FGS 2006 lectures available to download

Genealogy in the 21st century may be a lot different than it was in the 20th century. Blogs, online databases, webcasts, podcasts and now conference lectures on audio.

The Federation of Genealogical Societies 2006 conference was held in Boston from 30 August to 2 September. I missed it...but there are a lot of lectures I would love to have heard.

Many, if not all, of the conference lectures are available in audio MP3 files at www.lulu.com/fgs2006/. You can order and download the lectures for $1.99 per lecture. The above web site lists the lectures available, including lecturer and lecture title, but they are not in numerical order.

Sharon Sergeant created a web page here that has the available files in numerical order. The lecture titles, with a short description, are also here. The important thing to write down is the lecture number (e.g., W-56, T-158, F-254, S-339).

When you get to the Lulu web site to purchase and download the lectures you want, you can use your Browser's Edit Find menu to find the link for your target lecture. You will have to open an account at the Lulu site, and give your PayPal or credit card information. You can then Add lectures to your cart one at a time, then Check Out. After this, you can download your selected lectures, one at a time.

When you hit the "Download" button for each lecture, the file will download to your temporary files and will start to play. You will get a page where you can right-click the lecture title and "Save Target As" and save the file to your hard drive. Each lecture is about 30 mb and took me 60 to 90 seconds to download on a cable modem. I made a new folder "FGS2006" in my genealogy education folder for the lectures I downloaded.

I downloaded six lectures, and plan to listen to them in the car on CDs or my new iPod. I may also use them to help with my wife's insomnia.

What is still missing is the lecture syllabus for the conference - hopefully it will be available soon.

For $1.99 per lecture, I think these are a pretty good bargain.

UPDATE 10:30 PM: Ken Aitken has some details on the economics of this type of recording service, plus other interesting remarks here.