been pressuring her for a long time to set up a class about county records. He wanted her to create flyers, advertise in the paper, tell reporters about it. C was frustrated because he could have easily reserved a room himself and held the meeting on his own time, but he didn't seem to want to - then she realized that he had been pressuring her to get it in before November - election day. "It's just so transparent," she said. "And it's not like I can turn him down, because we get funds from that and need to have a good relationship with him. But I just feel so dirty! They don't tell you about this stuff in library school!"
Indeed, they don't. The politics of libraries are complicated, especially in public libraries where we're so dependent on funds from the government. It was certainly an interesting, informative night.
