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Part of this year’s October Family History Month line-up was a Book Repair Workshop held Tuesday afternoon, October 16, 2007. Bill O’Neil, the chair of the CGS Book Repair Committee, passed along some of his expertise to several apprentices who paid $15 each to learn from our resident expert.

Bill is a retired high school art teacher who has loved books since he worked in a library as a kid. He became interested in book making and took a class in the mid-1990s to learn the skill. At about the same time he read that the CGS Book Repair Committee was looking for volunteers and knew it was a perfect fit.

When Bill joined the book-repairers they were being led by Richard G. Thrift, who created the committee in 1987. Bill has fond memories of Dick Thrift, who had been made an Honorary Life Member of CGS before his death in 2002. Bill has been leading the group ever since.

The Book Repair Committee, which meets the second Tuesday of every month, has become indispensable to the maintenance of the library collection. The committee recently celebrated the repair of its 2,000th book which represents about 100 books repaired every year. The committee also lends a financial support, since they estimate that the average repair would cost the society about $60, if it was done professionally.

The workshop participants learned the techniques used in repairing books by actually creating a book for themselves. Bill provided the pages (a copy of the “how to” pamphlet authored by Dick Thrift) and the pupils created the binding. Bill reports that the group proved to be highly skilled which made for a very successful workshop. And everyone went home with a self-made instruction book and souvenir of the day.

Photographs courtesy of Jane Knowles Lindsey.

Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center was the scene of this year’s joint conference with the New England Historic Genealogical Society “NEHGS Comes West” held on Wednesday, September 26, 2007. 127 guests enjoyed the all-day program featuring 5 presentations, lunch and a silent auction. Two lectures were presented by Online Genealogist David Allen Lambert of NEHGS who started the day with Researching Your New England Ancestors Prior to 1850.

CGS Research Director, Nancy Simons Peterson, presented New England Holdings at the California Genealogical Society and distributed a two-page summary of the major Northeastern holdings at our library.

The silent auction raised over $1600 for CGS.

Margery Bell, Assistant Director of the Oakland Regional Family History Center, Debbie Smith and CGS board member and “look-up” maven Lavinia Grace Schwarz were among the attendees.

The NEHGS book sale was a total success – they sold out.

Former CGS president, Rick Sherman and 2 guests.

David Allen Lambert, CGS President Jane Lindsey and NEHGS President and CEO D. Brenton Simons were the featured speakers.

Most of the waving crowd are members of both societies.

NEHGS President and CEO D. Brenton Simons made a luncheon presentation What’s New at NEHGS. CGS President, Jane Lindsey, spoke about What’s Happening at CGS.

David Allen Lambert, author of the David Lambert Blog, closed the program with Online Resources for Locating Your New England Ancestors.

Photographs courtesy of Jane Knowles Lindsey.

Sometimes the best reason to belong to your local genealogical society is the help you can get from fellow members. It can be as simple as the clarity achieved just by speaking a research problem out loud to a willing listener or being able to informally consult with members who have the expertise you lack and are willing to share their resources. But Dr. Stephen Harris took sharing to a whole new level when he made his collection of city directories and telephone books available to CGS members.

Steve, who has a doctorate in psychology from U.C. Berkeley, worked for the Contra Costa County health department and is now semi-retired. He is also a CGS member and professional genealogist whose interest in family history dates back to the Oakland hills fire of October 1991. When Steve lost his home he also lost all of the family documents that he inherited from his parents. He admits he hadn’t paid much attention to them before but after they were destroyed he began to wonder if it was possible to replace them and to reconstruct the history of his family. Things just took off from there.

Steve started his collection when he rescued some old phone books that were being discarded by an archive. He has found that most libraries don’t like them because they are so fragile and that while city directories have been extensively microfilmed, telephone books seldom are. His collection, which now numbers over 5000 volumes, dating from the mid 1850’s to the 1960s, is housed in a space down the hall from CGS in the lower level of 2201 Broadway, Oakland.

Dr. Harris has generously granted CGS members access to his collection two days every month: the second Saturday and the third Friday. Members are to check in at the CGS desk first. From there they will be directed to Steve’s library. Dr. Stephen Harris can be reached at [email protected].

Photographs by Kathryn M. Doyle, 27 Apr 2007.