Family Tree Magazine, January 2008 TOC

The latest issue of Family Tree Magazine came this week in the mail.

The Table of Contents includes:

Features

* "Ladies First" by Lisa Alzo - page 22. Use these eight research strategies and nine key sources to trace your female ancestors.

* "Software Test Kitchen" by Allison Stacy - page 30. How does your software compare to the competition? Our test panel's reviews reveal how four popular family tree programs rate with genealogists like you.

* "That's Entertainment" by Lisa Alzo - page 46. Did your ancestor star in theater, vaudeville or even ther circus? Follow these six steps to spotlight performers in your pedigree.

* "Social Climbing" by Rick Crume - page 52. Social networking Web sites are the hottest new trend in online genealogy. Learn what they can do for you - and pick a service that meets your needs - with our guide.

* "Ancestors of the Caribbean" by David Fryxell - page 58. Bring your island heritage ashore with this compilation of tips and resources.

Columns

* "Branching Out" by Diane Haddad - page 10. What's new in discovering, preserving and celebrating your family history.

* "State Research Guides" - page 37. Pullout guides for Alabama and Nevada.

* "The Toolkit" by Allison Stacy - page 74. Reviews and roundups of the latest, greatest family history resources.

You can see more detail on these articles and the department articles at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/jan08.asp. They also have all of the web links mentioned in the magazine as a PDF here.

The software article covered only FamilyTreeMaker, Legacy Family Tree, RootsMagic and The Master Genealogist. However, they have a web extra with reviews about all 15 programs (10 Windows programs, 5 Mac programs) that were evaluated here. The review for each program goes to a Family Tree Magazine forum article about each piece of software. They did a nice job with this.

I found the "Ladies First" and "Software Test Kitchen" articles to be informative and helpful. If someone has Caribbean ancestry, the "Ancestors of the Caribbean" would be very helpful. I haven't found a circus performer (or worse) in my ancestry and the Social Networking stuff doesn't really excite me yet. Different strokes for different folks, eh?