GeneaBabble

Sorry about the recent lack of updates!  Life has a way of smacking you upside the head sometimes.  I’ve been working on some short articles on the use of land surveying in genealogy and I hope to post them soon.

Anyway, here’s a short clip about the goings on at the Family History Library:

Under the Records Access program, unveiled this week at a conference of genealogists in Richmond, Va., the collaboration will provide free services to archives and other records custodians who wish to digitize, index, publish and preserve their collections.
Here’s how it works: An army of volunteers will continue to index data from 2.4 million rolls of microfilm being housed at the LDS Church’s Granite Mountain Records Vault, as well as digitize and index data from other sources. They will collect information already indexed at other sites. Then the records will be posted on the church’s Web site, FamilySearch.org, and opened to the public.  [Read more]

Sounds like some very cool stuff going on.  Remember to thank all the volunteers that give their time so that we can discover and help others discover our family history.

I just found an article about genealogy blogs.  GeneaBabble wasn’t mentioned, of course, but some of my favorites were.  I’m surprised that The Genealogue wasn’t included, though.  That blog is simply scrumptious!

That reminds me… am I the only one that hates the word blog and anything related to it?  I use it because everyone knows what it is and there’s no reason to use another term, but for some reason the word just bothers me.  I also can’t stand the word “enjoy.”  Or “meal.”  Yeah.. don’t tell me, “Enjoy your meal!”  Ugh…

Sorry about the lack of updates recently! Busy, busy, busy!

I ran across a site called WeRelate.org. WeRelate is sponsored by the Foundation for On-Line Genealogy, Inc. in partnership with the Allen County Public Library. WeRelate uses the same model as Wikipedia to organize and maintain information.

The project looks promising and I encourage you to check it out and help expand it. There is a brief tutorial video on the site to help you get started.

Just got this in my e-mail:

We told you it was coming up, and now it’s here. Starting right now, you can search all of our records absolutely FREE. Enjoy full, unlimited access for the next 3 days. It’s our way of saying Happy Holidays and helping you connect with family during the season.

So, I went to Ancestry and it had me give them my e-mail address because this offer is separate from your regular account. Then it wanted me to annoy my friends with the offer, but I skipped that part. The only parts of Ancestry I don’t have access to is (ironically) the map images and stuff like that. I have enough maps to keep me busy. Anyway, after signing up I was able to access them.

What’s the catch? I’m not sure yet, but I guarantee they’ll annoy the heck out of me for the foreseeable future.

I’m not going to do a full review of MapYourAncestors.com because there’s already a good one at StudentsOfDescent. I just wanted to point out that finding out how to register on this site is completely mystifying. In fact, I couldn’t figure it out until I read the post at StudentsOfDescent!

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing a program to link GEDCOM files and Google Earth and MapYourAncestors seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s a bit confusing and feature-poor.

So, I’ll make it easy for you. You can register here. You’re welcome.