Sunday, September 21, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - September 14-20, 2008

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 genealogy carnivals, 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:

* Carnival of Genealogy - 55 Editions Revisited by Julie on the GenBlog blog. Julie does everyone a favor and puts links in one place for this collection of Carnival posts - each a collection in itself.

* Treasure Hunt! A Challenge for Genea-bloggers by Denise L on The Family Curator blog. Denise challenges genea-bloggers to write about their own treasure hunt - the deadline for posts about the treasure hunt plan is 30 September and for the results of the treasure hunt is 20 October - write an email to Denise, or comment on her blog.

* BEST of the Internet for Genealogists - 14 Sept 2008 by Pat Richley on DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. I love DearMYRTLE's regular posts that cover blogs, instructions, databases, videos, podcasts, threads, commentary and innovations.

* A Primer on Setting Goals and Reaching Them by Sheri Fenley on The Educated Genealogist blog. First Samford, then Pauline, now motorcycles? Sheri has an interesting life, and I'm really glad that she shares some of it with us. There is a great family history story in this post!

* Video Interview of Paul Nauta of FamilySearch by Dick Eastman on the Eastman Online Genealogy Newsletter blog. This interview, now on RootsTelevision, was very interesting and helpful to my understanding of what FamilySearch is doing with indexing, digitizing and searching.

* Genealogical Roundup by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak on the Roots Television: Megan's Roots World blog. Megan always provides an interesting reading list, oriented toward her interests.

* Choctaw Ancestry by John Newmark on the Transylvanian Dutch blog. John finds fascinating records in the Dawes Commission records on Footnote.com, and tells us about it. It's a wonderful research story, even though it didn't come out the way you might expect.

* Come, O Thou Traveler, Unknown: My First Digital Audio File by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country on Monroe County, Mississippi blog. We've all known that Terry is a gifted writer, but he also plays a mean piano, and is willing to try out new technology. This post brings them all together!

* Friday from the Collectors - September 19: Connecting the Diaspora by Brett Payne on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Brett is the author of the Photo-Sleuth blog, and displays some pictures from his interesting family collection.

* Federation of Genealogical Societies Annual Conference Exhibits and News Summary by Carolyn Barkley on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com blog. Carolyn provides an excellent summary of the exhibits and news from her time at the recent FGS conference in Philadelphia.

* Friday at the PGSA Conference and Saturday at the PGSA Conference by Steve Danko on Steve's Genealogy Blog. Steve attended the Polish Genealogical Society of America conference in Chicago, and summarized his experiences in these posts. He also met Thomas MacEntee while in Chicago, memorialized here. So, Steve, what about those women at the next table?

* Patronymics - or understanding names that have you so confused that you don't know who's who and Understanding Diminuitives in 17th Century New York Dutch Names by Lorine McGinnis Schulze on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog. What a timely post for me, just dipping into the Dutch New York genealogy pool! Lorine explains Dutch name patronymics and diminutives very well!

* Adam to Zsuzsanna: Hungarian and Croatian names in the family tree by Lisa on the 100 Years in America blog. This is a fascinating post explaining the Slavic names in her family and their English/US equivalents. In addition, Lisa explains some of the difficulties of finding records for these types of names - they used diminutives too!

* The Gentle Ferocity of Love by Terry Snyder on The Desktop Genealogist blog. This is a simple and beautiful piece of writing about two couples - one old, one new, both really in love.

Thank you to all genealogy bloggers for an interesting and informative week. Did you notice some new blogs on this list? I hope so!

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!

UPDATED: Terry provided the link to her post. The link to her blog works now.

5 comments:

Terry Thornton said...

Thanks RANDY for your kind comments and the link. I most appreciate your shout-out.

Thomas MacEntee, administrator GeneaBloggers Group asked for a "how to" on setting up Blogger for audio. That short article is at http://fbbootcamp.blogspot.com/2008/09/adding-audio-file-to-blogger.html

Some of your readers may enjoy adding audio capacity to their blog. But I have to warn you, my second audio recording is "TERRY TALKS and SINGS!" Get ready. It will be posted in about ten days.

TERRY

DearMYRTLE said...

Thanks for the kind words, Randy. Yours is one of Ol' Myrt's "MUST READ FIRST" blogs.

Family Curator said...

Thanks, Randy, for including the Treasure Hunt Challenge in your Best of... this week. I ALWAYS find a Treasure when I read your blog. Thank you for all you do to promote family history and genealogy.

TERRY SNYDER said...

Thanks Randy for wanting to add my post, "The Gentle Ferocity of Love" to your list. I am honored, epecially since this post is one that is close to my heart. I apologize that you could not find the link, which is http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PluckPersona&U=f684072254a04ece9ce6f1a8f1a96078&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3af684072254a04ece9ce6f1a8f1a96078Post%3ac618dcf1-161f-4078-bb85-8ec782a72814&sid=sitelife.thenews-messenger.com

You can see from the length of the link and the difficulty of finding me, the problem I am having attracting and keeping readers. Google can no longer optimize my posts because they are buried so deeply inside the News-Messenger's new website. So truly, your mentioning my post, is very much appreciated.

Terry S.

Sheri Fenley said...

Thank you again for not only reading my blog, but actually liking it too! You're the best Randy, if it weren't for your encouragement and support, I probably would have given up by now!
Sheri Fenley