RootsTech Classes To Be Streamed Live

RootsTech has grown to be the largest genealogy conference in the United States in just three years. It is being held in the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 6, 7, and 8 this year. They will be streaming 15 of the conference sessions and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate bloggers like James Tanner from Mesa Arizona that shares the information on his blog before the ink is dry on the original press release!  If you haven't ever read him, you should.  He'll amaze and entertain you.

You can find James at http://genealogysstar.blogspot.com  Here is what he has listed as the session chosen to be in the spotlight this year.

"Free Online Broadcast Schedule for RootsTech 2014 Announced Thursday, February 6 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family from My Couch by Tammy Hepps 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., FamilySearch Family Tree: What's New and What's Next by Ron Tanner 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Intro to DNA for Genealogists by James Rader 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Genealogy in the Cloud by Randy Hoffman 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Sharing Your Family with Multimedia by Michael LeClerc Friday, February 7 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Storytelling Super Powers: How to Come Off as Your Family's Genealogy Hero by David Adelman 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Tweets, Links, Pins, and Posts: Break Down Genealogical Brick Walls with Social Media by Lisa Alzo 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.comby Crista Cowen 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Finding Family and Ancestors Outside the USA with New Technologies by Daniel Horowitz 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Do It Yourself Photo Restoration by Ancestry Insider Saturday, February 8 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Become an iPad Power User by Lisa Louise Cooke 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., Information Overload: Managing Online Searches and Their Results by Josh Taylor 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., A Beginner’s Guide to Going Paperless by Randy Whited 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., How to Interview Yourself for a Personal History by Tom Taylor 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Five Ways to Do Genealogy in Your Sleep by Deborah Gamble" Interested viewers can watch the live presentations at RootsTech.org.  Remember it is Mountain Standard Time for the live streaming. I have the good fortune to be able to attend this conference so will not be doing any staff training next week.  But I'll be back with hopefully some great new things to share with all of you.  I am particularly interested in hearing Ron Tanner the Chief Developer for Family Search Family Tree on Thursday 1:00-2:00 pm (MT Standard Time Zone!) from the line up of classes to be streamed.  I feel I have fallen a little behind on keeping up with this team so plan to refocus on that while there and a bunch of other fun topics.   I also want to hear Lisa Louise Cooke speak on becoming an iPad Power User as I just bought her book on this subject.  And then there is Michael Le Cleric the guy who does Genealogy Tip of the Day, and the Ancestry Insider, and Crista Cowan of ancestry.com and Josh Taylor of Who Do You Think You Are!  The list goes on and on!   Wish you were all coming with me!  All the great bloggers are going to be speaking and it is going to be fun.  One of the Keynote speakers is the Pioneer Woman, also a famous blogger in her own right although not about genealogy as far as I know.  Family History on the other hand, is something she is creating and preserving it daily on her ranch and in her kitchen and with her family!  I saw the movie  The Book Thief tonight and one of the quotes that struck a cord with me was "Life is Words."    I couldn't agree more.  Live it and then write it!  The movie was simply beautiful and very poignant if you haven't seen it....Do! I always try to add a tree or two on the posts, in honor of our family trees, so I am adding this one this week.  I hope I don't see anything like this in Utah, unless it is sunny and about 50 degrees and an after-the-fact storm, at the time I view it.  Snow is lovely to look at but I don't like to touch it....or drive, fly or walk in it.  From the picture window with a rip-roaring fire behind you and no place to go, it is as pretty as can be.  Jim is staying home so he'll see you this coming week and I'll be back the week after.  In the meantime, enjoy the Rootstech streaming if you get of chance.  I hope it rains here a lot while I am away.   Have a great week! Happy Hunting...Bonnie

Alameda Obituary Cards OFSL

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A Message From Linda Bailey to the Staff:

"Exploring the Alameda County Obituary Cards Collection (in the fiche drawers)

This lesson is mostly just a reminder to all the staff that the OFSL has this unique collection. Using it is very straight forward.

It is just a huge collection of alphabetized index cards with obituaries glued on them – very low tech, but never-the-less, quite valuable to those who have relatives in Alameda County. They were put together by volunteers at the East Bay Genealogical Society, but were moved here when they ran out of storage space.

The only mildly confusing thing is understanding what years they cover. The cards in the collection with actual obituaries glued to them cover 1985 to 2002. However, there are some cards that refer you to a “Biogr. File”.  These are for obituaries that were too large to glue to a 4x6 inch card. When these cards were in the East Bay genealogical Society library, you could find these obituaries in folders. We do not have the folders, but we do have a set of 9 DVD’s of the scanned images. They are in Ken Miller’s office – we don’t have back-up copies yet. I will follow up on that. The Biogr. File DVD’s cover from 1985 to 2006 but unfortunately are hard to use because of the lack of an index.  If someone really wants to view the DVD’s ask for help from one of the directors."

At the end of the lesson, she threw in a challenge to find a card, scan it on our copier and save it to a flash drive.  We are to help each other with that task if they don’t know how to do it.  Great suggestion!  Let's do it.

From Bonnie: "Alameda Obituary Cards ~ Staff Lesson #27" Click here to view (Bonnie shared these files using Dropbox. Enjoy!)

Google Like A Boss

Puzzilla.com-Help With Lateral And Decendancy Research

Puzzilla Chart

Have you ever had people say, “I don’t know where to do research on my ancestors?” Or, “I think my genealogy is all done!” Or, “What is an easy way to find out if there are missing people in the work that has already been done?”

Well, Puzzilla.org may be the right place to go.

Puzzilla.org is a Family Search–Family Tree certified affiliate software program, simply meaning that it is authorized to access the Family Tree database.  From that database, it creates a decendancy chart.  Many people may not be able to go back further on their direct lines for a multitude of reasons, but perhaps researching on lateral or descendant lines would appeal to them. This tool helps them visualize where to do that research.

You might want read through the lesson and follow along at the same time on the computer so you can do each step as it is described. The Descendancy chart can be a little “confusing” looking at first, but with practice it is quite a delightful tool.

Good luck.

Watch this video clip:   http://bcove.me/w1qbenty

View this link for Puzzilla Lesson: 
 http://tinyurl.com/mf8k8l4

Why Write?

We as genealogists and family historians know the value of records first hand.  We know how important they are to us personally and how they connect us to ancestors that would be lost without the writing and efforts of others to create them.  When people were silent, records still reveal their lives, their comings and goings, their triumphs and their even their secrets.  Contrary to the popular notion that a secret from the past was taken to his or her grave to be buried and forgotten...that is often not the case.

The decisions we make, both seemingly insignificant or huge do impact the course of our family history and our posterity from that time forth.  Think of the simple act of moving to a new location and how that affects generations in the future.  My parents moved from Minnesota to California a month before I was born.  That changed everything for me, my history and my posterity.

Wouldn't it be best if we kept track of our own lives and recorded it. The records that are public we have very little say over.  But what about the color of our lives?  The things that made us who we have become?  What we learned from the triumphs and failures of others?   Or our own?

I am not saying to divulge every little thing we have done that may have a negative or even positive effect on our posterity. Most mistakes are between us and Lord and trying to straighten them out after the fact is called repentance.   In the rare event that we have something that will be recorded publicly, maybe we would want to tell our own side of the story, even if we leave it in a safe deposit box or some place to be found after we are gone.

But at the very least shouldn't we keep a record of the good things and events both good or bad that taught us things, that helped us to improve and grow and learn.  That way the important things in our lives will not go slipping by like sand through our fingers and be lost.  Those thousand and one things that have meaning to us can be cherished and preserved through our writing and the recording of them.

Winston Churchill stated that history would remember him in a favorable light.  When asked why he said, "Because I intend to write it myself!"  He did write it.  He is indeed, remembered favorably to many in the world.  Our goal is not to be remembered as a perfect individual as we all know that is not the case.  But perhaps the goal is to be remembered and understood.  Who can explain who we are better than us?  We are the only ones that truly understand our heart, our motives and our intentions.  Do we want someone else speculating on those things after we are gone?  I don't.  I bet you don't either.

I saw these two quote on The Family Search Blog yesterday and thought them to be very intriguing.  

Leonardo Di Vinci

"There are three classes of people; those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who do not see."

"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.  Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Being willing is not enough; we must do."

This has been a good reminder to me to keep at it.  To keep writing when I wonder if anyone really benefits from it.  I have always known I do but I want it to help others as well.  I learned two very valuable lessons about this over the Christmas break.  I want to get permission to write the story and as soon as I do I will be sharing it here.

             

The Genealogy of Jesus Christ

Our Families Have Alway Been Important To God!

May your Christmas Be Merry and Bright!

Tree Connect Exercise

A few weeks ago we learned about Tree Connect on this blog for attaching outside sources to Family Search/Family Tree.

http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com/2013/10/record-seektree-connect-part-1-of-2.html

http://alegacythatmatters.blogspot.com/2013/09/tree-connectpart-2_6239.html

This is a wonderful way to save your documents electronically, cut the cost of copying and storing bulky papers and quickly documenting your research with accurate sources and citations.  With so much work to do and source this is a brilliant way to streamline your Family Tree. This one thing~sourcing sets Family Tree apart from several other online family trees and it also sets you apart as someone who is serious about authenticity and accuracy in the discipline of genealogy.

Every source that is added helps refine what was added in new.familysearch or what you add on your own and makes this FamilyTree the best.  We each need to spend sometime crowd sourcing this work for the world.  By the way new.familysearch goes to Read Only this month.

Linda has prepared a lesson about this with an exercise for you to Put Your Hands On It!

Both Linda and I agree that writing a lesson about Tree Connect is infinitely harder then just showing a person how to do it.  Seriously, once you have tried it a few times you will find it to be so easy and efficient.  You will be amazed and relieved that you do not have to do hours of research to find what you need.

Here is her exercise.  Please do not hesitate to ask for one on one assistance any time.  This will be a valuable asset for you in doing your own work and in helping the patrons at the library.

Here is Linda's Exercise: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghzd15fyhk3juig/Tree%20Connect.pdf

Since this blog is all about Trees~

Hope the one you have connected with at home is lovely!