Sunday, April 6, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - March 30-April 5, 2008

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week.

My criteria are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for the Carnival of Genealogy, or other meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

* "1890 Census Recovered" by the Ancestry Insider blog. The Insider wrote a believable post, especially for an apparent insider, but note the date. This was the best of the April Fool's Day posts, although the Family Tree Magazine cover was excellent also.

* "Twice Told Tuesday: The Baffled Photographer" by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. fM has some interesting photographs of cats, and tells a great story too.

* "JewishGen: How It all Began" by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe:The Jewish Genealogy Blog. JewishGen.org is going through a transition, and Schelly has written several posts of the latest news. This post provides some interesting history about the site itself.

* "Creating Our Church Archives, Part I: In The Beginning" and "Part 2: Sorting and Inventorying" by Cricket Hackmann on the Shaking the Family Tree blog. Cricket has been working on her family church archives and is providing a blueprint on how she's doing it.

* "Beauty's Grave" by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi blog. Terry is a great story-teller, and this is a keeper. The poem is a beauty too.

* "A Melded Web Site/Blog Environment" by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination:Austin Family blog. Thomas continues his discussion of personal web sites and blogs and comes to a blended decision.

* "We're Hiring" by Paul Allen on the Paul Allen (the lesser) blog. Paul describes the goals and objectives of his company, FamilyLink.com, and also notes that the company is hiring.

* "Newspapers" by Lori Thornton on the Smoky Mountain Family Historian blog. Lori describes the items that genealogists would miss if newspapers cease to exist and what would replace them. I agree with Lori.

* "Planning to Publish ... The Easy Way" by Ann Hege Hughes writing on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com blog. Ann works for Gateway Press, and itemizes the best way to provide book material ready for publication.

* "Gen-Activities for Kids" by Amanda Forson on the WorldVitalRecords Blog. Amanda lists some web sites to help kids to pursue genealogy along with their parents.

* "Genealogy Search Trend on Google" by Kathi on the Ancestor Search blog. Kathi determines that the popularity of "genealogy" as a search term on Google has steadily decreased over the past five years. I'm not surprised!

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Bloglines, reader, feed or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - we all appreciate feedback on what we write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me!

3 comments:

The Ancestry Insider said...

Randy,

Thanks for the mention. I've been planning that post for a full year. It was lots of fun.

Say, while I've got your ear, I have a suggestion for an article.

To followup Kathi's article on Genealogy searching on Google, someone needs to do a comparitive analysis of other search terms.

Did all hobbies decrease in like fashion? It would be interesting to compare genealogy against other hobbies such as gardening and stamp collecting.

Did people's interests move from hobbies to some other aspect of their lives? Besides hobbies, maybe you could look at other categories such as employment, finances, religion, politics, etc.

Does the decrease demonstrate increased competition from other search websites? Maybe a majority of search terms have seen a decrease.

Keep up the good work,
The Ancestry Insider
ancestryinsider.blogspot.com

Terry Thornton said...

Randy, Thanks. Beauty's Grave is one of those lucky finds --- it sort of wrote itself. I am still clueless about the author of the poem --- but have begun to develop family history about the one buried in Beauty's Grave.
TERRY

footnoteMaven said...

Randy:

Thank you so much for mentioning "The Baffled Photographer" and my companion website Shades Of The Departed.

Also, think the Ancestry Insider suggestion is very interesting!

fM