Sunday, March 20, 2011

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 13 to 19 March 2011

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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 Tangent – Preparing A Document/Indenture For Transcription and Genealogy Research  by Jim Smith on A Genealogy Hunt blog.  Jim is doing yeoman work trying to find his Smith family ancestors - I don't envy this task.  But he's steadily working through the records on Grenada.  Check out this post for his process of preparing records so that he can efficiently use them and show them.  I'm impressed!

Review: Comparing Scans on the FlipPal and Epson V500  by Denise Levenick on The Family Curator blog.  An interesting and useful comparison for typical family photographs.

Will My Genealogy Records Survive Me? by Lee R. Drew on the FamHist blog.  Lee has great suggestions to preserve your family history records. 

RootsTech: A Replacement for Genealogy Conferences? by Anne Roach on the TechnoGenealogist blog.  Anne was the FamilySearch leader of RootsTech 2011, and has some questions for genealogists and technologists.

Using Land Records to Solve Genealogical Problems - Part 3 by Michelle Goodrum on The Turning of Generations blog.  This is a continuation of Michelle's excellent series on land records.

March-April Shades by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog.  The topic is Photographs in Politics in this issue.  Is there a better online historical photo magazine available today?  This one is FREE, well-written, fascinating and beautiful.

Great Grandma was a Full Blooded Cherokee Princess - Now What????  by Roberta Estes on the Historical Melungeons, Native Americans, Appalachians blog.   Not so fast - there are some caveats here, and some links to more information.

GenPerfect–My Ideal Genealogy Software and More GenPefect by Mark Tucker on the ThinkGenealogy blog.  Mark lays a marker full of new ideas on software - who will be the first to adopt them?  Read the comments too!

WikiTree: 5 generation updatable pedigree widget BETA by Pat Richley-Erickson on the DearMYRTLE Genealogy Blog.  Ol' MYRT is exploring in WikiTree also, and has great news!

Genealogical Standards – Building Blocks of the Profession by Carolyn L. Barkley on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com blog.  This is a road map for becoming a skilled and trusted genealogist.

Protecting Your Blog by Kathy Reed on the Family Matters blog. Kathy has found a neat way to make quality printed books from her blog posts.  I love it!  Good work.

Sorting Saturday - Document & Record log by Heather Kuhn Roelker on the Leaves for Trees blog.  Heather has a very useful Excel form to document her searches for a particular family.  I love forms!

My Foray into Geni.com by Taneya Koonce on Taneya's Genealogy Blog.   Taneya stated her likes and dislikes on using her Geni.com family tree, and compared the site to other online family tree sites.

Several other genea-bloggers wrote weekly pick posts this week, including:

Follow Friday: This Week's Favs by Jen on the Climbing Your Family Tree blog.

Follow Friday - Around the Blogosphere - March 17, 2011 by Susan Petersen on the Long Lost Relatives.net blog.

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Google Reader, RSS 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 850 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

3 comments:

Tony Timmins said...

Hi Randy, started to go through my 128 items on Google Reader but never got past this post. THANKS! Really, Tony

Kathy Reed said...

I noticed a sudden increase in traffic to my blog. Then I discovered that a lot of the traffic was due to your mention of my post. Thanks so much for your kind words.

Jim Smith said...

Randy, I certainly appreciate your commendation of my blog, A Genealogy Hunt. Thanks. Jim