Who Do You Think You Are Stars Announced For 2011

NBC has announced that Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Cattrall, Lionel Richie, Rosie O'Donnell, Steve Buscemi, Tim McGraw and Vanessa Williams will be featured in the 2011 season of Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA). In case you missed the 2010 inaugural season, each week a celebrity is featured. The person goes on a journey back in time as his or her family history is discovered. More information can be found at NBC News.


The second season will begin airing on Friday, February 4th at 8:00 PM (7:00 PM Central). To review the shows from season one go to the show's website. Much of the research for the stories of the stars is provided by principal corporate sponsor Ancestry.com. As many of you know, family histories are not uncovered as easily as it may seem on TV. Ancestry has estimated that that each episode in the 2010 season required from 400 to 700 hours of researcher time. 

Google Your Family Tree

Google Your Family Tree is an award wining book by Daniel Lynch. Before I read the book I thought I knew a lot about searching Google but I found out I still had much to learn. I now have a searching exercise that I use in my Genealogy Research class that is based on some of the tips Lynch gives in the book.  


Thanks to Martha Graham I just discovered a website that introduces researchers to some of the power searching techniques of this book. Check it out and see if the site does live up to the subtitle: Unlock the Hidden Power of Google for Family History Research.
  

Ancestorville

Cousin Candy Hill passed along information about a site that was new to me. It is called Ancestorville and its "town historian" Debra Clifford describes it as "a town with over 4,000 lost family photos, antique paper, and identified genealogy antiques for sale. There are 13,386 surnames" in the town.


Candy reports that she has been able to find two pictures from her mom's line on this site and encourages anyone looking for family pictures to check it out. 

Footnote.com offers 7 Day Free Access

If you have been wondering whether or not Footnote.com would be useful in your family history research, this may be an offer you would find useful. Of course these free offers are not always free. If you really don't want a full subscription, you must make sure you cancel it within the "free" period.

As you may know Footnote.com was recently acquired by Ancestry.com. For now it appears these two data rich sites will continue to operate as separate subscriptions. Footnote's strength is its association with the treasure trove of historical documents held by the US National Archives. Currently featured are Revolutionary War items which include pension records, war rolls, service records and papers of the Continental Congress.


Lots of people do not realize that fee-based services like Ancestry and Footnote offer some of their resources free as a way to attract potential customers. See my post of March 26th about free areas of Ancestry. Footnote also has portions of its database which are also accessible even if one does not have a paid subscription.


If you decide to pursue this 7 day free trial, visit this link http://www.footnote.com/freetrial/.

Genealogy Happens in San Diego

Librarians seeking genealogy reference skills or those hoping to aid their personal family history research can now register for “Genealogy Happens! At the Genealogy Reference Desk,” a 2011 Midwinter institute offered by the American Library Association genealogy experts, the History Section of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA).

This full-day event, sponsored by ProQuest, is a not-to-be-missed learning experience for reference librarians of all levels of expertise, with coverage of both basic genealogy reference skills and more detailed topics, including social networking for genealogists and military research. Speakers include “Genealogy Guy” Drew Smith; David Rencher, director of the Libraries Division of the Family History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Ron Arons, author of “WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records”; and Curt Witcher, manager, Historical Genealogy Department, Allen County Public Library. ProQuest provides lunch for all event attendees.

The event will be held 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 7, 2011, at the Valencia Park/Malcolm X Branch of the San Diego Library, 5148 Market Street, San Diego. Interested participants can register for this event only (event code RUS1) or can register in conjunction with Annual Conference registration by adding it as a ticketed event. For institute-only registration using the online form, select “SO-Institute and Ticketed Events Only” as the registration type and proceed to select this event from the list. 

Lunch is included in the registration fee. Registration will be available online until Sunday, Jan. 3 2011. All interested participants must register by this date—no seats will be available at the door on the day of the event. More information about the Midwinter Meeting is available at www.ala.org/midwinter

National Genealogical Society Preconference

SPECIAL PRE-CONFERENCE EVENT, TUESDAY, 10 MAY 2011 Librarians’ Day

NGS’s special pre-conference program for librarians, sponsored by ProQuest, will be held Tuesday, 10 May, 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m., at the Charleston County Public Library, 68 Calhoun Street, Charleston. Librarians who work with family history patrons are encouraged to attend this outstanding program.

“How Did that Yankee Get in the Family?”—Michael Hall is a BYU graduate who has worked for FamilySearch for more than twenty years. He is currently strategic relations manager working with libraries and genealogical societies worldwide.

“Putting All Your Library Resources to Use”—George Morgan, president of Aha! Seminars, Inc., a training company providing continuing education for libraries and library consortia.

“Solving African American Brick Walls”—Toni Carrier, founding director of University of South Florida, Africana Heritage Project.

“Social Networking”—Drew Smith, academic librarian with the University of South Florida, Tampa.

ProQuest will provide lunch for registered attendees and will be available to answer questions about their
products. The program will conclude with a tour of the Charleston County Public Library. For more
information visit http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/librariansday

Registration is free to those working in libraries serving genealogists. If you can make it of Charleston, consider attending the entire conference. At the very least, visit the many vendors who will be exhibiting there. Entrance to the Exhibit Hall is free to everyone.

Dr D added to Geneabloggers.com

I found a nice surprise as a comment to my post of December 3rd concerning my computer crash. Some of you may not have noticed that there are occasionally comments posted to my posts on this blog. I welcome such comments whether they add to or correct what I have said, Either way I'll probably learn something new. The full comments don't appear automatically but an unobtrusive link does appear below the post. There have actually been three comments added to that particular post. Thank you to all who commented.

One of the comments was from Tom MacEntee. If you like reading my blog, check out the links to which Tom refers below, There is a search box on his site which now searches this blog and the almost 1,500 other ones he has listed on his blog of genealogical blogs. Thank you Tom for including Dr D Digs Up Ancestors on your list.

geneabloggers said...

Hello there!


You’ve got a great genealogy blog and we’ve added it to the list of over 1,400 genealogy blogs at GeneaBloggers (http://www.geneabloggers.com).


We will announce your blog in our weekly New Genealogy Blogs on Saturday, December 4, 2010. In the meantime, please visit the About (http://www.geneabloggers.com/about/) section at GeneaBloggers to learn how you can display your GeneaBloggers badge on your blog and also how you can participate in activities such as the Daily Blogging Themes.


If you need technical assistance, please check out Bootcamp for GeneaBloggers (http://fbbootcamp.blogspot.com).


Cheers


Thomas MacEntee

December 3, 2010 9:34 AM 

DNA Holiday Sale from Family Tree DNA

Family Tree DNA has announced the pricing for their annual holiday sale for those who have not previously tested. Below is their message. For more details visit the FTDNA.com site. Actually. these prices only seem to be available for those who join as part of a surname project:

Seasons Greetings! It's time once again for Family Tree DNA's annual end-of-year promotion. Starting tonight, and until December 31st, we will reduce the price of our YDNA37, YDNA67, mtDNAPlus, and Family Finder tests. Price for NEW KITS: Regular Price Promotional Price YDNA37                      $149                   $119 YDNA67                      $239                   $199 mtDNAPlus                 $159                   $129 Family Finder             $289                   $249 Price for UPGRADE:   Family Finder             $289                   $229 Orders must be in and paid for by Dec. 31, 2010, to receive this offer. IMPORTANT: since this promotion will run through the month of December, we encourage you to spread the word starting now, as the natural tendency is for people to order at the last minute, and we will not extend it beyond 12/31/2010. We thank you for your continued support and look forward to the sustained growth of the Family Tree DNA matching database.

Recovering from computer crash

My laptop computer crashed yesterday. This post is being written on my wife's laptop. We had concluded several years ago that there was a reason for the term "personal computing" and that a second computer was cheaper than a divorce.

We are back in California and will be home later today after a four week road trip to visit family back east. That is good because it will allow me to get back on my desktop computer while we decide if my laptop can be salvaged. That part of the timing of this crash is the good news. In some other respects, it couldn't come at a worse time. I am entering the last two weeks of my online course that I teach each fall in Ethics in the Information Age. Also, the draft of my next book, A Crash Course in Genealogy, is due to my editor at the end of the month.

My problems may be mitigated because of an action I took shortly before we left on our trip. I subscribed to Dropbox. I did this primarily for the ease with which I can synchronize the files on my desktop and laptop computers. In retrospect, it may have saved much of the data on my laptop in case we are not able to rescue that data. Most of my genealogy files, class files and book draft, photos and supporting documents are included in directories that I sync through Dropbox.

Dropbox offers 2GB of free online storage. Fortunately for me, I chose to upgrade to a paid for version that allows me 50GB of storage. The way this works is that linking software is downloaded to each computer from which you wish to access your online files. Then you drag the files you wish to store online into the Dropbox directory on that computer. If the computer is online to the Internet, the files are uploaded to your online Dropbox. If you have another computer, in my case my laptop, you need to install the program on it as well.

Before we left home I went online with my laptop and allowed it to sync all the files that I had uploaded from my desktop. Hopefully, all changes I made to these files or new documents I created in these directories in the last month were uploaded from my laptop as I made them. When I get home later today, I should be able to boot my desktop computer and it will download my latest version on these files from my online Dropbox. If this works as expected, what could have been a major data disaster will only be an inconvenience.

Free Online RootsMagic Classes

The RootsMagic Newsletter for December which was distributed today has two articles that may be of interest. The Holiday offer of the full version on RootsMagic software, first reported on this blog on November 2nd, is being extended until December 31. For $20 plus shipping, you can acquire the complete version of the software AND the manual. This bundle normally is sold for about twice that price. I have already ordered one as a gift.

Also free online classes are going to be offered. The newsletter reports:

"Throughout the year we travel to various cities teaching RootsMagic classes.  We are always asked when we will be visiting different areas of the country (or world).  The simple answer is that we just haven't gotten the cloning process down well enough to do that yet."

"So in January we're doing the next best thing.  We are going to start offering free online RootsMagic classes.  You will be able to sit at your computer and watch as we present classes on everything from getting started with RootsMagic to advanced features like creating custom reports, and everything in between.  We'll also be able to answer questions from attendees."

"Each class will be limited to the first 1000 people to sign up, but if you miss out or can't make it, don't worry because we will record the class for you to download and watch later."

"So keep an eye out for the January newsletter where we will provide all the details on how to sign up for these free classes."