Sunday, January 10, 2010

Best of the Genea-Blogs - January 3-9, 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:

* Why Internet Sucks (And How You Can Fix It) [Guest Author] by Katrina McQuarrie on Elyse Doerflinger's Elyse's Genealogy Blog. Katrina's post highlights problems with using the Internet for genealogy research, and offers ideas for how you (we) can improve it.

* Carnival of Genealogy, 87th Edition edited by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. There was a record 66 entries to this genealogy carnival with the topic of New Year's Resolutions.

* Promoting Genealogical Societies by Tina Sansone on the Gtownma's Genealogy blog. Tina has excellent ideas for genealogical societies to promote themselves - well done!

* Family History: Getting relatives involved by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. This list of ideas to get relatives involved in your research activities is superb!

* DNA Testing Solves Mysteries and Brings Family Together, part 1 and part 2a by Emily Aulicino on the DNA - Genealem's Genetic Genealogy blog. Emily wrote about several success stories that used DNA testing to find relatives.

* Does Genealogy Software Make Inputting Sources Unnecessarily Complicated? by Melody Lassalle on The Research Journal blog. Mel recounts her experiences doing sources in genealogy software, and has her own criteria and methods for doing it. True confessions time here - read the comments too!

* A Festival of Postcards (6th Ed.) – White Part 1, Vintage postcards & altered mail art and Part 2, Contemporary postcards, postcrossing by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault on the A Canadian Family blog. Evelyn's postcard festival has many entries on the theme of "White."

* "Show and tell": Irish genealogical treasures by Lisa on the Small-Leaved Shamrock blog. This 17th edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture has 12 entries on the theme of "show and tell."

* Brave New World by Dead Man Talking on the Blogging a Dead Horse blog. DMT collects photographs of cemeteries and graves - view this collection of Native-American photos. Amazing.

* Shades The Magazine - January Issue by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. This is the best! online genealogy magazine available - read all 70 pages of it! Don't miss Donna's Top 10 Photo Resolutions and the latest Penelope Dreadful story! And plenty more.

* Data miners and vampires by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog. James names a common complaint appropriately...and has words of wisdom for the wrong-doers and their victims.

* Local Resources Rock! Dallas Public Library by Tami Glatz on the relatively curious about genealogy blog. Dallas Public Library is now on my genea-bucket list after reading Tami's description of the genealogy holdings.

* Blogger’s Day 2010 at Ancestry.com by Leland Meitzler on the GenealogyBlog blog. Leland is the first with a summary of the Blogger's Day at Ancestry.com - with a picture too! I hope that we get more detailed information from the other attendees.

* Top Ten Reasons I'm Not Attending Blogger Day 2010 by Chris Dunham at The Genealogue blog. Not every genea-blogger was invited to Blogger's Day - and Chris has some reasons why he didn't go. I think Chris should write for Letterman - I really do!

* Weekly Rewind by Apple on the Apple's Tree blog. Apple's weekly summary of her activities, genealogy carnivals and her reading favorites. I often find blog posts listed here that escaped my attention!

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.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

UPDATED: Corrected typo of "667" to "66" - thank you, T.K - good catch. See, somebody reads these lists critically!

5 comments:

Jean Hibben said...

Circlemending has awarded you with the "Happy 101" Award. To see my comments on this, go to
Handle this however you see fit.
It was great to see you on Sat ... thanks for being there!!
Jean

TK said...

Randy, your typo cracked me up!! It only SEEMS like there were 667 entries in the 87th CoG! LOL!!

Anonymous said...

Randy, you are a very busy man and Finding Our Ancestors has awarded you the Happy 101 award as well.

Donna said...

I'm sure that, to Jasia putting it together, it felt like 667!

I'm glad you enjoyed my Shades article!

Donna

Schelly Talalay Dardashti said...

Thanks for the shout-out, Randy.

Best wishes,
Schelly