Sunday, June 6, 2010

Weekly Genealogy Picks

Weekly Genealogy Picks --May 30 to June 5
from genealogy blogs, newspaper articles and elsewhere

Dear Myrtle reminds us that borders change, so we need to be careful in determining where our ancestors lived.

FamilySearch indexing projects continue to grow.  You can read their latest press release at several blogs, including AnceStories, Renee's Genealogy Blog, and EOGN.  I'm not sure why the press release isn't at their own site's "Press Room," though.

Randy at Genea-Musings has been doing a series of posts on how to use the Branches genealogy software.  Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Gena Philibert Ortega at Gena's Genealogy discusses Privacy Rights and Family History. (She also recommends reading an op-ed piece by Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie's Ghosts, on which I concur.)

Brett Payne at Photo-Sleuth illustrates how he narrowed down the dates of several photographs significantly with the help of some city directories.

Elyse Doerflinger at Elyse's Genealogy Blog encourages us to efficiently use even short periods of time, and provides a list of six genealogy tasks that can be completed in under 30 minutes. 

The May issue of Shades of the Departed has also been released.  I enjoyed the article by Denise Barrett Olson on preserving important emails as our ancestors did with their letters.

Email is a popular topic this week. Lorine McGinnis Schulze at Olive Tree Genealogy writes of a difficult task facing her: identifying the source of photos she collected from family members, when the emails that had this information have been lost.  Jasia at CreativeGene follows up with her own email issues.

Dan Curtis shares some advice on writing your ancestor's biography.

The National Archive's "National Declassification Center" starts a blog. "Releasing All We Can, Protecting What We Must. The National Declassification Center (NDC) mission is to align people, processes, and technologies to advance the declassification and public release of historically valuable permanent records while maintaining national security."

The 94th Carnival of Genealogy was released, with the focus on the changing roles of women.  The 95th Carnival will be the annual "Swimsuit Edition," with a deadline of July 1st.  More info here.

In the news: A canine DNA-kit for identifying what breeds exactly are represented in your favorite mutt.

Other Weekly Lists
Amanuensis Monday: May 31st participants
We probably had a lighter participation this week due to the Memorial Day holiday.

* Sherry Stocking Kline at FamilyTreeWriter
* Lisa Wallen Logsdon at Old Stones Undeciphered
* John Newmark at TransylvanianDutch
* "anonymous" at Nolichucky Roots 
* Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings

If you participated, but don't appear on this list, please, let me know.

1 comment:

Moultrie Creek said...

John, I'm glad to see you enjoyed the email article. Email archival should be a much bigger issue than it is.