Nearly 200,000 materials in the Omaha Public Library system will spend four years in limbo following the closure of the W. Dale Clark Main Library in 2022 until the new Central Library’s opens next spring.
In the meantime, some of the artifacts are being housed at the new downtown branch on 14th and Jones streets. Others landed in an old Shopko building near 84th and Center streets.
The former department store building currently houses Omaha Public Library’s genealogy and local history collection. All of the resources have remained available to the public in the Genealogy & Local History Room—or Shopko’s former Lawn & Garden department.
Martha Grenzeback, a genealogy and local history librarian at the Genealogy & Local History Room, said a temporary location lets them take stock of everything before their move to the Central Library.
“We’ve finally been able to have all the genealogy resources together, all the Nebraska history things together,” Grenzeback said. “We’ve been able to get organized better, because we can see everything in one place.”
The Genealogy & Local History Room has city directories, a cabinet full of obituaries and rolls of microfilm with old Omaha newspapers. In the back, the old department store floor is filled with maps, photographs, court records, city government records and more.
“We have a whole collection of old water permits that tell you when the water was first connected to your house, and a lot of other things that people don’t necessarily think of,” Grenzeback said. “But when they see them, they’re sort of enchanted and pulled in.”
The library also collects postcards, lantern slides and restaurant menus, Grenzeback said. There are at least 35,000 genealogy and Nebraska history books/periodicals in the collection. Some of the collection has been digitized.
Many of the Genealogy & Local History Room’s materials are donated. One recent donation — a family Bible — contains marriage records and baptismal certificates dating back to the Civil War era.
“‘Few outside of Mr. Reid’s family and old comrades knew the heroic part he played at Gettysburg,’” Grenzeback read from a newspaper clipping stuck between the pages.
After the war, Reid was one of the first to settle in the area that became Fairacres—an area annexed by Omaha in 1941. Fairacres is on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s interesting as a family Bible, but it’s also part of Omaha history,” Grenzeback said. “It’s so exciting when people bring in stuff like this.”
Grenzeback said she’s helped people prove their ancestry for dual citizenship, find and learn about biological parents and discover who used to live in their house. While genealogy is usually about the past, Grenzeback said it has benefits for the present.
“A lot of genealogy is just about finding your tribe and getting that sense that you belong to something,” Grenzeback said.
Many genealogical societies and lineage groups use the Genealogy Room as a meeting space.
Mary Hanke is a member of multiple groups that meet there, like Daughters of the American Revolution, Colonial Dames XVII Century and Daughters of Colonial Wars. These lineage societies require members to prove their ancestry to someone from the era, and Hanke helps people with their applications.
“They’ll start with the easiest one to prove,” Hanke said. “And then they branch out and go down the female line. Those are always hard, because they’re always known as ‘Mrs. Dave White,’ you know. Sometimes you never can find her name or her maiden name.”
Hanke’s passion for genealogy stemmed from her mother’s interest in the hobby.
“It was very important to my mom,” Hanke said. “She would sit at the Historical Society with the card catalog, write and write and write, then what sources they didn’t have, she would write away to some other library.”
Hanke said her mother’s letters were still being answered over a year after she passed away. She and her sister continued their mother’s work in her honor.
“It just kind of sucks you in and takes you down a rabbit hole,” Hanke said. “Once you hit something fun, you just keep digging.”
The Genealogy & Local History Room houses its own events, like Zoom seminars about ancestry software, or zine and collage-making workshops.
One visitor made a family history book with pictures and documents he scanned from the library’s collection.
“We asked for a copy of that to add to the collection because it is unique,” Grenzeback said. “It is beautiful. It would speak to a lot of other people.”
Grenzeback said these personal projects can become valuable resources for others.
“I feel that one of our roles is to encourage people to think beyond the throwaway society,” Grenzeback said. “Maybe you don’t have a need for this, but your descendants might be interested, or just somebody else in the community.”
The Greater Omaha Genealogical Society (GOGS) meets at the Genealogy & Local History Room. President Teri Baer says working in a group can help fill in research gaps.
“You can do quite a bit on your own, but I also feel that in many cases you also learn from others,” Baer said. “It’s a really good way to network with other people. Maybe you have a research area where you’re stumped and you don’t know where to look.”
Baer says GOGS works hand-in-hand with the library.
“From time to time, we work with the libraries if there’s books that they want to get added to their collection,” Baer said. “We will frequently purchase books for the library to use.”
With all the resources the library can provide, Baer said GOGS members are excited for them to be on shelves when the Central Library is finished. Baer said the plans for larger meeting spaces could bring in fresh faces with an interest in history.
“I think having more of a presence there at the library is going to really let people know who we are—who GOGS is,” Baer said. “Other people in the library that aren’t members overhear what’s going on, and they become interested.”
The current space can only hold about 50 people, but the Genealogy & Local History department will get a large portion of the Central Library’s third floor.
Grenzeback said she is excited for the new opportunities, like the Automatic Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). Resources can be stored in metal bins and retrieved by robots.
“It’s going to be great for some books that people don’t need very often, but you really want to keep them,” Grenzeback said. “We’re having to figure out some of our more awkward resources. Things that are really fragile can’t go in it because it’s operated by robots.”
The ASRS is just one element of the $158 million, state-of-the-art Omaha Central Library project. ASRS’s are common in academic libraries, and Central Library will be the first public library to have one.
Grenzeback added genealogy is more than dates and names.
“Even to people who aren’t super interested in all the fine-tuning of births, deaths, whatever—those stories that people before us had to tell, if we don’t write them down, who will?” Grenzeback said. “And we have a lot of those stories written down. That’s what those archives are.”
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