Sunday, January 1, 2012

Best of the Genea-Blogs - for the year 2011

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There is no weekly Best of the Genea-Blogs this week due to my holiday travels.  There were some really good blog posts though - I recommend that you check out the weekly summaries by several geneabloggers that I have listed at the bottom of this post.

For the Year 2011, I posted 48 Best of the Genea-Blogs posts.  I missed the weeks of 6/12, 9/11, 9/18 and 1/1/12.  There were 188 geneabloggers featured in those posts.

While quantity is not necessarily the best metric, for something like a "Best Of" summary it's the only metric I have to determine which genea-bloggers were listed most often in my series.  Therefore, here are the top 20 listed in order of number of mentions (note that persons with multiple blogs are ranked by adding the blog totals):

1)  James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star   blog (31 mentions) and  FamilySearch Tech Tips blog (1 mention).

2)  Marian Pierre-Louis on the Marian's Roots and Rambles   blog (21 mentions) and New England House Historian  blog (3 mentions).

3)  Susan Farrell Bankhead on Susan's Genealogy Blog (18 mentions).

4)  Michael Hait on the Planting the Seeds blog (17 mentions).

5)  The writer of The Ancestry Insider blog (16 mentions)

6)  Pat Richley-Erickson on DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog (15 mentions)

7)  Jasia on the Creative Gene blog (11 mentions) and The Catholic Gene blog (1 mention)

7)   Kerry Scott on the Clue Wagon blog (12 mentions)

7)   Lorine McGinnis Schulze on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog  (12 mentions)

7)  Carolyn L. Barkley on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com   blog (12 mentions)

11) Heather Wilkinson Rojo on the Nutfield Genealogy blog (10 mentions)

11) Lee R. Drew on the Family History with the Lineagekeeper blog (10 mentions)

13)  Leslie Albrecht Huber on The Journey Takers  blog (9 mentions)

13) Thomas MacEntee on the Geneabloggers blog (7 mentions), the High-Definition Genealogy blog (1 mention), and the Destination: Austin Family blog (1 mention).

15)   footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed  blog (3 mentions), The Graveyard Rabbit blog (1 mention), and the footnoteMaven blog (4 mentions)

16)  Banai Feldstein on The Ginger Jewish Genealogy Blog  (7 mentions)

16)  Amy Coffin on the We Tree Genealogy Blog  (7 mentions)

16) Cheryl Palmer on the Heritage Happens  blog (7 mentions)

16) Lynn Palermo on The Armchair Genealogist  blog (7 mentions)

16)  Philip Trauring on the Blood and Frogs blog.   (7 mentions)

16) Bart Brenner (GeneaPopPop) on the Stardust 'n' Roots blog  (7 mentions)

Well, there are 21 listed there, and each of them is different and uniformly thought provoking, informative and well written. 

Congratulations to the Top 21, and thank you for being such talented and dedicated genealogy bloggers. 

If someone asked me "what genealogy blogs do you recommend," these 21 would be on my list, along with quite a few others not on the list above. 

My thanks to all of the active genea-bloggers who fill my day with news, views and experiences in the world of genealogy.  I estimate that I read over 250 blog posts each and every day, and I try to highlight 10 to 20 posts each week.  That's about 1% of the candidates.  I have a bias for thoughtful, poignant and humorous posts... Obviously, I don't read every genealogy blog there is, but I do have over 1,100 on my reading list.  If you know of a really good genealogy  blog, please tell me about it - send me a link in a comment to this post and I'll add it to my Google Reader list. 

For this past week, the following genea-bloggers took the time to compile their own Best Of list:

* Ruth's Recommendations by Ruth Blair on The Passionate Genealogist blog.

*Follow Friday Gems - 12-30-11 by Deb Ruth on the Adventures in Genealogy blog.

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

Please read their lists and click on their links. 

For what it's worth - this is Post #221 in the Best of the Genea-Blogs series!  That's over four years of trying to review the world of genea-blogs (started 23 September 2007). 

I really enjoyed reviewing my lists today - I cannot remember every post that I've listed, but it was fun refreshing my memory.

5 comments:

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Thanks for the bod of approval, Randy. I really appreciate it!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Randy. Your mentioning of my blog is truly an honor.

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

Randy, Thanks for having me on this great list. I can see that I'll have to read some of my colleagues blogs more often, since you think so highly of them. Thanks too for all you do for the genealogy community. I know that everyone looks forward to your weekly "best of" blog post!

Susan Bankhead said...

Randy: YOU"RE the BEST Geneablogger for taking the time to read all the blogs and compile the list. I APPRECIATE YOU! And, thanks for finding my blog, Susans Genealogy Blog, worth mentioning. Happy New Year!

my Heritage Happens said...

I am forever grateful that you, Randy Seaver, has acknowledged some of my posts on your "best of" lists! Wow! Thank you so much! To see my blog listed as one of the best for the year leaves me speechless...