National Genealogical Society

NGS Conference Richmond Virginia – Day 2 #NGS2014gen

It was another busy but fun day. I started by attending Lisa Alzo’s lecture “Family History Writing Made Easier: Cloud-Based Tools Every Genealogist Can Use” and as usual she was terrific. Lisa provided so many new tools to help with writing your family history it may take a while to try them all out. It was a full class for eight in the morning.

After a short break it was a lecture by Nathan W. Murphy, AG of FamilySearch. His lecture was “FamilySearch Wiki Guide to English Research” and it was very informative. A little good luck for me is the fact that there are a lot of parish records for Lancashire where my ancestors can be found. You will also find a link to the England Jurisdictions 1851 map through the county pages and it is a very useful tool.

The last lecture of the morning was Stephani Evans, CG who presented “Oh, the Things you Can Map: Mapping Data, Memory, and Historical Content.” She provided many different kinds of maps to help with your research and warned us to make sure we knew the reason the map was created. This reason can skew a map in many different directions.

Next it was time for lunch. I attended the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Luncheon. The speaker was Naomi Joshi and her topic was “How to Assemble a Weighty Tome and Survive the Experience.” Naomi had the audience in stitches with her presentation. She was so funny with all the things that happened while creating the new New York State research book and gazetteer. It is due out some time this year and will be a weighty 600 pages long. Sounds like it will be a must add to your genealogical library if you do research in New York State.

After lunch there was a little time to wander the marketplace. I still have a few more exhibitors to visit that I noted in the NGS app.

The first afternoon lecture was “The Memory Ninja: Using Pinterest to Engage Your Family in Memory Collection” by Cheri J. Daniels, MSLS. I have wondered about Pinterest for a while and now I think I may give it a try.

The last lecture of the day for me was Paul Milner’s “Scottish Maps and Tools for Finding the Right Place.” This was a very useful lecture about where to find and how to read Scottish maps. Paul had a little technical difficulty at the beginning but he got things going again quickly and never missed a beat.

Tomorrow is another busy day and I have another full day of lectures. There is one problem – I have a couple of times that I have more than one lecture I want to attend. I guess I will have to choose and get recordings of the others. Thank goodness there is that option.

NGS Conference Richmond Virginia – Day 1 – #NGS2014gen

1 Comment / By Ruth Blair

Well the first day of the National Genealogical Conference in Richmond Virginia is drawing to a close. It has been a very busy day. It actually started on Tuesday night with a Bloggers Dinner hosted by FamilySearch. I will write about that in another blog post. After dinner was the Dessert Social with the Association of Professional Genealogists. Both events were a time to meet up with old friends and meet some new ones. I have noticed there are a lot of first timers at this conference which is great news.

This morning was a very early start as I had to catch the 6:30 shuttle to the convention centre for the Findmypast Breakfast. I will write about this in another post. After that it was the Opening Session where NGS presented several awards and the speaker was Sandra Gioia Treadway who is the Librarian of Virginia and State Archivist. Her topic was “The Evolving Library: Planning and Adapting to Meet the Needs of Twenty-first Century Researchers.” She talked about how the library and archives building was new in 1997 but now it does not fit the needs of present day researchers because technology has changed so quickly. They are planning to renovate and have a new library and archives in 2021.

The Exhibit Hall opened after the Opening Session and it was jam packed with people, and continued to be throughout most of the day. I did manage to visit a fair number of the Exhibitors I had highlighted in my NGS app. Still have a few more to visit and a few to revisit to find out more about their products.

The luncheon I chose to attend today was the Virginia Genealogical Society Luncheon. The speaker was Conley L. Edwards who retired as Librarian of Virginia and State Archivist in 2009. He shared stories of the many genealogists and researchers he saw come through the doors of the library and archives.

My first lecture after lunch was “Why Can’t I Find It in the ILS (Library Catalog)? Techniques Used by Librarians” presented by Patricia Moseley Van Skaik. It was very interesting and I learned a few more tricks to using the library catalogs.

The last lecture of the day was “Mining the Destination Data” by David E. Rencher and as per usual he did not disappoint. It was informative and humorous. How to take the exhaustive search and use it to help get your ancestors back to the old country.

My first lecture is 8 am tomorrow morning and it is another full day.