North Dakota Archives and Libraries

Portal:North Dakota

The following archives, libraries, and societies have collections or services helpful for genealogical research in North Dakota.

State Historical Society of North Dakota
North Dakota Heritage Center 612 E. Boulevard Avenue Bismarck, ND 58505 Telephone: 701-328-2668 Web Site: http://www.nd.gov/hist/

National Archives—Central Plains Region
2306 East Bannister Road Kansas City, MO 64131 Telephone: 816-268-8000 Web Site: http://www.archives.gov/central-plains/kansas-city/

National Archives-Rocky Mountain Region
P.O. Box 25307 Denver, CO 80225-0307 Web Site: http://www.nara.gov/research_rooms/rocky_mtn/index.html

Institute for Regional Studies &amp; University Archives
North Dakota State University Libraries PO Box 5599 Fargo, ND 58105-5599 Telephone: 701-231-8914 Web Site: http://www.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/ndirs/

Department of Special Collections
Chester Fritz Library University of North Dakota 3051 University Avenue Stop P.O. Box 9000 Grand Forks, ND 58202-9000 Telephone: 701-777-4625 Web Site: http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/contact.html

Germans from Russia Heritage Society
1125 West Turnpike Avenue Bismarck, ND 58501 Web Site: http://www.grhs.com/

A helpful guide to several important North Dakota collections is John B. Davenport (v. 1), Colleen A. Oihus (v. 2), and Sandra J. Beidler (v. 3), Guide to the Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection and Related Research Collections, Three Volumes. (Grand Forks, North Dakota: Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota, 1975, 1983, 1985).

To learn more about the history and record-keeping systems of North Dakota counties, use the inventories of the Mercer, Golden Valley, and Williams Counties' archives published by the Historical Records Survey around 1940. The Family History Library has copies of these inventories.

Computer Networks and Bulletin Boards
Computers with modems can be useful tools for obtaining information from selected archives and libraries. In a way, computer networks themselves serve as a library. The Internet, certain computer bulletin boards, and commercial on-line services help family history researchers:


 * Locate other researchers
 * Post queries
 * Send and receive E-mail
 * Search large databases
 * Search computer libraries
 * Join in computer chat and lecture sessions

You can find computerized research tips and information about ancestors from North Dakota in a variety of sources at local, state, national, and international levels. The list of sources is growing rapidly. Most of the information is available at no cost.

Addresses on the Internet change frequently. As of April 1997, the following sites are important gateways linking you to many more network and bulletin board sites:

USGenWeb http://www.rootsweb.com/~ndgenweb/

A cooperative effort by many volunteers to list genealogical databases, libraries, bulletin boards, and other resources available on the Internet for each county, state, and country.

Roots-L
http://www.rootsweb.com/roots-l/usa/

A useful list of sites and resources. Includes a large, regularly updated research coordination list for North Dakota.

Cyndi's List
http://www.cyndislist.com/nd.htm#Libraries

Contains links to many North Dakota sources including Libraries and Archives.

For further details about using computer networks, bulletin boards, and news groups for family history research, see the United States Research Outline (30972), 2nd ed., "Archives and Libraries" section.

FamilySearch™
http://www.familysearch.org/

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

The Family History Library and some Family History Centers have computers with FamilySearch™. FamilySearch is a collection of computer files containing several million names. FamilySearch is a good place to begin your research. Some of the records come from compiled sources; some have been automated from original sources.