The (NYG&B) announced today that Arthur C.M. and Nancy V. Kelly, co-founders and owners of Kinship Books, have donated the assets of their business, Kinship Books, to the NYG&B.

This generous gift includes rights to more than 300 publications, including transcribed and indexed materials from more than 50 New York counties.

Unknown said...: I want to start out by saying that I think that is excellent!! What a great legacy of research! I have looked at this tremendous amount of reference material before and am in awe of their work! With that said, I emailed the folks at NYG&B asking about the works becoming online resources at one point.

Here's their response:

"Hello Mark, currently, the publications are available in some libraries and for purchase at kinshipny.com.

The process of digitization will take tremendous resources, so some titles may be available for purchase in a pdf format late this year. A few titles may be added to our eLibrary for members, but that will occur later, and definitely after our new eLibrary launches later this year.

In addition to Kinship book searches, you will also find hundreds (or maybe thousands--I didn't do an exact count) of Valkenburg and Van Valkenburg references in The NYG&B Record, our quarterly journal.
https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/elibrary/record-wordens-surname-index"

I indicated to them that as a straight-up research tool I could not - or anyone for that matter - afford to purchase all of the titles that may be required to track down that elusive ancestor. Some are $70 each. From their search tool on the NYG&B site, there are 150+ titles where the VanValkenburg surname appears!

My only thought would be to hope to one day have them all online and pay some membership fee - like they have now at NYG&B.; 5:27 PM