There was some discussion about the holdings of Mississippi church records at the San Antonio Public Library. I have visited the San Antonio Public Library in the recent past, and they have a very good collection of genealogical books, journals, films, etc. On the same floor is a Texana collection also. The catalog is online: http://www.sanantonio.gov/library/ Dallas Public Library has an excellent genealogical collection. The person in charge of this section is a well-known genealogist-author: Lloyd D. Bockstruck. With a search engine like google.com, I am certain you can find the webpage and perhaps an online catalog. Houston has the excellent Clayton Library, a part of the Houston Public Library system. Again, use google.com (or Cyndis List for libraries) to find the catalog. I have not been to Fort Worth Public Library in several decades. It, too, has a genealogical collection. In Austin, there is the Texas State Library and also the Texas State Archives. The Library used to be closed on Mondays. Again, check the appropriate website. Even some small towns in Texas have very good collections--Victoria Texas Public Library for instance. Something most Universities and community colleges don't want genealogists (who are becoming better researchers, if they don't rely too heavily on the internet) to know is that many of them have genealogical material. It is cataloged under local history or immigration or the country. English genealogy is frequently tucked away in a book which has Antiquarian or Archeology in the title. If you are not a browser, you will not learn this. I found a well-known University library in southern California had genealogies and heraldry tucked away in the CS section of the shelves [Library of Congress cataloging system]. The library also had in the CS section the many volumes of F. Rider, American Genealogical Index, which had not yet been completed the last time I visited. Burke's Peerage was also there. Local histories (including some of the town records of some New England States) had call numbers beginning with F. Immigration books, such as Germans to America and The Famine Immigrants were tucked away in the Z section. If your University or community college has open shelves (pray that they do), get a card, try to find parking (a big problem) and determine how books are cataloged (Dewey decimal, or Library of Congress, which is more common in university libraries and increasingly in community colleges). Many if not most Universities now have online catalogs which you probably can access from home. Try a few titles and see what you come up with. Learn their cataloging system and browse. Pretend you are visiting a museum and get acquainted. Don't expect to learn too much on this exploratory visit--but you just might. Many a person has been amazed to discover some ancestral information while browsing--me too!!! Many times!! Furthermore, talk to your local public librarian about the policy on interlibrary loan. If you have country libraries, as I do, you may find a reluctance on the part of the librarian to entertain your strange request. Nonetheless, if those librarians are on the public payroll, they should be helpful!!! I have to pay about $3.00 and read the book in the library, but that's better than flying somewhere, paying for a hotel room, etc. Take plenty of coins so you can photocopy. National Genealogical Society has moved its book collection to the St. Louis [County?] Missouri public library system, and these books are supposed to be open for interlibrary loan. I do not know whether you have to be a member of NGS. Look for the website and make an inquiry. I live too far away from St. Louis and have not digested all the documents I have collected from Richmond, VA, the Family History Library, and other libraries where my travels just happen to take me! (My automobiles--even rental ones--have a way of finding a local library which nearly always has something of interest--especially reference books, if not genealogical books.) A genealogist has to learn to be a detective, and that means casing the joint!!! E.W.Wallace