WikiTree

Our session covered "Understanding WikiTree": Click Here

 What is new in Ancestry.

Our session today covered: "What is new in Ancestry" and "How to search without using the name".  For a replay of the session: Click Here

 Creating History Family Book Part 4 with Canva and intro to Family Book Creator

There was a light turnout today, with wonderful weather, the beach close by and summertime activities with visitors, this makes sense. For anyone who would like to catch up on our session, feel free to watch the videos.

After our discussions about personal genealogy by members, we went over upcoming genealogy webinars and top 11 genealogy TV shows, then on to our main topics.

1) Creating Family History Book Part 4, using Canva and Q&A. For recording: Click here

2) Creating Family History Book, introduction to using Family Book Creator as a plugin to Family Tree Maker (for an example product: Click here): For recording: Click here

We talked about setting up a workshop for those that are interested in learning how to use the Family Book Creator for creating a Family History Book.  It is more complicated than the on-line Canva, Snapfish, Mixbook or others.  With the more complications also brings much more capability, not only pulling data directly from Family Tree Maker, but also allowing you to import Word documents (txt, doc) or pages of your pdf files.  Please send me an e-mail if you are interested in the workshop.

See you next time.

 Creating Family History Book - Part 3 - Building with Canva.com

Our focus today was on building a Print-Resolution PDF file using Canva.  This is different from building a file in Snapfish, Mixbook, MyCanvas, Shutterfly or others where they own the content that you build and it is all about selling you a hardcover book from their sites. This is an i-cloud based platform (free) where you build out your book and you own the print-resolution pdf that you can take to any printer to make a book or you can electronically share your high quality pdf with others.

We went through the introduction to Canva.com, how to use it, click here for video, then each member used their own free version of Canva to start building their own stories.  Each member who attended was given access to 2 templates that were designed for Family History Book and Lynn Baker's sample book template.  A handout was provided with helpful tips on using Canva: click here for handout.

Creating a Family History Book part 2 - planning

Our meeting went well with topics on:

• Members sharing their genealogy work
• Open discussion on FamilySearch questions
• Open discussion on AncestryDNA questions

Main topic: continuing series on "Creating a Family History Book".  We discussed how to plan your book and what to consider.  We discussed various applications to use to format and publish the book.  Our decision for the next meeting was to: (1) explore MixBook, Canva and FTM - wanting both the ability to publish a hardcopy book and to have a print-resolution pdf for sharing electronically, (2) each member will come up with a short story and photo to use at the next meeting.

For video replay: Click here

• For Organize Your Family History Writing Project word template: Click here; for example pdf: Click here
• For Photo-Book tips word template: Click here, for Example pdf: Click here

What's new in Ancestry and Creating Family Book

We had a good attendance today at our DIRT meeting.  The topics we covered were:

• Personal genealogy stories shared from around the room
• Update on Phil Pritzlaff's AncestryDNA spreadsheet approach: Video Click here
• What's New in Ancestry: Video - to be redone
• FamilySearch Record Seek to move web file information: Video Click here
•     Handout for Record Seek: Click  here
• Discussion on Creating Family History Book and next steps: Video Click here

Future sessions will be on AncestryDNA and continuing the project on Creating Family History Book.

 AncestryDNA Matches - Step by Step build of excel spreadsheet

    We welcomed Paula Murphy to our DIRT community.  We also had some fantastic successes by our members as they shared their own genealogy research.

    Our key topic was  AncestryDNA Matches - Step by Step build of excel spreadsheet.  This bridged off of Phil Pritzlaff's presentation on April 27.  For those who want to actually create a similar spreadsheet for solving brick walls with DNA, this session was a step by step approach to creating your spreadsheets with hints on using Microsoft Excel.  Click here for the video replay.  Click here for the handout guide.

    We then covered some of the Surname mapping websites for use in genealogy.  Click here for replay.