The website credentials are impressive. Emory University hosts the website. The National Endowment for the Humanities is the principal sponsor and partners with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute of Harvard, several international partners, all universities, as well as libraries, presses, and mapping specialists.

The website is a work in progress. Though the databases are dynamic and growing, searching them is not for the faint of heart. The downloadable PDF Guide to searching runs to 40 pages. If you search, pay particular attention to the “How to Structure a Query” sections in the Guide for each database.

On November 1, 2007, the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library dedicated the Dr. Phillip and Betty Baker Genealogy Center. The dedication honored a gift to The Library Foundation of $100,000 by the Bakers to ensure that the community has 21st-century resources for genealogy and family history research.

The Baker gift will enhance library services by bringing in genealogical experts for programming, upgrading technology, and providing enhancements to the print, electronic, and microfilm collections.

The Baker Genealogy Center is located within the Topeka Room on the second floor of the library. The entire area is set aside as quiet research space. The Baker Center houses, in print, electronic form, or on microfilm, year books, birth, marriage and death records, family histories, obituaries, census records, marriage and cemetery indexes, military records, property, tax, and probate records, plat and insurance maps, passenger lists, naturalization records, and Topeka city directories.
Supplemental local history materials of use to genealogists held in the Topeka Room collection include county and municipal histories, biographies, historic newspapers, and migration histories.

Computers, microfilm reader-printers, and a photocopier are all available in the Topeka Room. To ensure full access to the collection, librarians provide professional service 78 hours a week, all hours that the library is open.