You have seen these books: slim volumes with sepia toned historical photographs on their covers, found at bookstores, drug stores, or anywhere that might be touristy. They are published by Arcadia Publishing, a company based in South Carolina that has made local history books their specialty. They find authors that are local, or experts on a specific locality, and find archival period photos, usually about 200 of them, to illustrate each book. You may already own one, or several.
Are these books useful for genealogy? Possibly. While most of us will not be lucky enough to find our own families in the pictures or written history in these books, they can give us an excellent idea of what life might have been like at the time period covered, in that place. And Arcadia has just about every place in the US covered. They have something for every state, and even some titles in half a dozen Canadian provinces. The Images of America lists 8,223 titles on their website, and Arcadia has other series as well, for a total of over 17,000 titles. Rather overwhelming!
My intention with this blog was to review books that most people could borrow from their local library, and would not have to purchase if they did not want to. That may be more of a challenge with these books. However, if you are trying to interest younger generations in their family history, these books might be a good investment, since many people would prefer to look at photos, than to read genealogies. Go figure! While these books are slim, they are not exactly cheap – they are about $20 per title. For that reason, you might want to preview a book before you buy it. You may be able to do that online, at the Arcadia website. My local library system has about a dozen titles relating to nearby localities on their shelves. The problem arises when the places you are interested in learning about are not the place where you currently live. That is where interlibrary loans and World Cat come in.
You should be able to go through your local library, through World Cat, to get an interlibrary loan. At my library, I have to login to their webpage, and go the interlibrary loan page. I am asked to make a request through World Cat, searching through their catalog. In this case, it might be helpful to find an exact title on Arcadia’s website first, as that will also tell you the author. Once I find the book I want, I click on “Borrow This Item (ILL)”, which takes me back to my library, where I can complete the process. Interlibrary loans can take several weeks, depending on the distance between the two libraries.
If this was your family, how would you research them? To find titles that will be the most useful, make sure to check the dates covered in the volume(s) that cover the area you are interested in, and confirm that the people you are researching lived there during that time frame. After you have read the book, most of which will consist of lengthy captions for all the photos, be sure to review the bibliography at the end. This could lead you to other books that might have more relevance to your search.