Sunday, January 11, 2009

Best of the Genea-blogs - January 4-10, 2009

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 genealogy carnivals, 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 (note that I have not done much blog reading since coming to Salt Lake City on Thursday):

* Writing on Stone: Mistakes, Strike-overs and Other Problems by Terry Thornton, the monthly The Graveyard Rabbit "Weekend with Shades" columnist on the Shades of the Departed blog. Terry's fascinating post shows examples of problems with gravestone inscriptions.

* An Update on my Volunteer Work by Elyse Doerflinger on the Graveyard Rabbit of Eastern Tennessee blog. Elyse had an interesting experience at a local cemetery and has some really good ideas about documenting cemetery photos.

* Ancestry.com possible future directions by the blogger on The Ancestry Insider blog (whom I have now met and had great conversations with!). The AI has information about a survey taken by some Ancestry.com users that may reveal future directions of Ancestry.com.

* Getting Into Google Books I (Lessons) and II (Lessons) by Jennifer on the Rainy Day Genealogy Readings blog. Jennifer starts her series on Google Books with two outstanding posts with lots of screen shots of examples.

* Who Are Our Brickwall Ancestors, and Why Aren't We Blogging About Them Regularly? by Miriam Midkiff on the Ancestories: Stories of my Ancestors blog. This is a great question - and genea-bloggers should read it and participate in knocking down the brickwalls of ancestors written about. I'm willing!

* Shades Starts the Year with a Bang - Make that a Shot! by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. fM tells a fascinating story and finds research that provides information about a murder and more. This is the first article of a series.

* Jump Start Your Genealogy Blog. 52 Weeks. 52 Ideas - Part 1 and Part 2 by Amy Coffin on the We Tree blog. Amy came up with something to write about each week of the year - for those trying to keep their New Years resolution to blog more in 2009. Great list, great prompts.

* What I Have Learned About Pauline Wheeler Robbins by Linda Robbins on the HollingsworthRobbins Family Tree blog. Linda tells a fascinating research story about one of her husband's ancestors. Are all Pauline's this interesting?

* Footnote.com Advanced Search by Kathi on the Ancestor Search Blog. Kathi has great advice for users of Footnote searches - this answers some of my questions!

* Using Genetic genealogy to Solve the Mystery of Benjaman Kyle by Blaine Bettinger on The Genetic Genealogist blog. Blaine describes the challenge of using Y-DNA analysis to find the family of a person who can't remember his relatives. The techniques can be used to find biological parents of adopted children too.

* Draft as Many Versions as Needed for Clarity, Part 3 by Emily Aulicino on the Writing Your Memories blog. This is a continuation of Emily's series about the Draft portion of EDIT for writers.

* From my Email Box - "Spin Humor" by John West on the Tri-State Genealogical Society of Evansville, Indiana "TSGS Cruiser" blog. This is an amazing story about something many of us have heard about before - now we have a name and a place, and a relative to the honoree.

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 - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

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

Have you noticed that I created a blog category for all of the Best of the Genea-Blog posts in the Labels below this post? Click on it if you've missed earlier editions of BOTG-B.

5 comments:

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Thanks for including me in this week's "Best of..." It's quite an honor!

Terry Thornton said...

Thanks, Randy, for the shout-out. I am always dismayed at the number of mistakes and of the attempts to correct them on grave markers. There is no easy solution to correcting carvings on stone.
Terry

Genealem said...

Randy,

Thank you for mentioning my blog on Drafting for Clarity (Writing Your Memories blog). It's very kind of you! This is a WONDERFUL honor!

Genealem said...

Randy, Check out my other blog on Genetic Genealogy. It is geared for the beginning learners and there's a great deal of information in the archives to help people understand how beneficial this can be for genealogy. Thank you, Emily
URL: http://genealem-geneticgenealogy.blogspot.com/

Elyse said...

Thank you for putting my blog in your "best of the week". It is a huge honor.