Sunday, June 7, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - May 31 - June 6, 2009

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:

* Genealogy steadily down on Google Trends by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. Some interesting and disturbing trends here - check out the charts.

* Graveyard Rabbits Carnival – June 2009 by Julie Cahill Tarr on The Graveyard Rabbit blog. There were fifteen entries to this Carnival with the topic of "Veteran's Memorials." Read them.

* After I'm Gone - I Want My Genealogy Research To Live On by M. Diane rogers on the CanadaGenealogy, or, 'Jane's Your Aunt' blog. Diane shares her genealogical will with everyone, and has wise words for that "final tweet."

* Dublin by Donna Moughty on Donna's Genealogy Blog. Donna shares her research plans for her trip to Dublin, Ireland this month. This is a nice list of repositories to visit and the records they hold.

* Name counts for Newspapers by the writer of The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI provides some "inside genealogy" information about the name counts for the newspaper collections on Ancestry.com.

* Build Your Virtual Business Card by Denise Olson on the Family Matters blog. Denise has great ideas on how to make and use virtual business cards.

* Carnival of Genealogy, 73rd Edition by Apple on the Apple's Tree blog. This Carnival had 20 entries on the topic of "The Good Earth." The next Carnival of Genealogy topic will be "Swimsuit Issue."

* Grandma Said... by Janine on the Janinealogy blog. Janine discusses the veracity of family stories and her attempts to prove or disprove several of them.

* In the Good Old Summertime by Amy Coffin on the We Tree blog. Amy has some great ideas on how to involve young children in genealogy pursuits.

* Way Around the Brick Wall: The Plantations by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig continues to break down his brick wall problem by looking for Plantation tax records. He also notes local history and geographic records.

* June 4th: Old Maids Day by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene Eakle's Genealogy Blog. Arlene has wise advice about those spinsters who helped their parents and saved the family history.

* Cemetery Visit Planning by Russ Worthington on the My Tombstone Collection blog. Russ provides the chat log from a Second Life online meeting about Cemeteries. Good suggestions here.

* Unique Graves, Headstones and Tombstones by the writer of the Now That's Nifty blog (not a genealogy blog). There are some amazing tombstones here! The web site is really interesting too, and often gross. I like it!

* Dowsing For Graves And Other Wives Tales by Lee R. Drew on the FamHist blog. Lee recounts his own experiences with Dowsing and wonders about "old ways and remedies."

* Unclaimed Persons Solves 83 Cases by its First Birthday! by Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak on the Roots Television Megan's Roots World blog. Megan highlights the success of the Unclaimed Persons group on Facebook, and "retires" from leadership of this effort. Well done, Megan!

* Territory Southwest of the River Ohio by Arlene Eakle on Arlene Eakle's Tennessee Genealogy Blog. Arlene describes records and sources for the early settlement of eastern Tennessee.

* Penelope Dreadful: Strong Persuasion, The Ring That Wasn't There by Denise Levenick on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Another fine Penelope Dreadful column by Denise - very creative and fun. True? Who knows?

* Does Time Reveal Mercy? by Caroline J. Pointer on the Family Stories blog. Caroline analyzes an heirloom timepiece and tries to figure out who it belonged to. Interesting details, fine work!

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 - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me! I am currently reading posts from over 480 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

3 comments:

Dorene from Ohio said...

You have againg been awarded the Janice Brown Puckerbrush Blog Awards for Excellence.

Pick it up at:

http://graveyardrabbitofsanduskybay.blogspot.com/2009/06/janice-brown-puckerbrush-award-for.html

Penelope Dreadful said...

My sincere appreciation for including the latest installment at Shades on your "best of" list. I am delighted to know that you enjoyed the story!

cheekygnome said...

Randy, you're reading the Google Trends data wrong. The graph does not show a downward trend in genealogy interest. What it shows is a comparison of how often "genealogy" is searched for compared to all other searches on Google. The data on the web grows day by day, month by month and year by year. As that amount of data grows "genealogy" (a static word) becomes less and less of the overall number of searches made. To illustrate this look up some common buzzwords or "things" that have only been around for a year or two. A new product like the Blackberry Storm shows a similar downward curve to the word "genealogy". The graph spiked right about the time the product was released and then started a downward trend as Google added more and more search terms to their data pool.