Orange County Indexed · Research guide
What the Local History Liaison can do, and what to bring
Orange County Public Library's Local History Liaison helps with local and family history in the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection at the Main Library in Hillsborough. Librarians help people turn a question into a plan, find and make sense of sources, and reach material the library does not hold. You do not need a polished question to ask for help.
Features used in this guide: At OCPL
Drop in during Local History Help Hours, held most Mondays from noon to 3 p.m. at the Main Library. Or use the library's Local History Request Form to book an in-person appointment or to get help by email. The form covers help with a person, place or group; scanning or organizing pictures and documents; an introductory tour of the Wall Collection; getting started with genealogy; and using Ancestry and other databases. The collection is open for browsing whenever the Main Library is open, and staff at any service desk can help you get started.
Working out which materials will answer your question. Finding them in print, on microfilm, in databases and online. Evaluating and interpreting what you find. Borrowing what OCPL does not own through interlibrary loan. Pointing you to an archive, society or government office that holds what the library does not. The research and its conclusions stay yours; a librarian helps you find and weigh the evidence.
Your question in a sentence or two. What you already know and where each piece came from. Where you have searched and what you found, including the searches that found nothing. Copies or photos of documents you have, and any deadline. Searching is seldom one and done; a good conversation often changes the question, and that is part of the help.
The librarian will ask questions to understand what you need and may restate it to check. You can search together, with you at the keyboard if you like, and the librarian can explain why a source or search term was chosen. Take notes or photos of the searches so you can repeat them later. If what you need is beyond what the library holds, the librarian will help you find who does.
The plan of the room shows where things are: the genealogy and North Carolina bookshelves, the microfilm cabinet, the family and subject files, the maps. Read and scan microfilm at the research computer; scans are saved to a USB thumb drive, so bring one. Ancestry Library Edition and HeritageQuest are available on the library's public computers.
The Durham-Orange Genealogical Society, the Chapel Hill Historical Society, the North Carolina Genealogical Society and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, NC Triangle Region Chapter offer programs and research help. For county land records, the Orange County Register of Deeds; for older state and county records, the State Archives of North Carolina.
Start with How to research with Orange County Indexed, or pick the worked guide closest to your question and bring its notes to the Liaison.
This guide applies the Reference and User Services Association's Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers (2023), Guidelines for Developing and Maintaining Genealogy and Local History Collections (2022), Guidelines for Secondary Source Literacy for History (2023).
