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Sunday, January 3, 2010

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 27 December 2009 to 2 January 2010

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:

* Year in Review by John Newmark on the TransylvanianDutch blog. John lists 18 of his 2009 blog posts that he thinks readers will find informative and entertaining. They are!

* The Genealogical Proof Standard, step 1, The Genealogical Proof Standard, step 2 and The Genealogical Proof Standard, step 3 by Jen on the Shaw Genealogy blog. Jen is giving a talk on GPS and shares some of her information with us.

* NFS News: Media Event Excludes Online Community? by the writer of The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI not only laments the media problem, but discussed NFS release to non-LDS members and evaluated NFS with his GMM (Genealogical Maturity Model) - it didn't do well. Read the comments too - they are illuminating.

* Privacy, Identity Theft and Genealogy -- More on Identity Theft and Privacy, Identity Theft and Genealogy -- How real is this concern? by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. James finished up his series on this topic by discussing how much risk there is to genealogists with online databases. Not much. Good!

* Business and Occupational Records by Gena Philibert Ortega on the WorldVitalRecords Blog. Gena presents a great list of online and traditional resources for these records.

* Census "view maps" links no good, Ancestry.com? by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Ol' MYRT finds a problem with the Ancestry.com map function - it points to the county as if it's a city or town. Well done, MYRT - this slipped past everyone else!

* The Debate About Certification, etc.: The Courtroom Argument Concludes by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig's fictional, yet intriguing, courtroom drama about certification of genealogists continues - stay tuned! I think this would be a great script for presentation at genealogical societies and conferences.

* Why You Don’t Cite Sources (and How You Should) by Katrina McQuarrie on the Kick-Ass Genealogy blog. Katrina covers why you should, why you don't and her Pirate's code guidelines.

* 9 Genealogy Predictions for 2009 Reviewed by Mark Tucker on the ThinkGenealogy blog. Mark made predictions for 2009 in December 2008, and gave himself a 3.5 out of 9 on them. This is hard to do...I learned something just by reading his evaluations and appreciate the effort!

* Technology in genealogical research has its place by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. James presents some rules concerning genealogists using technology. Well said.

* Top 10 genealogy news stories of 2009 by John D. Reid on the Anglo-Celtic Connections blog. John's list concentrates on his English and Canadian interests, but for those items it is an excellent list.

* Treasure Chest Thursday - December 31, 2009 by Texicanwife on the Mountain Genealogist blog. Her treasure is her husband - read this beautiful tribute to him and what he means to her. We all come through life, into relationships and to genealogy via different routes, don't we?

* Graveyard Rabbits Carnival – January 2010 Edition by Julie Cahill Tarr on The Graveyard Rabbit blog. The theme for this carnival is "The Final Resting Place" and there are nine entries.

* New Year's Genealogical Wishes by Martin Hollick on The Slovak Yankee blog. Martin has a wish list of records to be found online - I agree!

* How To Do Cuyahoga County, OH Deed Research In Your Pajamas, Part 1: Finding the Deeds You Need and How To Do Cuyahoga County, OH Deed Research In Your Pajamas, Part 2: View, Save, and Print by Chris Staats on the Staats Place blog. Chris does a superb job of walking the reader through the new Cuyahoga County Deeds online.

* A Year In Review 2009. by Terri Kallio on The Ties That Bind blog. Check out Terri's video and her music playlist. What a beautiful thing to do to remember the year.

* Weekly Rewind by Apple on the Apple's Tree blog. Apple's weekly summary of her reading and research.

* Weekly Genealogy Picks by John Newmark on the TransylvanianDutch blog. John's weekly summary of genealogy and technology.

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 570 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems. Especially this past week - with the holidays I read through my blog list hurriedly and may have missed your great post.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

UPDATED 5 p.m. Added Jen's Shaw Genealogy GPS articles to the list after Jen kindly told me about them in comments - also added Shaw Genealogy to my blog list - sometimes I need help!

6 comments:

  1. http://shawgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/GPS

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  2. Thanks for posting the one about the Cuyahoga County, OH deeds online. I recently discovered a batch of family in that area, so I'm sure this will be helpful down the road.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Thanks for this:

    "Census "view maps" links no good, Ancestry.com? by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Ol' MYRT finds a problem with the Ancestry.com map function - it points to the county as if it's a city or town. Well done, MYRT - this slipped past everyone else!"

    However, when the maps were rolled out there were many such critical comments in the ancestry.com blog announcement.

    The core of the problem is the gedcom-format failure to distinguish between villages and Township-type municipalities by the same name. Even googlemaps does not handle this well: try to get it to come up with a Madison Twp. in Ohio and it comes up with Madison, Wisconsin, without telling you, and incorrectly linking the tree place/event. Similar problem with Bowling Green Twp, Licking County, Ohio; 9 times out of 10 you get Bowling Green, Kentucky.

    It is not entirely the mappers' programs' fault. It is the gedcom-format failure to designate what unit of government is referred to.

    What *is* the mappers' fault is failure to map Township-type subdivisions in order to distinguish between Counties and towns by the same name. The mapper-programmers are fundamentally city-based, and unable to provide maps that account for the fact that most of our ancestors did not live in cities.

    I post here because there is no way to comment on the post on Dear Myrtle's site.

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  5. Thanks for the shout out Randy! I've replied to GeoLover in my blog entry located at:

    http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2010/01/readers-response-census-view-maps-at.html

    Myrt :)

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