RootsTech 2012: Day two highlights
It was another exciting day at RootsTech. The MyHeritage booth was very busy all day, as the team told those who stopped by how MyHeritage and World Vital Records can help advance their research. Visitors were a mix of those new to MyHeritage, along with those who were already members.
Schelly, Steve Morse and Mark
A large audience heard Dave Barney of Google present the many uses of Google for genealogy. He demonstrated various features, ranging from Google Maps and how to pinpoint your ancestors on a street level view map and how to zoom in to their historic homes, churches and more to show your family’s living history. He shared a photo of the Swedish church – still standing - where his ancestors were married more than two centuries ago. The building was shown in Google street view.
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WDYTYA: An interview with Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Kudrow in the episode on her own family (Season 1, Episode 3)
Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of the US version of “Who Do You Think You Are?” was the guest for a group phone interview on Friday, January 27.
I was honored to participate in the call which focused on the show’s new season, which begins at 8pm, Friday, February 3, on NBC.
This year"s celebs are Martin Sheen, Marisa Tomei, Blair Underwood, Reba McEntire, Rob Lowe, Helen Hunt, Rita Wilson, Edie Falco, Rashida Jones, Jerome Bettis, Jason Sudeikis and Paula Deen.
Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, my own questions could not be answered. However, the others asked some great questions, and Lisa responded in kind (see below).
Other geneabloggers on the call were Thomas MacEntee, Lisa Louise Cooke, Angela Walton-Raji, Kathryn Lake Hogan and Diane Haddad, along with newspaper and entertainment industry magazine writers.
Here are some questions and Lisa’s responses.
Q: What advice do you have for people who become frustrated or stuck in their research?
Lisa: There doesn’t have to ever be an end. That's what makes it such a great hobby. I think there's always research you can do on different branches, different cousins and you go back. And then it's not just names and dates. Then you start looking at where they were living, what was happening there at that time, you start looking at historical documents. And you can maybe draw some conclusions or guesses about what was motivating some of their choices in life.
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Poll: Have you discovered an ancestral home?
Census records are a fantastic tool.
However, the details in the records leave much to the imagination. That is - of course - until you investigate the address listed on the census entry.
It's the part of the puzzle that brings context to the lives of our ancestors. The type of house, the bedroom-to-inhabitant ratio, the local area and surrounding industry - these are all fascinating elements that help us visualise our ancestors' lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit a not-too-distant home that was shared among a few generations on my maternal side. Lavish, it wasn't; however, the insight into their lifestyle was a humbling experience.
Let us know in the poll below if you've visited any ancestral homes. Alternatively, please leave a comment below.
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One blogger’s story: Denielle Radcliff Koch
There are more than 2,000 genealogy blogs – known as geneablogs - in cyberspace, and more appear every day.
While some focus on a researcher’s own family, or specialize in a certain country, town or ethnicity, others provide assistance to researchers via tips and tricks of the trade.
Blogger Denielle Radcliff Koch, 29, of North Carolina, fits into several categories with two working blogs and another in planning.
Her mother always told stories about her family. In her teens, Denielle dabbled in genealogy by just talking to relatives. She began seriously researching when her great-grandmother passed away soon after her daughter’s birth.
“Once I got going, I was hooked.”
When she first began researching, her daughter was a colicky baby and Denielle and her husband were on a very tight budget. She couldn’t afford to pay for genealogy website subscriptions. Library visits with the baby weren’t in the cards, either.
“So I started searching the internet to see what I could find for free. I was surprised to find that there’s actually a lot of stuff out there. “
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RootsTech 2012: MyHeritage is on its way!
While genealogy conferences bring together genealogists for learning, sharing, collaborating, RootsTech - February 2-4, in Salt Lake City, Utah - brings together technology developers and genealogy consumers.
It is a great opportunity for technologists and genealogists (of all skill levels) to share ideas, learn from each other and find solutions to family history challenges.
Genealogists and family historians learn firsthand about exciting new technologies and tools to improve their research experience, while developers learn skills to deliver new applications and systems. The program offers many choices; see it here.
MyHeritage.com will be there in force at our display booth 514. Our RootsTech contingent includes:
MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet. He will speak at 1.30pm, on Thursday, February 2 and demonstrate new technology to be unveiled for the first time. Family history fans worldwide will be delighted with this presentation. To learn more, you’ll have to be there!
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What’s your best piece of genealogy advice?
Have a think about your best genealogy advice...
We all remember our first forays into the world of family research.
"Where do I look?", "How do I physically record the information?" and "What on earth is a GEDCOM file?" are just a few of the many questions that went through my mind when starting out.
Now, if somebody who had "been there and done that" could have provided some advice about the importance of citing sources or, indeed, the art of deciphering census handwriting, my research would have been significantly more efficient!
Over the next three days, we're going to be asking our learned community to share advice for budding or even experienced genealogists. Continue reading "What’s your best piece of genealogy advice?" »
Resolutions: Yes or No?
It’s almost New Year's Eve 2012. Do you know where your resolutions are?
Will it help us - as family historians and genealogists - if we make these lists?
The answer is yes, according to a Wake Forest University study, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,by Assistant Professor E.J. Masicampo, who found that committing to a plan to accomplish a goal makes it more likely to be achieved, and allows you to think about other things.
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Genealogy News: North America, 27 December 2011
For the last-of-2011 edition of the North American Genealogy News, here are some interesting items.
Included are the US Securities Exchange Commission’s definition of a family member (who would have thought the SEC was interested in family history?), the 2011 list of the 100 most popular boys’ and girls’ names, a Canadian “living” village, changes to the Social Security Death Index and more.
Defining the family
For those who think that governments are not interested in genealogy, note that the US Securities Exchange Commission has now defined family members, in connection with a new rule requiring hedge funds to register with the SEC if they manage other people’s money.
Read the definition here:
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Genealogy News – North America – 20 November 2011
Today’s edition includes map resources (including Google Earth), genealogy classes covering diverse topics, information on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a Maryland newspaper digitization project, easing adoptees’ efforts to obtain their original birth certificates, and the start date for the new US season of "Who Do You Think You Are?".
ON THE MAP
The New England Historical and Genealogical Society provided more major map collection resources:
- The Boston Atlas
- The Harvard Map Collection
- The Yale Map Collection
- Historic USGS maps of New England and New York on the University of New Hampshire Library website
- New York Public Library Digital Gallery maps
- David Rumsey Map Collection
- Library of Congress Map Collections
- Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas
- Historic Atlas of Canada Online Learning Project
- Historic Cities
GOOGLE EARTH CAN HELP YOU
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New Zealand: National Library’s Digital Archives Project
As our readers know, one of my favorite blogs is The Signal, the digital preservation blog of the US Library of Congress.
A recent post, written by Mike Ashenfelder, spotlighted the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) and how it is making its digital cultural collections available to anyone with an Internet connection.
Over recent years , the NLNZ has moved towards aggregating its online collections and high-tech resources under an initiative called the National Digital Heritage Archive. On the front end, the NDHA built their own web tools and designed clean interfaces to make the user’s experience easy. And on the back end they partnered with Ex Libris and Sun (now part of Oracle) to develop an OAIS compliant repository.
One of the ways they've done this is through mandated legal deposit. This means that publishers are required to submit their publications to the library.
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