Friday, September 23, 2011

Follow Friday - Weekend Genealogy Fun

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Here are my recommendations for some Genealogy Fun this weekend:

1) Listen to Geneabloggers Radio tonight (Friday night, 10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT, 8 p.m. MT and 7 p.m. PT) hosted by Thomas MacEntee. This week's topic is "Genealogists Bore Their Families – What You Can Do About It." The special guests include:

Michael Katchen of the startup company 1000memories.com discussing ways in which you can engage your family in genealogy and family history.
*  Walt Grady of Couragent, Inc., the innovative maker of the Flip-Pal™ Mobile Scanner – the hottest gadget in genealogy right now .
*  Genealogy blogger Joan Miller of Luxegen.ca will share some of the innovative ways in which she personally has been able to share her genealogy research without having family members run in the opposite direction.

2) Listen to the FGS Radio - My Society show on Saturday (2 p.m. ET, 1 p.m. CT, 12 noon MT, 11 a.m. PT) hosted by Thomas MacEntee this week. The topic is "Your Society’s Facebook Presence." 
The highlights:

*   Using a Q&A format which was popular in workshops at the recent FGS 2011 conference, Thomas will review some of the issues involved with making sure your genealogy society can harness the power of Facebook.
*  We’ll be highlighting the Elgin (IL) Genealogical Society in our weekly Society Spotlight feature.

3) Check out the recent Webinars on:

Researching Your Connecticut Ancestors. by Marian Pierre-Louis (free until 3 October 2011)
* Exploring FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com by their founder, Paul Allen.
* Facebook for Genealogists, by Thomas MacEntee (free until 26 September 2011).
* "Newspapers for Genealogists: Using GenealogyBank.com to document every day of your ancestors' lives" with Tom Kemp.
* "Organizng for Success" with Karen Clifford (available free indefinitely from Legacy Family Tree)
* "The Power of DNA in Unlocking Family Relationships," with Ugo Perugo (available indefinitely from Legacy Family Tree)
* "Leveraging the Power of "We": a Watershed Event in Discovering Where to Find Your Ancestors (Research Wiki, Research Courses, and FamilySearch Forums)," with Michael Ritchey (available from Legacy Family Tree).
* RootsMagic Webinars (all free) available at http://www.rootsmagic.com/Webinars/
* National Genealogical Society (NGS) Videos (some are free to view) at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/videos_online
* Thomas MacEntee's Explorinar on Easy Website Creation (free to view).
* Thomas MacEntee's Explorinar on Evernote - Easy Note Taking UPDATED (free to view)

4) Respond to my Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge, posted on www.geneamusings.com soon after 12 noon Pacific time (that's 1900 GMT for those who understand time zones).

5) Go to a local genealogical society program, or go to a library or repository with genealogical resources. I'm going to the Chula Vista Genealogical Society Fall Seminar on Saturday featuring Anne Bowman and Donna Bradley.

6)  Go to a local or close repository with genealogy and family history material.  Do some research in traditional resources or order FamilySearch microfilms online with original source records.

7)  do some online research in the latest record collections at FamilySearch  (free, https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/list), Ancestry ($$, http://www.ancestry.com/cs/reccol/default), Fold3 ($$, www.fold3.com), WorldVitalRecords ($$, www.WorldvitalRecords.com), American Ancestors ($$, www.AmericanAncestors.org), GenealogyBank ($$, www.GenealogyBank.com), etc.

8) Add material (names, dates, places, notes, images, sources, etc.) to your genealogy software program. I have three inches of paper collected from my vacation, and will try to enter some of it into my database this weekend.

9) Spend time with your family doing fun things. Linda and I are going to the Padres-Dodgers game on Saturday and the Padres-Cubs game on Monday.

10) Go to a local cemetery and clean stones, take gravestone pictures, or transcribe epitaphs for your local society, for Find-a-Grave, or a similar online service.

Whatever you decide, please tell us about your genealogy endeavors on a social network or in a blog post. You never know when your experiences may stimulate or encourage others to do useful genealogy work.

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