Where Do You Go for Education and Help?

-
We may not be able to attend educational meetings for weeks or months because of the increasing number of new corona virus infections in King County and the state of Washington. So we need to find other ways to grow our skills and stay in touch with one another.

 Some of us learn best visually, some want to listen, and some to read. All of us learn by doing! It's important to take new information and put it to work, and choose what works for you. If you have not tried Twitter as a source of genealogy news and resources, give it a whirl. You need not have an account to search for "genealogy" for instance. 

Webinars/video, podcasts, blogs, genealogy groups, and forums educate, inform, and entertain.

Webinars

Webinars feature some of the best speakers available discussing your genealogy and family history interests. 

Top of your list right now should be RootsTech free sessions: https://www.rootstech.org/video-archive. Some 2019 videos are still available and useful, and the new ones are tremendous and fresh.

 Legacy Family Tree Webinars provides a variety of subjects and speakers. One webinar is free every week; the rest require a membership which sometimes go on sale. See GenealogyBargains.com for instance. A membership also allows you to download the syllabus in advance. 
genealogybargains.com

YouTube offers a plethora of genealogy education and family history entertainment too, free. Subscribe to your favorite channels, like Family History Fanatics, or The Barefoot Genealogist.


Podcasts

When you have a walk or drive planned, or while doing quiet work such as house cleaning, gardening or needlework, listen to a podcast! Barbara has a great blog post about the best: https://skcgs.blogspot.com/2018/11/have-you-listened-to-podcast.html


Blogs

Blogs supply extremely high-quality information. Like this blog, you can subscribe to those you like. Always good:

Genealogy Groups

Genealogy mailing lists have been an invaluable resource; most hosted at Rootsweb like our own list. That service has ended, but all of the list archives are still hosted at Rootsweb, searchable. In my opinion, the archives are half the value of mail lists. 
SKCGS group - find more groups on the blue bar at top

We moved our list to Groups.io; some have gone elsewhere. Many of them are linked from the Rootsweb archives. These new groups are often very lively, so joining and sending information, queries and questions are rewarding. 

 Facebook has many genealogy and family history groups, some very specialized.

Forums

Ancestry hosts a multitude of message boards for surnames, localities and topics. Posting a well-crafted query can pay off with answers for many years. 


Genforum is not as busy as it used to be, but the search can be useful, and commenting is allowed. Loads of great information.

Login to Groups.io to use as a forum

Groups.io can be used as a forum, if you prefer that, as depicted above.

 https://community.familysearch.org/ are often overlooked. If much of your work is in FamilySearch, use these forums.


r/genealogy

You may never have visited Reddit, "the front page of the Internet," for genealogy, but it is very interesting. Also new is Stackexchange Genealogy & Family History. 


As you can see, there are lots of ways to continue your genealogy education and to communicate with your fellow researchers. Please tell us in the comments below what we've missed!


Valorie Cowan Zimmerman

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking for a Needle in a Haystack? GAME CHANGER at FamilySearch

-
Image
Generated with Bing ImageCreator (AI), March 13, 2024 Where is YOUR Needle, Your Missing Record? Genealogical Proof Standard When we use the GPS (Genealogical Proof Standard) as our guide, we all know that "exhaustive research" can be both tedious and exhausting. Is life long enough to search page by page through all the counties where all the members of a family might have lived, paid taxes, bought, leased or sold property, made a will or died intestate? It is possible that the new Full Text Search at FamilySearch will  eventually  allow us to do just that. It has been estimated that 75% or more of the records at FamilySearch were browsable but not searchable; the only indexes those found in the records themselves. Those records are certainly attainable by using those indexes and browsing to the record of interest, but the process is tedious, often frustrating, and slow. And once found, the record must be read and transcribed to be useful. This new Full Text Search tackles a...
Read more

What's the Question?

-
Image
We genealogists are often told by experienced researchers how important it is to begin with a research question. I resisted doing this for a long time, but now that I use a series of questions to guide my research, the search is more focused and actually finds more of the history of the family I'm investigating. I use a Google Doc as the  research proceeds, where I keep the question(s), the plan, timelines, checklist of resources to search, etc. all in one place. I've seen others use spreadsheets in the same way, perhaps splitting up things in tabs (Excel or Google Sheets). I prefer a document because I add source citations as I find them and I can begin writing up the case right there in the doc as the hypotheses are proven. Specific Questions in Previous Successes As beginners we often have no clue how much and what details we already know about a person, event or relationship, so it's hard to specify what we want to know. But when looking back at successful research, it ...
Read more

Help Save This Abused and Neglected Cemetery

-
Image
Screen capture from Google Maps History In an exchange of emails this past week in both the main SKCGS group, and in the Washington-State-Genealogy group, many facts were revealed about the history of the I.O.O.F. Comet Lodge Cemetery, also known as the Old Burying Ground, the Georgetown Cemetery, the Graham Street Burying Ground and maybe more.  FindAGrave sums it up this way: "Since it was established in 1881, the Comet Lodge cemetery site has been whittled away to less than half its original 5 acres. Records are sketchy but it's safe to say that some 500 pioneers were buried here, atop unknown numbers of native Duwamish people. New burials ended in the 1930s. Since then, homes and streets were built on top of many of the plots as the neighborhood around the cemetery grew.  "Upkeep and ownership of the cemetery bounced between the city, civic groups, relatives of Comet Lodge residents, and nearby neighbors. For years, much of the property was allowed to deteriorate int...
Read more