“Democratizing” Genealogy and Family Heritage Practices: The View from Urbana, Illinois

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Abstract

To be a genealogist, to do genealogy, requires sources of information. These sources emerge as part of ever-evolving information infrastructures. Between the years of 1958 and 1978 local genealogists in Urbana, Illinois, created library services and collections that both shaped and reflected the “democratization,” through popularization, of genealogical research practices. By analyzing these local information practices in their historical context this chapter offers new perspective on how and why genealogical research became accessible and appealing to many Americans of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds in the second half of the twentieth century. Genealogy in pop culture came to mean many different things to many different genealogists. By foregrounding the infrastructural substrate of this diversity, this chapter illustrates how information systems inform popular heritage. The amateur genealogists who “democratized” genealogy and family heritage practices in Urbana, Illinois, did so by connecting to the international systems of information provision under development in the second half of the twentieth century.

Keywords

Genealogy Family history Public libraries Information infrastructure Information history Library history Genealogical societies 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the efforts of the Champaign County Genealogical Society and the Urbana Free Library Archives to preserve their records. Staff at the Champaign County Historical Archives and Urbana Free Library assisted in all facets of this research. Additional thanks to staff at the University of Illinois Archives, the US National Archives at College Park, the American University Archives, and to Alistair Black at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose guidance shaped the development of this chapter.

References

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignChampaignUSA

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