Sunday, July 27, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - July 20-26, 2008

Several hundred genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.

My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, 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.

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

* Research Delivered and Research Delivered - Finding and Managing Subscriptions by Denise Olson on the Family Matters blog. Denise has plenty of excellent advice and examples on how to efficiently manage research and information in our online genealogy world. This is worthy of a magazine article!

* George Carlin Goes Upstairs by Sharon Elliott on the BackTrack blog. Sharon proves that poor George's quote about his grandfather doing dirty word #3 to his grandmother were inaccurate. I'm glad Sharon is back to keep us all on track, and laughing too.

* A Great Weekend by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. His Honor, Judge Manson officiates at his nephew's wedding and tells us all the inside scoop. Well done, Craig - sounds like you had a marvelous time.

* Electric Ladyland by L.H. Crawley on The Virtual Dime Museum blog. An electric what? You have to read about this piece of underwear from the 1880's...scary stuff. Interesting article about something mysterious to many of us.

* Will Your Work Survive the Digital Age? and Will Your Work Survive the Digital Age - Dissemination by Janet Hovorka on The Chart Chick blog. Janet asks hard questions and gives great answers in the first two post in this series.

* The Case of the $12 Box Coat by Becky Wiseman on the Kinexxions blog. Becky explores a mystery concerning her 3rd-GGF and finds some really interesting documents in the process. Excellent research!

* Creative Non-Fiction - Factual & Fascinating and A Good Question by footnoteMaven on the footnoteMaven blog. fM explains the concept of Creative Non-fiction and then provides some examples of her own CNF work as good examples. Now we all want to read more of this stuff! And try to write it, too.

* DAR's 117th Continental Congress by Elizabeth O'Neal on the Little Bytes of Life blog. Elizabeth takes us with her on her trip to Washington DC. Read as she visits the Archives and the DAR library, and enjoys the sights too.

* Future of Ancestry.com b y the blogger who writes The Ancestry Insider. Some excellent "insider's scoop" from the AI who is leaving Ancestry.com for FamilySearch.org. I'm sure that he will continue to provide insight into the inner workings of Ancestry.com. Please read the comments to this post - lots of good insight and questions. I wonder how many of the Anonymous posters work at Ancestry.com?

* Top Ten Signs Your Ancestor was a SuperHero by Chris Dunham on The Genealogue blog. Chris gives us another superb list just in time for the Batman movie. Funny stuff!

* Oil Heritage Week and Your Genealogy by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene H. Eakle Genealogy Blog. Arlene's advice is excellent concerning sources and indexes and encourages all of us to volunteer to index, abstract, transcribe, teach, etc. in order to keep genealogy research open and vibrant.

* TGG Interview Series IX - Ana Oquendo Pabon by Blaine Bettinger on The Genetic Genealogist blog. Blaine's ninth interview with people in the DNA/Genetics field is one of the best. Dra. Ana is one of the mainstays on the Unclaimed Persons Project on Facebook, and it was fascinating to see her biographical details and her experience in genetic research.

* July 25- Friday From the Collectors features Janet Hovorka (The Chart Chick) on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Janet writes about using photographs on family history charts. The work is absolutely beautiful.

* 20 Things That Make Genealogy Fun by Joe Beine on the Genealogy Roots Blog. Joe has a funny list - especially #20 "my ancestors are cooler than yours."

* Maximizing Research & Time at the Library by Sharon Gayle on the Family History Research: Methods and Writing on Genealogy blog. Sharon links to a PDF of her treatise with this title. It is excellent advice for those of us heading off to a distant library on vacation.

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!

2 comments:

Lidian said...

Thanks for the link, Randy!

Elizabeth O'Neal said...

Thanks for the mention and for visiting my blog, Randy. It was fun chatting with you at Scanfest today!