Sunday, March 23, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - March 16-22, 2008

I'm back from my "vacation in Santa Cruz." I did read my Bloglines every day but didn't write down all the "best" ones since Tuesday. I've spent an hour or so reading the ones I thought I remembered...

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week.

My criteria are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy, address current genealogy issues, personal family history, are funny or are poignant.

I don't list posts destined for the Carnival of Genealogy, or other meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

* "Cabinet of Curiosities #5: Steampunk Edition" by Tim Abbott on the Walking the Berkshires blog. Naturally, I had no idea who, or what, Steampunk is, or was, or will be. But this collection of blog articles is really interesting. Scary. Thanks, Tim, I think.

* "A St. Patrick's Day Parade of Posts" by Lisa on the Small-Leaved Shamrock blog. Lisa hosts the 5th Carnival of Irish History and Culture" and has a fine list of contributors - all about St. Patrick's Day.

* "My Trip to Ireland, 2001" by Dick Hillenbrand on the Upstate New York Genealogy blog. I love to hear about genealogy travels - and Dick has some great stories for St. Patrick's Day.

* "Let the Sunshine In" by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig discusses Sunshine Week (concerning government documents) and how open records policies and genealogy researchers are affected.

* "Rootsweb/Ancestry CC Meltdown" by GenMaster on the Mad Genealogist blog. GenMaster provides a summary, insight and questions about the removal of some USGenWeb sites from the Rootsweb domain because of the TGN move to put Rootsweb pages in the Ancestry domain. A sane analysis. Good questions.

* "Two Ancestry Presidents Contrasted" by the Insider on the Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. Insider summarizes talks by Paul Allen (former President of Ancestry, currently CEO of FamilyLink.inc) and Tim Sullivan (current CEO of The Generations Network). The summary leaves me waiting for more shoes to drop. I would love to have heard or seen both of these talks.

* "WorldVitalRecords.com Ranked #10 Most Popular Genealogy Site for 2008" by Whitney Ransom on the WorldVitalRecords Blog. This post links to Kory Meyerink's presentation at the recent BYU/FamilySearch conference which lists the Top 50 Genealogy Web Sites - Kory's article is "50 Most Popular Genealogy Web Sites for 2008." I see some surprises (to me) on this list!

* "News from the BYU Computerized Genealogy Conference" by Diane Haddad on the Genealogy Insider blog. This is a wonderful summary of important genealogy news that nobody else has published (that I can find).

* "The 'Busted Bubble' Scare in Parham" by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi blog. Terry is regularly writing a human interest column for the Amory Advertiser newspaper. This post is about his brush with fate when he was a boy. I wish I could remember things like this from my boyhood.

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Bloglines, reader, feed or email if you like what you read.

Please make a comment to them also - we all appreciate feedback on what we write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me!

1 comment:

Terry Thornton said...

Thanks, Randy, for the mention. I was fortunate to have received such good and rapid medical attention --- but it sure busted my bubble blowing forever!
TERRY