I Want to be a Census Taker in 2010

Chris Dunham (The Genealogue), has done it again in his unique, inimitable and extremely funny style. He discloses what might happen if you disobey the census taker in 2010. Read the article here - it's hilarious.

The best quote:

Hiding from the census taker in 2010 will be nearly impossible, given the sweeping changes to Census Bureau policies soon to be implemented. Citizens who fail to return their census forms by mail will be visited by a representative of the Bureau—now part of the Department of Justice. Enumerators will be authorized to detain non-respondents for up to seven days, during which time they will be educated on the history and importance of the census, and encouraged to complete their forms. Enumerators will be forbidden from inflicting physical harm on the detainees, with "physical harm" defined in the new regulations as "anything that might leave a bruise."

Read the whole thing - it's worth it.

Oh, how I want to be a census taker in 2010!!!

CVGS Program Today on Female Ancestors

In the Chula Vista Genealogical Society's effort to draw potential new members to our society, we have Saturday programs 3 times a year on the 5th Saturdays - the ones on which no one else schedules a monthly meeting. Our thought is that we may be able to draw local genealogy researchers who work during the week when we have our regular society meetings. We had one of these Saturday meetings today.

The speaker was myself - we had a committed speaker drop out several months ago. The subject was "Pursuing Your Elusive Female Ancestors."

The presentation described each type of record that might help identify a maiden name (e.g., census, vital, land, cemetery, probate, pension, church, home, newspaper, etc), plus provided locations where the resources might be found in traditional resources (libraries, local societies, courthouses, FHL films, etc.) and Internet resources (databases, web pages, etc.). I also provided examples from my own research of many of the types of records. It went a bit long, but that was because I put too many good examples into the presentation.

This is the first presentation that I've done in a PowerPoint format (but I used overheads since I don't have a laptop or projector). I like the format, but without a laptop I can't do the fancy things - but I don't like the fades, the click every line, and other PP glitzy features anyway.

I made a master slide with a large title area, a picture in one corner (of my mother, her mother and grandmother) a footer with my name and the presentation title. Each slide had an action title at the top, and the bullet points addressed the issue. I included the traditional and Internet resource discussions in my verbal presentation, but not on the slides. The handout had them, however.

I enjoy the challenge of preparing and making the presentation. I'm learning to reduce word count on my slides (my training was as an engineer where we had to include everything we had to say on the slides, since they got passed around our management and the customer's management) and to use more pictures and examples.

I need to add a few more examples, especially in land records, modify some of the text which was awkward and take out a few of the examples which were not real pertinent. It was a decent job, IMHO, but it could be better.

I'll be happy when I can use a laptop and a projector - the darn overhead flimsies for my HP inkjet printer are expensive - about 75 cents each.

Roots Television is online

Genealogy is approaching the 21st century...Roots Television is online at http://www.rootstelevision.com/index.html Don't go there yet - read this before you go:

When you click on the link to the site, you will arrive at a page where Sharon DeBartolo Carmack interviews Hank Jones - the video will play and you can see how the format works.

There are a LOT more videos on the site. Look for the tabs at the top of the page that say "Roots Living," "How To," "Homeland," "DNA," "Legacy" and "Pay TV."

On each tab are a series of video clips, some up to 48 minutes long. You can put a face and a voice to famous researchers like Sharon Carmack, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, Curt Witcher and others.

There are also some video logs (Vlogs, of course!) that people have submitted, including several by Trina Boice of Carlsbad CA.

This looks great - is it the future of conferences? If so, are you willing to pay for each lecture?

Hat tip to Chris at The Genealogue for mentioning this again.

OK - go for it here!

Have you visited "The Genealogist" blog?

I have found that Paul Duxbury and Kevin Cook are two of the more prolific online genealogy writers around. They host "The Genealogist" blog and have a general web site. Their other genealogy web sites include:

** The Amateur Genealogist

** Catholic Genealogy

** Our Family Trees (link didn't work for me)

** Discovering Your Family Tree (link didn't work for me)

** GenMates

I also discovered their web site www.genealogy-articles.com with 50 articles available online on a wide range of topics. I read several of them, and they are extremely well done.

While Paul and Kevin have a United Kingdom focus, many of the articles are useful for USA and Canadian research.

APG List Discusses Professional Genealogy

I enjoy the APG (Association of Professional Genealogists) mailing list immensely - there is always good information offered by the leaders of the profession - delivered to my emailbox.

During much of this month, the list has been discussing professional genealogy - education, training, certification, credentials, regulation, licensing, marketing, running a business, research fees, etc.

You can access the September 2006 archives of the APG list here. Scroll down to the posts that start with:

* Working capital for a growing genealogy business
* Five year outlook for genealogical income
* Earning a living
* Professional genealogy

and several other titles in between. You will have to read the entries post by post, but if you are interested in the topic you will enjoy the time.

The discussion has been extremely informative, conducted in a very civilized tone, by some of the best-known genealogists in the USA.

Newsbank's GenealogyBank database

Kelley Weber on the APG mailing list posted about the Newsbank announcement concerning America's Genealogy Bank here. The first paragraph says:

In an effort to set new standards for U.S. genealogy research, NewsBank has digitized tens of millions of obituaries, death notices, family histories, birth and marriage announcements and a wide variety of other primary and secondary sources from the 1600s through the 21st century. NewsBank has consolidated these important records in comprehensive, one-stop genealogy resources that are now available online and through public libraries. For the first time, genealogists, family historians and others can quickly search these vast, largely untapped archives and easily use recent and historical information in a digital format. Casual and serious researchers will come to rely on the excellent results provided only by NewsBank's exclusive content, resources and services.

I encourage you to read the whole thing and click the link to the Genealogy Bank for more detail.

This offering sounds promising - especially if enough libraries subscribe to it. There is no indication yet what the at-home personal subscription rate will be.

PERSI Update is released

Dick Eastman and Leland Meitzler have posts about the updated PERSI (PERiodical Source Index) release by ProQuest. You can read the entire press release here.

The money quote:

ProQuest Information and Learning and Allen County Public Library (Ft. Wayne, IN) add another milestone in their longstanding alliance with the release of a significant amount of new data in the Periodical Source Index (PERSI). With this update, PERSI now contains nearly 2 million citations from over 6,500 periodicals published in the United States, Canada, and abroad. The new release includes indexing for over 235,000 articles from 2004 and 2005. No other index covers periodical research in local history and genealogy as extensively as PERSI.

PERSI can be accessed at HeritageQuestOnline (through a subscribing library card) or at Ancestry.com. You can order copies of articles from the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I have used PERSI on occasion, and have found it helpful in finding periodical articles, especially concerning localities. There are many genealogy gems in these articles but they are very difficult to mine. Usually, you have to find an index for a specific periodical, or browse the periodical shelves at a genealogy library to find the gems. Some societies, such as New England HistGen Society, have indexed their periodical pages and made the images available, usually behind a membership firewall.

In order to make PERSI more useful to genealogists, there needs to be an every name index and images of the articles. This seems to me to be a very worthwhile project for companies like ProQuest or Ancestry. I think it would be a quantum leap in useful online genealogy data.

Heck, they've completed the census records - they must need new challenges! Are they listening?

UPDATE (9/29, 3:55 PM): It was pointed out to me that there might be copyright infringement issues for all post-1922 periodical issues and articles that would prevent digitizing of the periodicals in the PERSI collection. That makes the "worthwhile project" impossible to tackle. I was wishing and hoping...

An indexing project by the different societies or publishers, or by a subscription site, might be possible. Some journals, like the NEHG Register, already have published indexes, and I know there are quite a few others with published indexes.

My opinion is that the real "hidden gems" that many people strive to find are hiding in small circulation newsletters and journals in the Allen County library. A trip there might be in order.

CVGS Research Group does Annie Moore

My local society, the Chula Vista Genealogical Society (south of San Diego, 80 members), has a monthly research group that discusses research techniques and helps attendees with their brick wall problems. It's been going about three years now, and has been instrumental in growing our society membership. We average 10 to 15 attendees each month.

We did something different today - I gave them a research problem - Annie Moore (which they had heard about, but knew no details) - providing only what we knew about her in the 1892 newspaper articles. I asked them what genealogy resources they would investigate if it was their problem.

We went around the room twice, and got some interesting responses - 16 in all. There was the obvious (federal census, city directories, birth, marriage and death records, church, newspapers, WWI draft registration for the brothers, probate, property, taxes, naturalization, cemetery) and a few others that were not as obvious (the Irish Moore family, NYC museums or historical societies, state census records, school records). The group figured out that they should research the parents and the brothers in addition to Annie herself. We did all that in about 30 minutes.

I then told them how the researchers solved the problem in about 6 weeks, and about Megan's press conference and presentation at NYGBS. I read one of the Irish Echo articles that described the research and the outcome. We passed the death, census and WWI draft documents around, in addition to Sharon Elliott's list of homes and lower Manhattan map. All in all, it was a great 30 minutes.

I gave them an A for their effort. They identified all of the important research avenues, but didn't know exactly what records were available. We discussed how many of the records were not available on the Internet.

This exercise points out the value of doing a "group-think" on thorny research problems. Somebody usually comes up with a great suggestion for the researcher to follow up on. The absolute best times in the group are when they report back on the results of their searches - and found data based on the group responses.

Does your society have this "bias-for-action" - the willingness to attack thorny research problems and to help each other? If not, you might want to consider a research group.

Have you visited Ancestorville?

While browsing through the Genealogy News, I ran across a link to Ancestorville. Sounded interesting, so I clicked on it, wondering what it was.

Ancestorville is a commercial web site selling ephemera -- but if you find one of your ancestor's ephemera, it might be well worth the look.

The web site is described as:

We sell lost family photos and antique paper ephemera items, and are dedicated to the reunion of family treasures. Our site has over 9,600 surnames and thousands of family photos, letters, ephemera, deeds, advertising trade cards, family bibles, cabinet card photographs, cdv photograph, Victorian calling cards, stereoview or stereoscopic photos, daguerreotype photographs, antique paper items and such. All related to genealogy and family history.

If this is your cup of tea, go for it!

SCGS Genealogy Writing contest

The Southern California Genealogical Society sponsors a yearly writing contest with cash awards.

They are accepting entries for the 7th Annuel (2006) contest from 1 November to 31 December. The announcement is here. The FAQ list is here on the SCGS site.

The types of articles desired are described here:

* What Kind of Articles Do You Want?
The contest is for factual articles: either family-or local-history, character sketches, or memoirs. The entries should capture a sense of a family’s experience(s), or the character of a locality, or reveal an individual’s character and personality. The best articles will help illuminate the human drama—and will also illuminate the era, and/or the historical or social context of the subject.

* What Kind of Articles Do You NOT Want?
Accounts of genealogical research procedures, “how-to articles,” advice, and/or general genealogical columns are not appropriate for this contest.

If you like to write, and can satisfy the requirements, I urge you to submit one or two entries. One of my genealogy friends, Paula-Jo Cahoon, was a winner in an earlier contest with her story of "Fany".