30 May 2011

Internet Genealogy: June/July 2011 Issue

The front cover feature article in the new issue of Internet Genealogy magazine, "Google's Archives: news you can use" appears just after Google announces they will make no new additions to their newspaper archive site. Fortunately, Google is not taking away the current facility so Lisa Alzo's article remains useful, especially the section on "five ways to find your ancestors" which is more generally applicable than just to the Google news archives.

Other major articles in this issue are:
Family History Centers: Visited One Lately?
The New Look of FamilySearch
Top Websites for Irish Research
Don't Just Sit There: Volunteer!
Civil Registration Records in Eastern Europe
Write On! Writing Your Family History
Family Tree Maker for Mac: Research Ready
Historic Pittsburg Research Resources
How Safe is Your Genealogy Data?
Get Involved with the WikiTree!
The item on volunteering caught my eye. How to get volunteers is one of the perennial items discussed in genealogy circles. Just last Saturday, Thomas McEntee's broadcast for the Federation of Genealogical Societies which had the theme Genealogy Society Marketing, archived here, saw interest expressed in the chat accompanying the session on how to recruit and keep volunteers. Prompted by others in the chat he made some good points including taking people up promptly on their offer to volunteer.

The Internet Genealogy item focused on volunteering for online indexing projects through FamilySearch. It makes the point of how easy it is to be volunteer, how flexible the system is, and a sense of satisfaction you can get out of contributing in this way. you can get started by clicking the "Get Started" button at the LDS website at http://indexing.familysearch.org

2 comments:

DWP said...

The cover's article title "Top Websites for Irish Research" is highly misleading,- no such claim of "TOP Websites" is made or implied in the text of the article. The article contains descriptions and links of 45 free and subsciption/pay-per-view websites. They can't all be "Top"!

However, the article is useful, but the reader will have to experiment and or seek other sources or advice about which sites are likely to meet the reader's needs.

DWP said...

In the article "Family History Centers: Visited One Lately?" I do not see any mention of the free premium websites available at many Family History Centers through the Family History Center Portal. For a list of these websites with a brief description of each see:
https://help.familysearch.org/publishing/699/106761_f.SAL_Public.html

The use of the FHC Portal was the subject of a presentation at the recent "Voices from the Past" at the Ottawa Family History Center under the title "LDS Family History Services Online Portal" by Richard Hodgson. I have not been able to find a copy of his presentation or his slides online.

It appears from some Internet surfing that the list of sites available through the portal at various FHCs is not a constant. Users should visit the FHC they use for details.