Lesson 9

AncestryLibrary 

Titanic’s Sister Ship(s): Under the New Collections tab, I went to Pictures, then to Passenger Ships and Images on the right; I entered England in the location box and used the keyword Titanic. I got 6 results and scanned for White Star line. The Majestic was too early, but the Olympic was launched the same year as the Titanic and its entry does list it as the sister ship of Titanic. There is a picture of the Olympic. The Britannic is identified as “similar to the Titanic” but not specifically identified as her sister ship. Indeed, I doubt White Star lines would want to identify any ship launched after Titanic as her “sister ship.”

Hindenburg: I don’t see a link for Newspapers and Publications nor do I see that phrase in any of the dropdown lists from the tabs across the top of the homepage, but I have a link for Newspapers, so I tried that. I entered Hindenburg in the keyword box and got 432 hits. If I slide down a bit in the left column, I now get a link to Newspapers and Publications. I clicked on that and increased my results to 436. The first few results are photocopies of card catalog entries. If one clicks into the View Image link on the first entry and then advances through the card using the prompt at the bottom of the image, a student could piece together the basic facts about the disaster, and find which pages to search in the New York Times archives for May 1937 to get the original stories.

As I search further, I realize that almost all of the pertinent results are these images of card catalog entries; the rest appear to be obituaries for people named Hindenburg. Under the Publications side, the articles include an entry for Col. Von Hindenburg prior to the disaster, and a review of a novel written after the disaster attempting to explain how it happened.

I wouldn’t really use AncestryLibrary for this kind of question. First, you can only access it in school so I only recommend it for information the student is very unlikely to find elsewhere. Secondly, why would a person go to AncestryLibrary to figure out what date to search in the NY Times archives? Finding the date of the disaster is a great reason to let the student use Wikipedia, then jump right into the NY Times archives. Moreover, the card catalog entries are so badly typed that it would make me hesitant to trust their accuracy. I would require the student to go to the Times anyway.

HertageQuest: I had instant success! I chose Search Books, then Places, then entered “Huntington, NY” and got a list of 16 results of which 8 were pertinent to the exact town I wanted. If you are patient, you can get the images of the pages in each book to come up, so I can sit in my kitchen in Rapid City and read the original town histories for cities across the US. To a local history geek, this is heaven!