By Dawne
Among the unique resources of The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library is one of the largest city directory collections in a research facility in the nation. For most cities, The Genealogy Center’s directory holdings date from the mid- to late-1800s to the present. For a few cities, city directory coverage dates from the late 1700s!
Many of the older city directory print volumes were collected during the Great Depression. The library saw an upswing in usage during the Depression, and at the same time, library funds were scarce. So Head Librarian Rex Potterf and library employee Fred Reynolds traveled throughout the Midwest, visiting second-hand book stores and buying all kinds of books for the library, among them, city directories. They went as far afield as western Kansas, and purchased books for a dollar or two. In 1961, when the Indiana History and Genealogy Room was established under the tenure of Reynolds, then Head Librarian, these old city directories were part of the core of the collection.
A few years later, in 1965, Reynolds negotiated an arrangement with R. L. Polk & Co. Directory Company to become a depository collection of Polk city directories. The department initially received annually a copy of each Polk directory that did not sell out, and later began receiving a copy of each Polk directory published.
What this means for the researcher is that The Genealogy Center’s print directory holdings are complete – lacking a year or two here and there – from the mid-1960s to the present for each city Polk has covered, and also include a random collection of directories published by various companies that were purchased from other sources or donated throughout the years.
To complement the print directory collection, The Center also has a large number of directories on microfilm. Depending on the locality, these begin in the late 1700s to the mid- or late-1800s and continue through the mid-1960s, or the beginning of the print volumes.
To determine what directories The Genealogy Center owns, consult the online catalogs at www.GenealogyCenter.org. Place your cursor on the word “Databases,” then “Free Databases.” Choose Genealogy Center Catalog and type in the name of the city, plus the name of the state, and the word directories. The Genealogy Center Catalog primarily includes print materials, although some microtext items are included. In the Microtext Catalog, which is the second option under “free databases,” choose “City and County Directories,” select a state and then browse through the alphabetical list of available directories on film.
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