Sunday, October 11, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - October 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:

* Carnival of Genealogy 81: The day the geneablogs died by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. 12 genea-bloggers contributed their own blog obituaries (none of them recording actual blog deaths) to this Carnival. Some are really sad, some very funny.

* Survey Results: Please Tell Us About Your Experiences by Dick Eastman on the Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. Dick asked many questions about computer usage, use of genealogy databases and software, society meetings and conference attendance, and levels of expertise. He had over 2,000 responses and the results are interesting.

* Watching Over My Shoulder by Lee Drew on the FamHist blog. Lee describes how he gets into his genamension (genealogy dimension) and works for hours at a time - I can relate to that!

* Breaking News: Feds Require Bloggers to Disclose Product Endorsement Connections by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig describes the new FTC regulations concerning bloggers and endorsements or reviews. He promised further review from his administrative law students later.

* "I'll believe it, if you can prove it" applies to genealogy and Which is it? Genealogical Proof Standard or Legal Proof? by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. James continues his discussions on evidence, proof, and standards from an attorney's, and genealogist's, point of view.

* My Genealogy Surprise Package - Part 1 and My Genealogy Surprise Package - Part 2 by Tina Lyons on the Tina's Genealogical Wish List blog. Tina received a package in the mail from her grandmother. Read about Tina's surprises!

* Understanding Records, Part 1: How Comprehensive is the Record? by Kory Meyerink on The ProGenealogists(R) Blog. Kory's post discusses coverage of records, and links to an interesting NGSQ article by William Saxbe titled Nineteenth-Century Death Records: How Dependable Are They?.

* Using Charts in Your Genealogy Research by Robyn on the Reclaiming Kin blog. Robyn lists a number of very useful charts that help her in her genealogy research. Hey, she's an engineer, what did you expect?

* Where to Find Obituaries Online by Tami Glatz on the relatively curious about genealogy blog. Tami does a great job of surveying for online obituary websites - a keeper!

* Journal Penetration on the Web and Journal Penetration on the Web, Part II by Martin Hollick on The Slovak Yankee blog. Martin is studying if scholarly journal articles about 17th century people are being read and the information transmitted on the Internet. Great concept, interesting but dismaying results.

* Killing The Babies & Captivating First Sentences by footnoteMaven on the footnoteMaven blog. fM talks about writing skills and making the first line of a written work grab the reader. Excellent advice for genea-bloggers.

* Equality among family history researchers by Paula Stuart-Warren on the Paula's Genealogical Eclectica blog. Paula describes the acceptance and encouragement of the wide genealogy world of researchers, writers, and presenters. She's right, and I really appreciate it!

* Year Two: It's My 2nd Blogiversary! by Elizabeth O'Neal on the Little Bytes of Life blog. Elizabeth celebrates her blog's anniversary, and tells a bit of how and why she started writing, and encourages others to do the same.

* Use Blog Prompts to Jump-Start Your Writing by Denise Levenick on The Family Curator blog. Denise has prepared a monthly Genealogy and Family History Blogger’s Almanac to help genea-bloggers find writing topics.

* Maybe I Could Touch Heaven by Caroline Pointer on the Family Stories blog. Caroline shares a memory of "home" and why people like going back to where they were raised - well done!

* Surname Saturday: PATER by Donna Pointkouski on the What's Past Is Prologue blog. Donna takes Surname Saturday to a new level - this is a great start on a series of surname posts. Absolutely beautiful work.

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! I am currently reading posts from over 530 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

6 comments:

James Tanner said...

Thanks, especially from those of us who don't have time to make our own list.

Family Curator said...

Thank you, Randy, for including The Family Curator and Blogger's Almanac in the weekly round-up.

As always, I've got more reading to do now that you have pointed the way!

footnoteMaven said...

Randy:

Thank you so much for the shout out and for not mentioning my roasted baby graphic.

A great list as always!

-fM

Schelly Talalay Dardashti said...

Thanks, Randy, for the mention!

Elizabeth O'Neal said...

Thanks for the mention, Randy, and for sharing your favs. Very helpful to us busy mommy-geneabloggers trying to keep our sanity intact! :-)

tami osmer glatz said...

thanks again, Randy, for including my humble blog (Relatively Curious About Genealogy). Your blog is at the top of my reading list !