Sunday, October 30, 2011

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 23 to 29 October 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:


Got some help on my tree … by Diane Boumenot on the One Rhode Island Family blog.  Diane attended the NEHGS Fall Weekend Research Getaway and came home with some new information, some courtesy of Gary Boyd Roberts.

Genealogist for Hire – The Myths and Misconceptions?  by Lynn Palermo on The Armchaiur Genealogist blog.  Lynn has questions for us, and her readers have some answers.

Myths and Misconceptions to Hiring a Genealogist – Comments by Jennifer Holik-Urban on the Generations, Piecing the Past Together blog.  Jennifer provides her responses to Lynn's questions.

True Confessions by Janet Hovorka on The Chart Chick blog.  Janet tells us how she's restructured their family life and started their children on the family history hunt.

Bridging the Technology Gap by Nancy Shively on the Family Tree Firsts blog.  Nancy has suggestions for societies to bring senior adults into the genealogy world and the digital age.

What do courthouses, cemeteries, churches, and libraries have in common?  by Randy Majors on the RandyMajors.com blog.  Randy keeps improving his historical county boundaries map tool.  Try it!

No Excuse -- just bad genealogy by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.  James is on the front lines of FamilySearch and genealogy education - and has examples for all of us to consider.

What Am I Doing with Social Media?  by Marian Pierre-Louis on the Marian's Roots and Rambles blog.  Marian shares her reasons for using social media - they're good ones!

THE CITATION: OR, A GENEALOGY HORROR POEM by Bill West on the West in New England blog.  An ode to genealogy citations for Halloween!  Very well done, and funny, with no apologies needed to EAP.

Not Just a Name and Date: Flesh on the Bones by Susan Farrell Bankhead on Susan's Genealogy Blog.  Execellent suggestions for adding family history content to your ancestors lives.

The limits of online genealogy research by Michael Hait on the Planting the Seeds blog.  Michael links to his long Case Study of doing online research to solve African-American research problems.  The series is challenging and interesting - not everything is online, but a researcher can go quite a ways in solving research problems.

Several genea-bloggers wrote weekly pick posts and news summary posts this week, including:

Monday Morning Mentions by Lynn Palermo on The Armchair Genealogist blog.

Ruth's Recommendations by Ruth Blair on The Passionate Genealogist blog.

Genealogy Round Up, October 27 by Megan Smolenyak on the Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Roots World blog.

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

Follow Friday Gems - 10-28-11  by Deb Ruth on the Adventures in Genealogy blog.

Genealogy News Corral, Oct. 24-28 by Diane Haddad on the Genealogy Insider blog.

Week in Review by John Newmark on the TransylvanianDutch 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 1060 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here

Updated 2 November:  Kerry Scott wrote to say that Nancy Shively wrote the Family Tree Firsts blog post.  I corrected it.

3 comments:

James Tanner said...

If I am on the front lines, does that mean I get shot first? :-)

Lynn Palermo said...

Thanks Randy, Happy Halloween with the Grand-kids!

Kerry Scott said...

The Family Tree Firsts blog post was actually written by Nancy Shively (I tweeted it because I work for Family Tree Magazine/Family Tree University, so I appreciate the mention...but Nancy is the author of the post).