Guest post: London parish registers

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Guest contributor: Marie Hickey

As many of you will be aware, digitised copies of London parish registers held by London Metropolitan Archives are now available through the website, ancestry.com. These are separated into four groups; Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1538-1812, Marriages and Banns 1754-1921, Births and Baptisms 1812-1906 and Deaths and Burials 1812-1906. Not all parishes are included (for instance, St Margaret, Westminster) and date coverage varies considerably.

It is possible to do a name search in all of these databases except for Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1538-1812. To learn if your parish is available, scroll to the end of the page (of the section you have chosen) where you will get a list of the parish/es included. Click on the parish and you will then have a choice of years and time periods. You will need to scroll through as you would with the films but at least you now have access to the films which you would not have had in the past and also access to post 1837 marriage certificates.

Karen Kalopulu (1957 - 2009)

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Karen Kalopulu. Born in Auckland, Karen grew up in the new suburb of Otara and following work with an employment scheme started her library career as a library assistant at Mount Albert Library in 1979. She obtained her library certificate in 1983 and remained with Mount Albert until 1987. 

In 1987, she moved to the Central Library as a senior library assistant and worked as a member of Coral Ridling's esteemed Social Sciences Department. It was here that she learned how to use non-New Zealand family history material, a collection which was being built and expanded to recognise the burgeoning interest in that area. This became the area of her specialisation from the early 1990s. 

In 1996, she moved to the newly created Auckland Research Centre with family history as one of its key specialties. She worked with others to create a separate shelf identification system for the integrated New Zealand and non New Zealand family history material. In 2000, she achieved her ultimate goal of becoming the Family History librarian and significant changes ensued. 

In 2003, she was celebrated for the library's acceptance by the Genealogical Society of Utah's (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) allowing the direct borrowing of their genealogy microfilms. 

In 2005, she inaugurated the library's first 'Lock In', with 40 keen researchers taking the opportunity to study in the Auckland Research Centre from 8pm to 8am from Friday evening to Saturday morning. The fifth annual 'Lock In' took place in September of this year. 

In 2008, she piloted 'Our Stories' at Avondale College and in 2009 very successfully expanded this to many other schools in the Auckland City area. 

All this while she regularly attended family history conferences both here and in Australia, was a regular speaker to family history groups around the greater Auckland area and conducted training classes to expand people's knowledge of our library resources. She also initiated the Central Library's lunchtime talk sessions, along with the 'Telling Your Life Story' workshops. 

All remarked on her cheeriness, dedication and passion, which she brought to family history and the collection we have here at Auckland City Libraries. Allison Dobbie, group manager Libraries for Auckland City, said of her, "Karen is highly respected and much loved by her colleagues and by the many customers who value her outstanding skills as a family history librarian. Karen's work extended across many libraries and many community groups and organisations. We will miss her very much indeed. This is indeed a very sad passing." 

Karen leaves two sons, two daughters and a grandchild. 

David Verran,
Team leader, Auckland Research Centre.

Guest post: Auckland City Libraries family histories database

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Guest contributor: Bridget
 
We have over a thousand family histories in our collection donated to the library’s research centre over the years. The family histories are housed in their own bay of shelves in Auckland City Library’s family history collection under the call number 2 NZL FAM. With the help of our volunteers and casual staff we have been able to make this collection more accessible to our customers by creating a name searchable database. Because of the number of names involved within a family we have limited the inputted names to three generations only.
 
At this stage you will need to ask staff at the desk to search the database for you but it is well worthwhile. A single name search can show how connected some New Zealand families can be with one family name sometimes appearing in half a dozen other families’ histories.
 
The example below shows a result from a search on the family name Williams. The name can be found in more than 30 other named family histories, all of them on our shelves.

 

The Auckland Research Centre in Auckland’s Central library is open until 8.00 on weekdays and until 4.00 on the weekends. Access is free and membership is not required to browse our collections.

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