Sunday, August 8, 2010

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 1-7 August 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:

* My New Way of Doing Research by Barbara Poole on the Life From the Roots blog. Barbara is enjoying her online contacts and sharing her successes with us.

* Walk Down The Aisle With Shades' Wedding Issue edited by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. This issue of the premier online genealogy magazine is excellent! Well done!

* A Genealogy Blog Primer – Updated by Thomas MacEntee on the Geneabloggers blog. Thomas updated his primer, and provides links to the PDF version and to the slide show version. Excellent!

* Life in a cloud: You CAN do it, but SHOULD you? by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Pat is living in several places at once it seems, and has found easy ways to use technology to keep all of her files up-to-date. An interesting post!

* Using Genome-Wide SNP Scans to Explore Your Genetic Heritage and A Review of Family Tree DNA’s Family Finder – Part II by Blaine Bettinger on The Genetic Genealogist blog. Blaine's articles are excellent tutorials on autosomal testing for genealogy purposes, and answered some questions about the medical aspect also.

* A Letter Home From War (Amanuensis Monday) and Thoughts on 'A Letter Home From War' by Valerie Craft on the Begin with 'Craft' blog. Valerie posted a fascinating Civil War letter home and then analyzed it. What a wonderful find, and excellent analysis too!

* Carnival of Genealogy, 96th Edition edited by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. The topic for this monthly carnival was "Scrapbook Your Family History" and there were 18 submissions, and the feature post was Cindy's John & Margaret McCann Bellew Family Scrapbook posted at Everything's Relative - Researching Your Family History.

* How to Make Your Story “Work” by the writer of the Memoir Maker blog. I really liked these tips on writing a good story, and hope you do too. I wish I could do this better!

* Wiki Thoughts by Taneya Koonce on Taneya's Genealogy Blog. Taneya looks at the FamilySearch Research Wiki, and several other wikis, and describes her "likes."

* Identifying Revolutionary War Era Parents by Kathleen Brandt on the a3Genealogy blog. Kathleen provides a neat, concise five places to look to solve this common research problem.

* More On Timelines by Julie Cahill Tarr on the GenBlog blog. Julie has more ideas about timelines and has some interesting graphics.

Other "Best of..." weekly pick posts are here:

* Weekly Genealogy Picks by John Newmark on the TransylvanianDutch blog. John also links to several other weekly pick posts.

* Follow Friday: 6 August 2010 by Greta Koehl on Greta's Genealogy Bog. Greta's picks are often different from my own.

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

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

4 comments:

Julie said...

Thanks for the shout out, Randy.

Barbara Poole said...

Thank you Randy for mentioning my post today in your "Best of...." Wonderful surprise. Thanks again.

Unknown said...

Well deserved Julie and Barbara!!! Great to see some of the regulars keeping us up with their new way of doing research, timelines, walking in the clouds, updating the blogger primer, Shades of the Departed photos, Carnival are always great, Tanya shared a lot about WIKI as you did also this week, Randy and more DNA data is always a very contemprary and facsinating subject to read. And excellent blogs by "new to me" Valerie Craft and Kathleen Bates.
Congratulations everyone and thanks again Randy with keping us updated with the latest and greatest.

Jasia said...

Thanks for mentioning the COG, Randy!