The Enoch Pratt Free Library has many excellent resources for those digging into state, local, and family history. Those materials include microfilm reels containing practically every extant newspaper in Maryland, including all the county weeklies. In the serials department, you will also find the Evening Sun and the Baltimore News American, papers which genealogists and others often overlook as they tend to rely on the Baltimore Sun.
The Maryland Department is another strength. This unit has been collecting and organizing books and other types of materials on every subject since 1935. as long as the information is about Maryland It has over 50,000 volumes pertaining to the State, 300,000 items on over 7,000 subjects in vertical files, and lots of photographs, maps and atlases. Items I often use in this reading room are the telephone directories. The stacks contain volumes for rural counties going back to the 1920s.
And for a perhaps over a decade, I have been using the great databases, which are accessible from the convenience of your home. The Baltimore Sun Historical Archives (1835 to 1987), for example, is available online and is text searchable. Other online publications include the Washington Post (1877 – 1994), the New York Times (1851 – 2007), the Baltimore Afro-American (1893 – 1988), and the Wall Street Journal.
The institution also has a number of general magazine and scholarly databases available for patrons. One of those is JSTOR, the virtual repository for scholarly journals, including many of the state historical society journals from around the nation. Another, which those studying or communities will find valuable, is the Sanborn Map database for communities all around the State. You may find many these to be of assistance.
The Pratt’s electronic holdings are strong and continue to grow. To access these valuable text searchable resources, you need a Baltimore City Library Card. All Maryland residents are eligible, but you do have to visit any branch in the city to receive the card.
These are resources I use all the time, as they help me find evidence beyond what the local papers provide. I also use them to locate reference dates, which allows me to access the local non-indexed materials without spending countless hours on a search.
You will find these Enoch Pratt databases to be of great assistance when doing genealogical research.
