Sunday, November 22, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - November 15-21, 2009

Hundreds of 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:

* Beginning Your Online Search for Ancestors for Free by Miles Meyer on the Miles' Genealogy Tips blog. Miles has good advice for finding free online resources for his class. And us.

* What Did Willie Do? by Kay B. on the Kay B's Place blog. Kay has a fascinating biography of her uncle Willie - read and enjoy!

* Briefest of Histories of Genealogy by Polly Kimmitt on the Pollyblog blog. Polly's newspaper column analyzes why genealogy is an addictive and popular pastime.

* The 18th Edition Of Smile For The Camera's In Town by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. The theme for this Carnival was "Travel" and 19 bloggers submitted posts - read them all!

* Anatomy of a Military Pension File, Part 1 and Anatomy of a Military Pension File, Part 2 by Amy Coffin on the We Tree blog. Amy received a pension file and is itemizing each page and the things she is learning from the pages.

* How to Keep On Learning Genealogy by Robyn on the Reclaiming Kin blog. Robyn has excellent advice for pursuing more genealogy knowledge.

* Wordy Wednesday: Shaking My Tree At The Roots! by Luckie Daniels on the Our Georgia Roots blog. Luckie declared she is "going rogue" on genealogy - this may be interesting and fun!

* Carnival of Genealogy, 84th Edition by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. The topic for this Carnival was "What the Carnival of Genealogy Means to Me." There were 23 submissions for this Carnival.

* NFS 1.0 for Non-Mormons by the writer of The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI explains New FamilySearch for the rest of us, and links to a 2005 presentation about how great it was going to be.

* Genealogy Television Programs Sprouting Up by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination: Austin Family blog. Thomas peers intro the crystal ball and foresees new genealogy addicts after they watch the two new TV programs coming soon.

* Canada's Home Children - Still Waiting for Recognition by M. Diane Rogers on the CanadaGenealogy: 'Jane's Your Aunt' blog. Diane describes the resources for Canada's "home children" - shipped to Canada from Englandi n the 19th century. Excellent work!

* Finding Family Stories in Online Digitized Books by Tami Glatz on the relatively curious about genealogy blog. Tami presents a great list of online book resources.

* Preview – Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories by Thomas MacEntee on the Geneabloggers blog. We have an Advent Calendar to follow with topics for each day - I encourage you to follow the calendar, and to read the posts.

* Numbers, part 1 by Beau Sharbrough on The Unofficial Footnote Blog. Beau discusses Footnote database completion percentages in this post, and how users can interpret them.

* Woodmen of the World Unite: A Photo Gallery: I by Dead Man Talking on the Blogging a Dead Horse blog. DMT comes up with some of the most interesting and beautiful photo essays about cemeteries and gravestones.

* The 24th Edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy by Al Wierzba on Al's Polish-American Genealogy Research blog. There were nine entries to this Carnival on the topic of tips, tricks and helps for research.

* Facebook for Genealogists by Jordan Jones on the GenealogyMedia.com:the Blog. Jordan updated his interesting article previously published in the NGS NewsMagazine (April-June 2009).

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

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

3 comments:

Amy Coffin said...

Thank you for the mention, Randy!

Anonymous said...

I was pleasantly surprised to be mentioned in this post. Thank you, that makes me feel good.

Luckie said...

Once again Randy, you honor me with a GeneaBlog Bestee mention! Thank you so much! I am ready to kick EVERY brick wall down!:-)

Luckie.