Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of April 6-12, 2008

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, provide 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.

* "10 Things Genealogy Software Should Do" by Mark Tucker on the ThinkGenealogy blog. Mark has made a document, a presentation and a video of his thoughts on this subject - outstanding. Every genealogist should read and comment on this. There are comments pro and con - read them too.

* "iGoogle as a Home Page and Genealogy Gadgets" by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination: Austin Family blog. Thomas explores iGoogle and finds some interesting and useful gadgets and widgets.

* "Comparative Analysis of Google Search Terms" by Kathi on the Ancestor Search blog. Kathi looked for trends in the use of "genealogy" as a search term compared to other hobbies or interests. The findings may surprise you!

* "Ancestry Shows a New Face (Book App)" by the Ancestry Insider on his/her blog. The AI displays the FaceBook application in work and/or produced by Ancestry.com. It has several interesting pages that look like Ancestry.com pages. This is another way to bring in computer-literate people about to be interested in family history.

* "Invasion of the Googlegangers" by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing The Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. Schelly highlights a newspaper articles about finding people with your name. Interesting - I've blogged about it before, but it may be an interesting meme challenge to see who can find the most or who has a completely unique name.

* "Friday from the Collectors - A Moment In Time" by guest blogger Becky Wiseman on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Becky writes a wonderful article describing her old photographs - in words many of us have thought about but not written. Excellent work!

* "I'm a Euro-Mutt! (genetically speaking)" by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak on the Roots Television: Megan's Roots World blog. Megan finds a DNA analysis that shows relative numbers of European ancestry. Fascinating.

* "What would your ancestors think about your stuff?" by Larry Lehmer on the Passing It On blog. Larry takes Lori Thornton's comments and ponders this question. This would be another great prompt for a Carnival or meme or blog post.

* "Research Party" by Lee Drew on the FamHist blog. Lee and his society cohorts threw a genealogy research party for teenagers - and 60 of them attended! What an amazing feat, and story. It's a great example for other societies to reach out to the younger generation.

* "Mary's NGS Conference Tips, Pt. 5" on the MoSGA Messenger (Missouri State Genealogical Association) blog. I missed the first four parts, but have found them here, here, here and here. Mary Celeste's tips are timely - the 2008 NGS conference is in Kansas City in three weeks!

* "Preserve and Inspire" by Jimmy Kavanagh on the Genealogy Gifts blog. Jimmy keeps coming up with wonderful genealogy gift ideas - I really like this one.

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!