You can search your family history for free at the London Public Library

Family Day is a statutory holiday to give familiestime to be together, but it can also give many pause to think about all thosewho came before us.

When it comes to researching your ancestral roots, the London Public Library has free tools to make the search possible, includingfull access to software such asFamilySearch, which includes historical images andphotographs of documents that are not available from home.

"A lot of people don't know where to start, and that's something we can help people do," said Mark Richardson, a librarian at the London Room on the third floor of the Central Library, where the ancestry tools have been set up.

"We're not genealogists but we do have resources and if you come as a raw beginner, we can help you get started."

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London Morning6:18Searching your family history at the London Public Library

London Librarian Mark Richardson spoke with the CBC's Markus Schwabe about the family history search tools that are available at the London Room at the Central Library in downtown London, Ont.

One of the one of the main challenges is learning to use databases such asAncestry or FamilySearch, Richardson said. Also available isaccess to back issues of the local newspaper.

"We have in our local history room back-issues of the London Free Press on microfilm, all the way back to the beginning of 1849," he said."So, they think it'sbeen lost,it's just not available anymore,wellthat's probably not true."

When you arrive to start your family history search, try to bring as much historical information as possible.

"It's more helpful to us if you can come with specifics," said Richardson. "If you just tell us 'I'm looking for something on my grandfather in the 1930s,' well, the indexing doesn't allow us to do that. But if you tell us, 'My grandfather was a baseball player in 1937 for the London Majors,' that's a different thing altogether.The more specific, the better."

Some of the Londoners who have used the services since they became available last summer have met family they didn't know they had,Richardson said.

"A few months ago, a woman ...came with her son and discovered some family members who didn't know that she and her son existed, and ever since then they've been getting together," said Richardson. "It's been quite a nice emotional story because they didn't connect until they came to the London Room."

In another instance, two women came into the London Room who had just discovered they were sisters.

"They were put up for adoption as infants, and they just discovered each other a few months before they came into the London Room," said Richardson. "They wanted to find out their original family name and all they had was their father's profession from their adoption papers."

Richardson said the name and profession were used in conjunction with the year they were put up for adoption to search newspaper clippings.

"Together with some luck and some hard work, my colleagues got an article about their father and they got a photograph of him through the newspaper article. They found out the original family name and it was quite, quite emotional for everybody involved."

The Central Library is closed for Family Day, but resumes regular hours on Tuesday. For more information and branch hours, visit the London Public Library website.