A Titanic Headline

A group of 4th grade students visited the Local History and Genealogy Room recently and asked to view the Massillon Independent for April 15, 1912 - the day the Titanic sank. The children were shocked and confused to discover the headline "Titanic Crew and Passengers Safe." How could this be? What was going on? This was a great opportunity not only to teach the students how to use microfilm (which they found mysterious and fascinating), but also about how much the pace of information has accelerated over the last 100 years.

National Poetry Month

This month is a great time to explore the magic and power of poetry. New to the art? Check out the PBS Series Poetry Everywhere to discover what you like and what you don't. You may like the poem in the video above. I may hate it. Talking and thinking about why is what this month is all about.

Expand Your Search Horizons

If you are like most people, you use only one or maybe two search engines to find information on the internet. Here are a few more you may like to try - just for the fun of it. And if you don't find what you need from a search engine - give us a call at the reference desk! 330.832.9831 x312

For general searching, try:

To search news, blogs and user-generated content, try:

To search for videos, try:

For more, click here. 
Is there a search engine we should know about? Leave a comment and tell us.

Letters from England (No. 3)

Barbara Wittman

Letters from England is written by Barbara Wittman, archivist of the Rotch-Wales Collection at the Massillon Public Library. Wittman is currently telecommuting to Massillon from Cambridge, where she is a Visiting Scholar, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.

The Cambridge University Library is a jewel of a place, dominating the university, opened in 1934. In total it holds around 8 million books, around ¼ of which are in open shelves, making it the largest open access library in Europe. The Reading Room with rows of long desks and chairs houses around 17,000 titles. The library contains over 160 kilometers of shelving, has 355,000 registered users, 350 members of staff including 100 working on research projects with outside funding. In 2011, there were 205,281 loans, which comes down to 821 loans per day in 250 working days per year. The Book fetchers fetch around 1,000 books per week.  Only 5 books on loan at a time allowed, probably to remind people to get on with it and return their books.

Cambridge Library Floorplan

 When you come up to Cambridge, to gain entrance to the library, you first have to present your paper work to the admissions office, have your photo taken, and explain why you need entrance before receiving a computerized card which passes you into the library. In some cases, pre-registration can be done on the Library web site.  After receiving your official card, you proceed to the cloak room where you deposit your coat on a rack with your umbrella, book bags and extraneous stuff into a computer lock box before proceeding into the library. Many people take computers into the library and for pence 20 you can buy a plastic library sack for pens, notebooks, glasses and change.  As you approach the tea room on the north wing, a large sign informs you that books are not to be taken into the room and a table is provided for you to deposit library books while you are inside. The tea room food is super, complete with scones and all sorts of morning coffees. You are checked digitally when you leave the library, proceeding again to the cloak room to retrieve your belongings. The library is open 9AM to 7 PM, 5 days a week and 9AM to 5 PM on Saturday with meals available on all days.  Closed Sunday and holidays.  The library is a wonderful place that welcomes us all as does Massillon Public Library. Each of the colleges has its own libraries as do most departments, so we have books here in abundance.

Kendal House History Class

Karen Rohr, Rose Hallett and Katie Woods
review Rohr's history of Seneca Street.

Current residents of the original town plat of Kendal gathered at the library on Saturday, February 4 for a house history class led by genealogy specialist, Jean Adkins.

Among those present was Karen Rohr who grew up on 11th Street NE, but now lives on Seneca. She has been researching the houses on Seneca for several years now, and brought with her a impeccably organized binder of her findings to date.

Sisters Rose Hallett and Katie Woods were there too. Rose lives in the house where she was born. She believes the house was once located on State Street but moved to its current location. Her parents bought it in 1923.

Katie lives near the Quaker Cemetery on Seneca. She said she used to be well known in the neighborhood for chasing children away from the cemetery. "My husband told me not to do that," she said. "He said the children would remember us at Halloween and not in a nice way, either." But he was wrong - her house never suffered the insult of broken eggs or other "opinions."

Cindy Clark and her Aunt Ann learn how to research
the history of their early Kendal house from
genealogy specialist Jean Adkins.

Cindy Clark came with her Aunt Ann. Their residence, in which Ann has lived since 1979, was discovered during the class to be a very early Kendal house. Over a decade ago, a man had told Ann that her house was "one of the two original houses in Kendal." While this may not be entirely true - it is probably close to it. She describes the main portion of her home as containing two large rooms, separated by an archway. The wood framing the arch and windows is extremely hard.  She recently renovated one of these rooms and discovered the walls were constructed of timber logs.

One of the tools used during the class was a map made by Frank Harrison Jr. (1910-1944). This map was recently photographed by the Massillon Museum and made available online at kendalohio.com. Harrison was one of the Museum's first employees and hoped one day to make a scale replica of Kendal. This map contains a wealth of information he gathered while conducting research on the town.

The map below is the modern equivalent to Harrison's map. It contains information on past, present and possible Kendal historic locations. A work in progress, new information is added as it is gained. Thanks to Ann's participation in the house history class, another early Kendal house has been identified.

View Historic Locations in Kendal in a larger map