Central American Family History Librarians Meet for Training

Librarians from four different countries met in Guatemala this fall for the first family history librarians’ training seminar to be held in Central America. Forty-nine library personnel from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica were instructed on names submission and the names extraction program. They learned about using the International Genealogical Index and the Family History Library Catalog, as well as about maintaining and repairing machines in the libraries. The instruction covered “everything to help them give better service to the members,” said Poloski Cordon, names processing supervisor at the Guatemala City Temple.

Brother Cordon, who manages the Church’s branch libraries in Central America, conducted the seminar. Other instructors included Nery Bonilla and Leonel Reyes, “two of the pioneers of family history research in Guatemala,” Brother Cordon said. The two were among the first to take advantage of microfilmed records when they became available in Guatemala, Brother Cordon explained, and each man has submitted more than two thousand family names to the temple. Both men are directors of libraries in their stakes.

The Church has ten family history libraries in Central America: three in Guatemala City, two in Quezaltenango, and one in Retalhuleu, Guatemala; one in Tegucigalpa and one in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; one in San Salvador, El Salvador; and one in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Brother Cordon said plans call for an annual Central American training seminar in Guatemala, with smaller seminars to be held more frequently in the individual countries.