CeCe Moore, genetic genealogy consultant for “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” and “Genealogy Roadshow,” spoke to locals about researching family trees, and praised the resources they already have.

“This is a wonderful service to the community,” Moore said. “This society has so much energy and interest; there’s a sense of excitement just walking in the door. The city even has signs posted, showing the way, which indicates the level of support it has.”

When the society hosted the Northwest Genealogy Conference last year, Moore was one of the presenters, and gushed over the reception she received.

“Arlington is my favorite audience,” Moore said. “The genealogy society’s library here is cosy and warm. If I lived here, I’d visit often.”

Society president Ruth Caesar noted that the new location has not only expanded upon its previous space by 30 percent, but it’s also only using a third of the available room in the city-owned building.

“There’s lot of room to grow yet,” Caesar said.

Caesar explained that, as at the library’s previous locations, it still organizes its books first locally, then by county, expanding to state, national and foreign collections of documents, all of which are reflected in its online catalogs.

“We have the Everett city directory for each year, as well as a collection of obituaries from the Everett Daily Herald and The Arlington Times,” Caesar said. “Our reference section includes not only an entire collection on the Civil War, but also a complete listing of the Civil War’s naval battles, which many people didn’t even know existed.”

Publications chairwoman and librarian Sue Walde touted not only the breadth of the library’s selection, which includes close to 6,000 titles, but also the precision of its cross-indexed categorization online.

“You can search our site by subject, medium and type of collection, before you even enter any search terms,” Walde said. “You can find out if we have what you’re looking for, from the comfort of your own home, and then come here to look at the actual materials.”

Those materials include microfilm and microfiche, as well as the complete family history of at least one society member, John L. Mattson, who donated his lifetime collection of research to the library.

Although Moore was able to share some behind-the-scenes information that wasn’t able to make the final cut on her TV shows, she acknowledged that her talk was more useful as a potential motivation for would-be genealogists. For more in-depth methods, she advised them to attend the next conference at the Byrnes Performing Arts Center Aug. 17-20.

“My goal is to inspire them to find out more,” Moore said.