Who has it?

Have you ever searched for a letter or diary or family papers? You're sure the papers were given to a library but which one?

You try World Cat through GALILEO and you find the family papers listed. If you're slightly 'search savvy' you can navigate the search screen and select the archives tab with the results. But what if you aren't 'search savvy'?

In scrolling through GALILEO I stumbled across :

ArchiveGrid which "provides online access to nearly a million descriptions of archival collections owned by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives worldwide. ArchiveGrid is an important destination for searching for historical documents, personal papers and family histories held in archives."

I did a quick search for my great uncle - Lawrence London. Tons of Lawrence and London showed up. I thought I'd never find my particular Lawrence London. ArchiveGrid gave me a clue (World Cat doesn't give clues)-

Searching for a name? Try lawrence london (there's a hyperlink which when clicked takes one right to the search- very handy) as a proximity search.

ArchiveGrid put the two words in quotes, which did narrow the search to a bit over 200 items- what really helped was when I added his middle name! Bingo. That gave me four specific sites - one of which was my great uncles papers at UNC. These links were also in World Cat but then Archive Grid is an OCLC product.

There is a note on GALILEO that ArchiveGrid is not available remotely. I hope it will soon be as readily available as World Cat. Until it is- stop by the library and check it out!

I will agree with one reviewer - ArchiveGrid is user friendly!



- kls