Dear Southern California Librarian:

As you know, obituaries and death notices are two very valuable resources used by genealogists and family researchers to flesh out the lives of their relatives. I�m sure you�re quite familiar with the challenges involved in locating an obituary in Los Angeles and the surrounding counties.

As a genealogist, a research professional, and a volunteer for RAOGK (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness), I am leading a volunteer project to develop an information resource bank that will help locate obituaries in Southern California. On behalf of the project committee, I am writing today to ask your help in this project.

We would be grateful if you would provide some basic information on your library, the library�s genealogy lookup policies, and on the Southern California newspapers in your holdings. The attached questionnaire should take about five minutes to complete. It may take a bit longer to provide your newspaper inventory if you have extensive newspaper holdings. In that event, you are welcome to attach your existing list of microfilm and hard-copy newspaper holdings instead of filling out the second page of the questionnaire. Completed forms can be returned to us electronically, by fax, or by US Postal Mail sent to my attention at the address above.

We expect that you will benefit from this project in several ways. By using tools provided on the project web site, your patrons will be able to submit well-formed queries and lookup requests. Links to your web site will help patrons find your library. You will have fingertip access to newspaper holdings of other area libraries. Most importantly, we hope that you will receive fewer research requests that are time-consuming, unproductive and impossible to fulfill.

The Southern California Obituary Resource Project is housed on Rootsweb.com. The URL is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~socalobituaries/index.html.

Thank you for your participation in this project. We appreciate the valuable service you provide to genealogists researching their families in Southern California.

Cordially,

Paula J. Hinkel - Los Angeles County, San Fernando Valley
Adrienne Stefanik - Los Angeles County, South Bay

socalobituaries

Fax 818-688-3253

.pdf version of letter * Word version of letter
.pdf version of library questionnaire * Word version of library questionnaire