Sunday, April 19, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - April 12-18, 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:

* Latest Record Search Collections by the anonymous author of The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI created a very useful widget that should keep the list of the LDS FamilySearch Record Search databases updated - we'll see. In any case, it's a great list.

* Seymour Prater, Saint Anthony, and Spit Spat Spo: The Recovery of Lost or Stolen Articles by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country of Monroe county, Mississippi blog. Terry's articles about life in rural Mississippi are fascinating to this city boy, and to many others I'm sure.

* How to Use the National Archives UK Website to Obtain Ancestor Documents by Lorine Schulze on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog. Lorine provides a useful how-to guide to the online National Archives site in the U.K.

* Search Enhancements, March 2009 by Beau Sharbrough on The Unofficial footnote Blog (TUFBLOG). Beau nicely summarizes the changes to the Search function that Footnote.com recently implemented on their site. Beau should know!

* Family Stories and Other Fairy Tales by Dick Eastman on the Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter blog. Dick analyzes in detail a family story of immigration provided by a correspondent in this article - well done!

* Web 2.0 and Genealogy Research--My Favorites! by Andrea Christman on the Family Tales blog. Andrea provides her take on the Genealogy/Web 2.0 tools like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

* Lost in Footnote by Denise Olson on the Family Matters blog. Denise likes and appreciates the Footnote Pages and describes some of their features in this post. I agree with her!

* Quest of a Genea-holic - Part 2 and Part 3 by Terri on The Ties That Bind blog. Terri is in the middle of a multi-part story about her great-grandfather's life - there are challenges and surprises in this story. Keep up with Terri!

* Tombstone Tuesday and Find-A-Grave by Russ Worthington on the My Tombstone Collection blog. Russ is getting his tombstone photo collection organized so that he knows what he has on his computer, on this blog and on Find-A-Grave. A noble effort. Read about his progress.

* Where is That Place? Using the USGS Web Site by Carolyn Barkley on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com Blog. Carolyn's article provides information about data on the United States Geological Survey web site and how it can help genealogy researchers.

* Newberry Library, Chicago’s Family History Center by Terri on the Finding Our Ancestors blog. Terri describes her research trip to the Newberry Library in Chicago, and has advice for fellow researchers. Thanks!

* The Carnivals In Town - A Noble Life -- 12th EDITION -- Smile For The Camera -- 10 April 2009 by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. There are 20 entries in the 12th Smile for the Camera carnival on the topic of A Noble Life. Read some of the best genealogy writing available!

* GeneaWEB2.0: Leveraging Online Resources for Meaningful Genealogy Research Issue #2 - Internet Social Networking by Kathleen Schaible on the Tracing Your Routes: Official Genealogy Blog of GenWed.com blog. Kathleen delves into what genealogy information can be found on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and how they can be used effectively.

* Carnival of Genealogy, 70th Edition by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. There are 33 entries in this carnival on the subject of Uncles. Great work. I'm always pleased to see new genea-bloggers in almost every carnival.

* How Do You Say Your Name? by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. Schelly helps us out with web sites that help pronounce names...she has some excellent examples from her reading and experience. I'm still trying to figure out Ng. People get messed up on the V in Seaver - I always have to say "V as in Victory!" Great post to end the week.

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!

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

2 comments:

Terry Thornton said...

RANDY, Thanks for including Seymour Prater, Saint Anthony, and Spit Spat Spo in your roundup of articles. I am honored that you included my article in with so many excellent authors.

Seymour Prater was a real person --- and I hope that more research can be done into his very special gifts.

Thank you for providing this list of articles to read. I look forward to it each week.

Terry Thornton
HILL COUNTRY OF MONROE COUNTY MISSISSIPPI

SCHELLY TALALAY DARDASHTI said...

Hi, Randy,

Thanks for the pointer to the Tracing the Tribe post. I hope that many people participate in adding the pronounciations of their names to the site mentioned.

Hmmmm - all along I thought you were SeaWer with a W :-) Well, that's what my grandfather from Austro-Hungary would say! Moby Dick was a "vale," the four things that go round and round on your car are "veals," you ate delicious "weel" in an Italian restaurant, and you whistled "vile" you worked. :-)

Schelly