Ruth’s Recommendations

Here are my favourite blog posts from the week of September 5th.

I was at the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in Springfield Illinois last week and I got to meet some bloggers. Randy Seaver kindly agreed to let me interview him and he mentioned it in his post called “Day 3 (Friday) at the FGS Conference).”

Randy did another post that listed all the bloggers who were writing about the FGS conference called “Best of the Genea-Blogs – FGS Edition.”

Deborah Large Fox had a post entitled “Be the String” where she talks about the story a Rabbi told at the funeral of her father-in-law and how it relates to family history. Welcome to Canada Deborah.

The Ancestry Insider had an interesting post entitled “The Insider Uncovers Secret Ancestry.com Program.” They look at how Ancestry.com is helping genealogy societies to digitize and index their material with the Ancestry.com Content Publisher. This deserves a closer look.

Are there any postings in the last week that you think need to be on this list? Let me know in the comments below.

©2011 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

Here are my favourite blog posts from this past week.

The FamilySearch Tech Tips Blog had a post entitled “Understanding Maps.” This is a very useful post that looks at map terminology and using maps as finding aids. Every genealogist knows the how important understanding maps are to their research.

Greta’s Genealogy Blog had a post called “Things I Don’t Care About in Genealogy.” Greta lists ten things that she does not care about in genealogy such as family crests and having an Indian princess in her family tree.

The Enniskerry Local History Blog has a mystery to solve. They describe that mystery in their post called “Mystery Stone at Powerscourt.”

The FGS Conference News Blog had a posting entitled “My conference challenges to you” where they list nine challenges for everyone attending the conference. Some people attend a conference by just going to lectures. FGS are challenging you to meet new people and find new inspiration in a number of places.

Tech Tips had another post called “Restoring the Details on Damaged Photographs.” This is the final entry in a five part series on restoring photographs digitally.

Amy Coffin of The We Tree Genealogy Blog has a post entitled “If Genealogist Were In the Tabloids.” This is an entertaining look at what tabloids would talk about if genealogists were considered celebrities.

Are there any postings in the last week that you think need to be on this list? Let me know in the comments below.

©2011 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

Here are my favourite blog posts from this past week.

GeneaPopPop at Stardust ‘n’ Roots wrote a post this week called “Sears Catalogue of Genealogists” where he takes a humourous look at some of the different models of genealogists. Which one are you? Or can you choose just one?

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings had a post entitled “How do I catch up to 13 years of genealogy sloth?” He returns to a spreadsheet he created in 1998 and had added handwritten notes to the print out. He did not have the electronic file on his computer but he kept backups elsewhere and was able to find it and open the file. Now he has thirteen years to add to this document before he leaves on a research trip. The moral of his story “get better organized.”

The Ancestry Insider has a post called “Beyond the Walls of Your FHC.” They refer to a session given by Art Johnson at the 2011 BYU Family History Conference. It looks at the different places you can find the Family Search community.

Greta’s Genealogy Blog had a posting called “What I Learned Wednesday: Sometimes You Just Need to Clean House” where she describes how she spent the last week really doing a good clear out and cleaning. I always find clearing out the clutter to be a very freeing process and it seems Greta did as well. One big perk is all the extra free space you now have in the house.

Brenda Dougall Merriman had a post this week called “The GREAT BIG FAT WORLD TREE.” I am not going to describe the post here this is one you need to read for yourself.

Randy Seaver’s post called “Serendipity strikes again…and genealogy fun ensues” reminds us of how taking a little time out to just play and have fun while researching online can result in success.

Kerry Scott of Clue Wagon had a posting entitled “What To Do With a 547-Page Probate File.” She talks about finding an extremely large probate file and the frustrations of being able to get access to it in the Court House. She then looks at the problems of copying it and how inspiration can come in an instant. She will certainly have fun going through this file in the years to come. Congratulations on the new job Kerry!

Are there any postings in the last week that you think need to be on this list? Let me know in the comments below.

©2011 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved