Finding It in the Stacks

There is a saying that has gone around genealogy circles: when it comes to research, what you find on the Internet is just the tip of the iceberg. That very concept was incorporated into a graphic design on a poster sold by the California Genealogical Society. In fact, I only recently realized that the poster was designed by the daughter of one of this blog’s readers—Lisa Gorrell.

I take that concept to heart—especially now, on the eve of our research trip to Ireland. At least, I hope that maxim will hold true! For libraries will be one of my most depended-upon stops in the various towns and counties of Ireland.

My mind was turned to libraries last night, having just returned from the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the building that houses the main branch of our local library. Our local genealogical society was there to help celebrate those fifty years. And why not? That library has played host to our Society’s meetings, workshops and donated reference collection from the time it opened the doors of that new building fifty years ago.

When I think of the nearly four thousand books our Society has donated to the library over those fifty years, it reminds me that our city is not unusual in that regard. Across the land, there are mid-sized cities (and perhaps even smaller) with genealogical societies which have done the same.

In the aggregate, that adds up to a significant stack of books. Books that someone can reference to find a way around a research brick wall, perhaps. And if we are doing that here in the United States, surely someone is doing the same in other countries as well.

Hopefully, one of those other countries is Ireland. I think of all the local history books, family genealogies, transcriptions of records and documents housed in our own repository. And I earnestly wish for the same to be true of the libraries at my destination. Not just the national library in Dublin. But the small libraries in places like Ballina in County Tipperary, where I have some questions still needing answers.

Wouldn’t it be just the dream outcome to walk into a local library and pull a book down off the shelf that mentions the name of someone in my Tully or Flannery families there?

Since our libraries here have their holdings listed in online catalogs, I thought I’d test the waters on this one. I Googled Ballina, Tipperary and library. Perhaps because Ballina markets itself jointly with its “twin” city across the River Shannon, Killaloe, the best I can hope for is to visit the library at the water’s edge on the other side of the river—and believe me, the Killaloe library does indeed boast waterfront property. It is on the original site of the lock keeper’s house.

While the library is fairly small—it houses holdings of nearly eight thousand volumes—it is, after all, the closest collection to my target town of Ballina. The website is helpful, providing contact information—you know I’ll have questions—and links of interest to a researcher like me. Better yet, the wider county library system has played coordinator to a crowdsourced list of details to make a genealogist happy. Check out this sortable list of local graveyard inscriptions, for instance. Or this page on the Cathedral’s burials. Or, better yet, this “GenMaps” readout—be patient, this one loads s-l-o-w-l-y—which can be manipulated according to selected features listed on the left sidebar.

And, of course, like any forward-thinking library, the Killaloe library includes their own blog, which I was delighted to find.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander over the entries in the listings of burials at the Cathedral just across the river from Ballina. Remember, the actual source of the baptismal verifications received by our Tully family in the 1870s originated from the Cathedral in County Clare, not the actual church the family attended in Ballina. And it wasn’t lost on me that there were a couple Flannerys in the cemetery listing, as well as Tullys. Who knows?

I can’t just satisfy myself with this resource from the next county over—though it is much closer in proximity to Ballina than the town’s own county seat in Tipperary. I’ll be looking to see what can be found online for the County Tipperary library system as well. But once we arrive in Ballina, I wouldn’t discount a trip across that eighteenth century bridge. After all, the bridge was already spanning the river, back when our family lived there.

Above: "On Suffolk Sands," 1887 oil on canvas by Dublin impressionist landscape painter Walter Frederick Osborne; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.