Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Many heads are better than one

Continuing my theme from yesterday about "Working Together Really Works!" I ran across Jasia's post on Creative Gene tonight about the Winter 2007 issue of the Michigan Genealogist magazine (this is a beautiful and well-done magazine). She provided a link that gave me almost an hour of reading pleasure.

Here is another example of the power of many people working together at the society and library level. Jasia's post illustrates that genealogy bloggers with local, regional and national interests can help other genealogists. If Jasia had not posted her blog, I would not have found the magazine, and would not have read all of the articles about different research topics, including many locality articles.

In this issue of the Michigan Genealogist magazine, there is an article about the October 2007 Family History Month presentations - and a link to the Michigan History, Arts and Libraries (MHAL) site, which includes a link to the Genealogy Workshops page with a list of the Powerpoint presentations given during October, along with the handouts. I read several of them - I know that the attendees at these presentations learned a lot from them. Some of the topics were similar to the October 2007 seminar I did for CVGS.

The magazine, the society and the state library are tremendous examples of a government body providing wonderful genealogy education resources for Michigan genealogy researchers. Even if a researcher couldn't attend the presentations, s/he can review the presentations and come away from an enjoyable hour full of ideas on how to research specific topics. Do other states, counties or cities do this? I would love to be a researcher in Michigan!

But that's not all on the MHAL page - there is a link to Genealogy Web Sites - with lists of web sites for many topics, with a Michigan emphasis. There is a link to Conducting Your Genealogy Research, and links to Michigan cemeteries, naturalization indexes, the 1870 Michigan census, and more.

UPDATED 1/16: Edited for clarity (which means I couldn't understand what I originally wrote...) - is it any better now?

If other state governments supported their state genealogy society and state library the way Michigan does, we would all be better educated and more resourceful. I don't even know if California does something like this. I'll check into it, and blog about it later.

Thanks Jasia - it's your fault I enjoyed myself tonight!

No comments: