Sunday, April 3, 2011

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 27 March to 2 April 2011

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:

Census Night: Looking Back - Part 1 and Part 2 by Caroline Gurney on the Caro's Family Chronicles blog.  Caroline shares English census images from 1841 to 1871 in this post.  It's interesting to see the census forms and the information collected on each person and family.

Sourcing in a Digital World by Denise Barrett Olson on the Moultrie Creek Gazette blog.  Denise takes us to the Source Portal on WeRelate.org - looks great to me!

Great Swedish Adventure ~ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 by Cheryl Palmer on the Heritage Happens blog.  Cheryl entered the Swedish Television Family History contest and is still in the running. [I know, I have some from the week before, but this is exciting.]

What if it Has Already Been Researched? by Kory Meyerink on the ProGenealogists blog.  Kory answers the question well, and has another one to answer too.

Do you have your genealogical head in the cloud? by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.  James takes a common-sense attitude toward cloud computing...and thinks we're doing it if we have up-to-date online family trees.

Chatting With Jay Verkler, CEO of FamilySearch International by Lorine McGinnis Schulze on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog.  Lorine talks to Jay about the 2011 RootsTech and also about future RootsTech conferences, and genealogy in general.

Probates can help you, so use them! by Nikki Larue on Blog of a Genealogist in Training.  Nikki is indexing probate records, and describes exactly why indexing is so important - fascinating clues turn up in records that you have no idea are there!

Shipwrecked In The South Pacific – 3 Oct 1855 and Charles and Rosa Logie ~ Shipwrecked in the South Pacific – 4 Oct 1855 by Lee R. Drew on the Family History with the Lineagekeeper blog.  Lee has some really interesting ancestors with harrowing life experiences - check out these articles!  Read the rest of his family letters and stories too!

We had Lunch with Cousin James R. Osgood (1836-1892) by Becky Jamison on the Grace and Glory blog.  A spontaneous look around a restaurant leads to a bit of intentional research by Becky, with interesting results.

Who reads all these genealogy blogs anyway? by the writer of the Geniaus blog.  Excellent question, first asked by James Tanner on Saturday.  Geniaus has answers, and suggests that genealogists could get more out of reading blogs than reading print magazines.  I agree! 

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

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

Follow Friday Newsletter: 1 April 2011 by Greta Koehl on Greta's Genealogy Bog blog.

Follow Friday - Around the Blogosphere - March 25 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 blogs 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 860 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

6 comments:

Eileen said...

I have discovered so many great blogs from reading your "Best of the Genea-Blogs" posts. If you aren't already familiar with it and are interested in genealogy education, I highly recommend Angela McGhie's blog "Adventures in Genealogy Education." I have just posted my first blog post "Spotlighting the National Institute of Genealogical Studies" as guest author on her blog.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the mention, Randy. I always look forward to your Sunday post to direct me to the good stories of the previous week. Thank you for including me this week.

Roots Traveler said...

Thanks for taking the time to put together this list of great blogs. I hope to find some great new ones to read.

Caro said...

Thank you so much for recommending my post on the UK censuses, Randy.

Like Becky, I always look forward to your Sunday night suggestions. I'm off to read Geniaus' post now, as I am definitely one of those who learn more from blogs than from magazines.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for including the Gazette article in with all these other great posts. I find I'm often spending my Sunday evenings reading your suggestions. It's something I look forward to each week.

my Heritage Happens said...

Imagine my surprise when I saw you mention my Swedish Adventure series in your blog! I think I have way to much to live up to...

Thanks for the dedication you give every day to the genealogy community, and a special thank you for appreciating this series of posts!