Monday, March 30, 2009

Must-Read Genealogy Blogs - Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question

I'm going to start highlighting genealogy blogs that add significant value to the genea-blogosphere. This may be a regular weekly feature at Genea-Musings!

I want to start the series by mentioning the absolute BEST new genealogy blog for 2009, in my humble opinion. There are quite a few new blogs, but this one, in my book, is number one.

My first Must-Read genealogy blog is Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question, written by Lorine McGinnis Schulze who has a number of other genealogy blogs and the Olive Tree Genealogy web site.

Lorine started her new blog on 1 January 2009 and committed to writing a new blog post every day answering a question from a reader. Today is the 89th consecutive day of Lorine's commitment, which I think is amazing (a time period that included the death of her mother).

The lead paragraph on Lorine's site says:

"Do you need help finding an ancestor? Do you have a genealogy question you would like to ask me? Do you want to know where to find certain genealogy records? Let Lorine help! Every day I will choose one question to answer. Send your query about your ancestors to me then check back here to see if it has been answered. Please take a few minutes to read other queries that I've responded to so you get an idea of the kind of query most apt to be chosen."

I encourage all of my readers to go visit Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question and see the scope of the questions and the quality of Lorine's responses.

This is a tremendous challenge for many of us - to authoritatively respond to a reader's brickwall question, and to do it with patience and good humor. Lorine does it extremely well. I really appreciate the effort and the leads the answers have provided me for my own research.

Are there any other genealogy blogs doing this type of question-and-answer on a regular basis (even weekly)? I can't think of one.

Do you have a nominee of a Must-Read Genealogy Blog? If so, please let me know in comments or email (rjseaver@cox.net). I will summarize your suggestions occasionally so that we all can benefit from them.

2 comments:

Olive Tree Genealogy said...

Wow, Randy, as my British grandmother would have said "I am gob-smacked" at your choosing my AskOliveTree blog as a must read for 2009. (gob-smacked=blown away by; left speechless) Thank you so much for your kind praise of my blog, it has really been fun and at the same time, challenging!

In all honesty though I think I may have missed 3 or 4 days of that 89 day timeframe.

I hope to get many more questions as I very much enjoy the challenge and the thought that maybe I am helping someone in a frustrating search. Thank you again, I am so honoured to have been chosen!

Lorine

Anonymous said...

Randy,

With all due respect. The genealogical pickings must be pretty bad when the bloggers start blogging about each other.

You blog about Lorine. Lorine blogs about you. I wonder how many other bloggers will pick up on this and blog about this.

The only thing worse is someone like me who complains about bloggers blogging about other bloggers :) :) :)

Regards,
Larry
2009MR31 16:00 Sydney