The Louisiana State Archives is located at 3851 Essen Lane – cross street Archives Ave. – in the state capital of Baton Rouge. This is a large building at the intersection’s southeast corner, with flags in front. The public access area is on the first floor, left of the main entrance. Free parking at the side of the building.
Here are some notes I made about this repository during my October 2016 visit:
No open Wi-Fi.
John B, a librarian at the archives, was very knowledgeable and gave a tour. All staff are friendly. The public area, called the Research Room, has books that serve as a point of access for the Archives’ microfilm collections, a computer index, and an Archives Index (not open on the Internet). They have an excellent-sized Civil War book collection and, to a lesser degree, volumes on African American research. I saw some books on Irish research.
There is a card catalog they call the Family Card Catalog. These cards were created about 30 years ago and serve as a surname index for the books on the wall next to the file. There is a list of each book that was indexed on top of the card catalog.
They have copies of all the major genealogical and history journals.
Next in the collection are books arranged by Parish. Parish histories and related.
Complete collections of 1) Father Hebert’s indexes, 2) Baton Rouge Diocese indexes, 3) Archives of the New Orleans Diocese, and 4) Orleans Parish Birth indices (1790-1915).
The Archives has both the Edwin A. Davis and Powel A. Casey Collections.
The Booth Index: a handwritten index of Confederate soldiers originally made for Washington D.C. post-war and later obtained by the state in 1930. Before this, the state didn’t have this information.
Confederate Soldiers/Military Binders.
Microfilm readers: only one with digital write path.
Aaron Tassin, MLIS 