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Monday, June 30, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - June 22-28, 2008

I'm a day late with this due to the SCGS Jamboree and travel afterward...


Several hundred genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.


My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, 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.


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


* "Gordon Clarke says Old FamilySearch to be shut down" by the unknown blogger on The Ancestry Insider blog. For those of us out of the LDS loop, information like this is useful. I shuddered when I read this the first time - there is so much great extracted data in the old FamilySearch IGI, especially church records from all over the world. Read the comment by James Anderson - that rings true to me. Hopefully, the IGI will remain intact; hopefully, with a better search engine!


* "Things I Love About New NFS" by the unknown blogger on the Shoebox Genealogy blog. This blogger lists what he likes about the New FamilySearch (and I think he is talking only about the linked family tree - the replacement for Ancestral File). In previous posts, he's listed 18 things he is concerned about in NFS. Gentle readers, New FamilySearch is part of our genealogy future... and we need to know how to work with it efficiently.


* "Dreaming About Genealogy" by the unknown blogger on the Legacy News blog. I am so envious... I've been hoping for dreams like this, and now need to gather the material for the bedside to ensure that I write it down correctly. My sympathies for the memory lapse -happens to me all the time. Good comments, too!


* "Family History and the Slave Trade" by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination: Austin Family blog. Thomas TV surfs and finds a PBS documentary that makes him wonder about his own family history connection to the slave trade.

* "How Cemetery Recordss and Inscriptions Expand Your Genealogy" by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene H. Eakle's Genealogy Blog. Arlene provides a wonderful summary about the value of cemetery records in our research.

* "Protecting Family Documents, a Genealogist's Most Precious Treasure" by Kathy Jones-Kristof on the Genealogy Helps and Hints blog. Kathy has excellent advice for organizing, scanning, saving and protecting your genealogy treasures.

* "Ancestorizing" by footnoteMaven on the footnoteMaven blog. fM provides the words to "Ode to Family History" - a really good poem! It is, as fM says, "us." Can you hear this in a song?

* "June 27, Friday from the Collectors: Volunteer Genealogical Photography" by Miriam Robbins Midkiff on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Miriam provides sound counsel on how to effectively pursue a volunteer effort (society, personal request, RAOGK, etc.) to photograph something for somebody else.

* "Finding Cousins in the Library" by Kathryn Doyle on the California Genealogical Society and Library blog. Kathryn has a great story about three society members finding out that they are cousins, and what ensued. We should all be so lucky!

* "Genealogy and History Thoughts Column 14 - My Thoughts on Another "Genealogy is Bunk" Article" by Jessica Oswalt on the Jessica's GeneJournal blog. Jessica has some great thoughts about past and current history education and the role of history and geography in our genealogy research.

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!

2 comments:

  1. Randy,
    I'm honored to make your list of bests! It was wonderful to meet you and Linda at Jamboree. I'm sorry I didn't get to see you both on Sunday to say goodbye.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Randy,

    Thank you for including my post in your best of the genea-blogs post.

    -Jessica

    ReplyDelete