The Iowa Genealogical Society can help you go back hundreds of years to find out about your ancestors — but the rest of this week they’re focusing on the past year. Executive Director LuAnn Folkers says they’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of their move to a new building in Des Moines across from the State Historical Society. Folkers says the new building doubled the space available to the nonprofit private society. She says they have a whole variety of Iowa materials, and they cover the whole world, including microfilm with census records from across the U.S. Folkers says they get a lot of people who want to find out more about their roots. She says they estimate about 10-thousand people a year use their services. She says they have some people doing special research projects, but the majority are trying to find out where grandma and grandpa came from and beyond that. Folkers says there is a charge to do the research. For nonmembers of the society, it’s ten dollars a day. Membership costs 30 dollars per year. The celebration includes an open house tonight (Wednesday) from seven to nine. There’s a roundtable discussion tomorrow night (Thursday) at the same time, and an auction Friday night and a barbecue on Saturday.
