Friday, June 5, 2009

Beginning Genealogy Helps - Post 2: Genealogy.com

In Beginning Genealogy Helps - Post 1, I listed four online genealogy tutorials and asked my readers for help finding others.

Reader Eileen recommended the articles and classes in the Learning Center at www.Genealogy.com. There are at least two different series here:

1) Genealogy How-To, with five sections, including:

* Getting Started -- five modules (Begin Your Research at Home, What's in a Name?, Collaborating with Others, Finding Existing Research on Your Ancestors, and Outfitting Your Genealogy Toolkit) with 27 articles.

* Getting Organized -- four modules (Turning Piles Into Files, Time Management, Using Photographs, Documenting Your Sources) with 19 articles.

* Developing Your Research Skills -- eight modules (Deciphering Documents and Handwriting, Finding Female Ancestors, Oral Histories, Researching Where Your Ancestor Lived, Looking Outside Your Family for Clues, Ideas to Help You Over the Brick Wall, Researching Your Medical History, Professional Genealogists) with 32 articles.

* Sharing Your Family's Story -- three modules (Reunions, Creating a Family Book, Genealogy Vacations) with 28 articles.

* Reference Guide -- six modules (Census Records, Church Records, International and Immigration Research, Researching Military Records, Using Federal, State and Local Records, Using Archives and Libraries) in 41 articles.

2) Genealogy Classes, with three sections, including:

* Beginning Genealogy - two modules (Part 1: Your Great Ancestral Hunt; Part 2: Record Groups as Building Material) in 14 articles.

* Internet Genealogy -- two modules (Beginning Internet Genealogy; Intermediate Internet Genealogy) in 31 articles.

* Tracing Immigrant Origins -- five modules (Introduction to Tracing Immigrant Origins; Post Civil War Immigrant Sources; Sources Between 1820 and 1865; Pre-1820 Immigration; European Sources) in 40 articles.

My impression is that both series were written before the year 2000, and have not been significantly updated since. The first series provides basic information about the genealogy research process, and provide little or no Internet resources. The second series on Beginning Genealogy and Immigrant Origins are fairly general, but the Internet Genealogy section is dated (e.g., Google is not listed as a Search Engine to use).

www.Genealogy.com also has an Article Archive with many articles on a variety of subjects.

For Beginning genealogists, the two tutorials may be helpful to introduce the scope and breadth of genealogy methods and records groups, but will not be helpful for Internet research.

1 comment:

Julie said...

Hey Randy,

Thanks for this post...very helpful, even for the non-beginner.

BTW, I nominated you for the Puckerbrush Award of Excellence (see http://genblogjulie.blogspot.com/2009/06/puckerbrush-award-of-excellence.html).

Julie