Debbie Bloom, creator of the Dead Librarian When a person is in search of their history, sometimes it’s the dead who speak the loudest and tell them the most, according to Debbie Bloom, Columbia’s Richland County Library local history manager and creator of the Dead Librarian blog. That blog links people all over the world to South Carolina’s deceased citizens and their families.

The idea behind the Dead Librarian blog was to create a site designed to help local family historians or anyone curious about their roots search for death notices and obituaries online.

“It’s all about the dead here,” Bloom said with a smile. “Obituaries are wonderful tools in a genealogy search, and we have roughly 400,000 entries in our data base.”

Bloom said that the library staff is eager to assist people with their searches and to steer them in the right direction to find their ancestors.

“Obituaries almost always contain the family information like parents, spouses and siblings, living or dead. The survivors mentioned are like little lifeboats,” she said.

Obituaries typically tell the deceased person’s age, place of birth, place of death, and almost always list the immediate family members by name and where they are currently living, Bloom said.

“That information is critical when you are trying to find someone or connect the dots of your family tree,” she said. “From there you can build on to that information and many times actually meet the people you are looking for if they are still alive.”

Bloom said a researcher starts with finding out all they can from their family members and once they’ve gathered that information, then they come to her, and she tries to help fill in the blank spaces.

Because the Richland County Library is the depository for The State newspaper Bloom said it has obits dating back to the 1800s. The blog is a way to access that information, many times from a person’s home, she said.

“A person can get up in the middle of the night and go online while having a cup of tea or a glass of wine and be wearing their pajamas and fuzzy slippers,” she said. “The site is up 24/7, and anyone can access it. With a library card you access many of the genealogy data bases linked to the site.”

Bloom has worked at the library for 11 years and has been the local history manager for the last year. She said the historical part of the library has a close relationship with the periodicals, and she began to notice lots of people coming in and looking at old obituaries using the microfilm.

“Once I saw that, I thought there had to be a better more productive way to search for information so I thought of inputting it into a website of its own,” Bloom said.

So day by day and name by name the entries were made by Bloom and her staff as well as volunteers. Even with the hundreds of thousands of names already downloaded, it’s an ongoing process she said.

“We are always adding names and when we finish with The State, we will then start working on the The Record.

The Record was the afternoon daily newspaper established in the Midlands in 1897 and in 1945 it was bought by The State newspaper, then the morning daily in Columbia. The two formed “The State Record” paper. That company was bought out in 1986 by Knight Ridder and in April of 1988 they ceased publication of The Record.

But the library still has the old Record papers filled with all of the obituaries, Bloom said. They will input all of that onto the Dead Librarian site as well.

“Right now, people can access obits from 1891 to 1922 from their home computers with their library cards,” she said. “After 1922, they have to come to us to search.”

Once the information was downloaded and available, Bloom said she started the blog to get the word out to the public. On the blog are links to numerous information sites around the state including other newspapers and libraries.

“The south always gets dumped on and joked about, but we seriously have one of the best library systems in the states,” she said. “I’ve gotten hits on the site from as far away as Australia, Japan, and even India.”

If a person is looking for a relative, he can write to the Dead Librarian, and someone will look into the obituaries for the name. If they find the obit they email it to the searcher, and that gives the person a starting point, Bloom said.

“Sometimes you have to physically make the road trip, but the library is a great place to begin,” she said.

The site has gained popularity recently, Bloom said. Time Warner’s “Palmetto People” is doing a featured spot on it, and it has been nominated for a Top 40 Genealogy Blog award in a family history magazine.

“I don’t know if we’ll win but it’s nice when your peers notice your work and acknowledge it in such a positive manner.”

The site can be accessed at www.thedeadlibrarian. blogspot.com and Bloom said that she and her staff are always willing to assist in the searches.

“We try our best to fulfill all the requests we get from people,” she said. “When we can do it online we do but if they come into the library we are always happy to point them in the right direction and get them started.”