Sunday, August 16, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - August 9-15, 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:

* Is tweeting a conference lecture a copyright violation? by Janet Hovorka on The Chart Chick blog. Janet weighs in on the issue, having been the tweeted and the tweeter! Excellent points.

* Breaking Down A Brick Wall: The Problem With Surnames and Breaking Down A Brick Wall–The Problem with Surnames, Part II by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig continues his series on his Gines ancestry - these are the 4th and 5th posts. Well done, as always!

* Twitter and Genealogy Conferences by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination: Austin Family blog. Thomas provides another opinion about the use of Twitter...and advocates a "best practices" for use of it during presentations.

* The Year Without a Summer… by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene Eakle Genealogy Blog. Arlene describes some of the events and reasons that may have caused migration of American families.

* This is a test of your local Broadcast System! by Midge Frazel on the Granite in My Blood blog. Midge muses about actually responding to a research challenge - and does it while learning a new technical skill! Funny post.

* Filling in the Blanks: Start with a Research Plan by Donna Pointkouski on the What's Past is Prologue blog. Donna discusses how research plans can help you plow through research roadblocks. Good thinking!

* Do You Know Your 16 Greats? by Thomas MacEntee on the Geneabloggers blog. Thomas collected all 52 of the "Sweet 16 Great-Great" posts from last weekends Saturday Night Genealogy Fun into a list. Thanks, Thomas!

* Look, Listen and Learn Classroom Exercises for Kids by Steven Lasky on the Museum of Family History blog. This is a new blog, oriented toward Jewish Family History. Steven makes excellent suggestions for ways to involve children in family history events.

* The dilemma of the original in genealogy and Original is not a category in genealogical evidence by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. These two articles deal with the value of "original" documents and their value as evidence. Wonderful discussion.

* Insider Incites Intellectual Property Profundity by the blogger who writes The ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI lends his expertise and experience to the "tweeting a conference" issue with some humor, wisdom and questions. Well done.

* Passing The Torch! by footnoteMaven on the footnoteMaven blog. Her son's getting married, and fM has big plans. First, she tells a wonderful story about her little boy, fit for posterity! And hopes that they have a boy just like he was.

* Hurdling the “Brick Wall” without Landing in a Pothole (The Real Value of Source Citation): by Erica on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com Blog. This post recounts conversations with Elizabeth Shown Mills about the subject near and dear to most of our minds.

* Researching Your Foreign Ancestors Online & Elsewhere by Tami Glatz on the relatively curious about genealogy blog. Tami's post discusses the first steps you should take when you discover where your immigrant ancestors came from.

* What do you think your ancestors… by the blogger who writes the Generations Gone By Weblog. What would your ancestors think about your lifestyle? Interesting question, plus some answers here.

* Social History Saturday: The Boy with the US Census by Gena Philibert Ortega on the Gena's Genealogy blog. This looks like a fascinating book for those of us mired in the census research business.

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 500 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

1 comment:

iPentimento | Genealogy and History said...

thanks for the great links to investigate Randy!