Sunday, May 29, 2011

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 22 to 28 May 2011

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Hundreds of 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:

*  Are You Making Full Use of Find A Grave? by Susan Petersen on the Long Lost Relatives.net blog.  Susan highlights features that Find-a-Grave offers.  Interesting and helpful post.

*  Non-traditional Genealogical Data Sources by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.  James highlights some of the online and paper resources that genealogists miss by not using university libraries.

Should I Join My Local Genealogy Society? by Amy Coffin on The The We Tree Genealogy Blog.  I agree with amy, yes!  She has excellent reasons.

Historical Societies: An Easy Way to Strike Gold  by Marian Pierre-Louis on the New England House Historian blog.  Marian' has lots of experience with historical societies - check out her examples here.

Beyond the Little Green Leaf: Proving the maiden name of Elizabeth (Clark) Preston (1760-1807) by GeneJ on the They Came Before blog.  I love research stories - in this one GeneJ goes to the original source to find the maiden name of her ancestor.  Excellent work!

Decoding an Ancestor's Y-Chromosome DNA Signature by Dave Dowell on the Dr. D. Digs Up Ancestors  blog.  I love DNA research stories - here's Dave's latest summary of his own Y-DNA tests.

Auto-Tweeting: Making Presentations Interactive Again - Part1 and Part 2 by Anne Roach on the TechnoGenealogist blog.  I didn't know you could do this...pretty cool.  Good thoughts on making presentations, too.

Cardboard Cutouts or Real People? by Jill Ball on the Geniaus blog.  Jill has suggestions for speakers at societies and conferences - are you listening?  I'm getting a message here...

How do people learn, and how should we teach? by Michael Hait on the Planting the Seed blog.  Michael reviews the subject, and links to an interesting presentation.  I'm still getting a message here...

Shades and The OverStuffed Baby Make A Connection and The Overstuffed Baby Comes Full Circle! by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog.  fM posted a photo some time ago with a name, and the granddaughter contacted her with lots more information about the grandmother's life.  Blogging works!

FOUND by Brenda Dougall Merriman on the Brenda Dougall Merriman blog.  Another "geneablogging works" example - Greta Koehl got a photographer's stamp translated for Brenda, who figured out the subject's name.

Information Your Genealogist Needs by Mary Douglass on the Notes That Matter blog.  Mary brings genealogical research to a very simple level - who, what, when, where, how and why!  I wish I'd thought of that.

Ancestry.com's Search Comments, etc.by Michael John Neill on the Rootdig.com blog.  Michael offers his suggestions.  It illustrates well that we all do database searching a little differently - and havel ikes and dislikes. 

Several other genea-bloggers wrote weekly pick posts this week, including:

Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds by Jen on the Climbing My Family Tree blog.

Follow Friday Newsletter: 27 May 2011 by Greta Koehl on Greta's Genealogy Bog blog.

Best Bytes for the Week of May 27, 2011 by Elizabeth O'Neal on the Little Bytes of Life blog.

I encourage readers to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blogs to your Favorites, Google Reader, RSS 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 920 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

4 comments:

Susan Petersen said...

Thanks for the shout out, Randy!

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Thanks for the nod, Randy!

Michael Hait said...

Thanks again for the mention!

Mary Douglass said...

Randy, Thanks for the notice! I'm a pretty simple kind of gal.