Do You Suffer From Progonoplexia?

According to Wikipedia, progonoplexia, from the Greek word Προγονοπληξια is roughly translated as "ancestoritis," or a deep obsession with one's ancestry.
Read more of this post at the My Heritage Blog.

-- submitted by Denise Doyon

Don't Be Afraid To Wander Around

Once again I am going to remind you that you sometimes need to get out of your comfort zone and explore the world a bit. There are so many things to find and much of it can be helpful.

Today I stumbled upon a website called EasyFamilyHistory.com which is full of books, software, tips and tools to make a family historians job easier and more productive. I found it by accident and thought some of you might find it useful.

Starting next month I am taking a five-week course on blogging your family history. After much research and thought I have decided that blog-to-book is going to be the vehicle for writing my family history narrative. I won't go into all the reasons for that decision, but when the blog is up and running, you will all be invited to come along for the ride. In the meantime, I am doing a LOT of preparation for the course and building the framework for the blog (our "summer" homework). That means I have been wandering the internet reading blogs and looking for "stuff" that will help me build and populate my own blog. I am curious about how others approached the same type of writing project; what kind of blog they built; what kind of material they wrote about; what kind of visual aids they used.  Many of them are very engaging.  I want my blog to be engaging, too.  How do they do it?  How can I do it? I wander around a lot, read a lot, and take a lot of notes. My Evernote inbox is bursting with links to stuff I want to go back to. You may think that is wasted time, but it has had tremendous pay-offs for me.  It's how I find a lot of very useful "stuff".

At one time in my life I was a collector of books. I was a voracious reader and made it a point to always buy hard-cover, first-edition books whenever possible. One day, my plan was to retire and run a used bookstore in Paris. I was building an inventory. Some of my best stuff was procured while spending hours wandering around used bookstores, climbing ladders and finding what was hidden behind what was obvious. I have re-tooled those skills and now apply them to the Internet.

You never know what you will stumble upon. There are hidden treasures everywhere - and the more curious you are - the more questions you ask - the more you will find. There is always someone out there who already did what you are trying to do. There is a lot to be learned from them.  You never know who or what you will stumble upon.

So don't be afraid to wander around out there!  You don't have to get dressed up or even get dressed at all!

--submitted by Denise Doyon

Organize Those Blogs

No matter how long you have been searching for your ancestors, how many places you have looked, how many websites you have subscribed to and how much $$$$ you have spent, there is always somewhere new to look and someone with a new perspective. There are tools, resources and plans of attack you haven't even dreamed of yet. Every researcher has their "toolbox" and every one of them uses different tools differently.  

I am curious by nature and have always had an interest in how someone else does the same thing I am doing. They may know something I don't know, have a different approach to the same problem, use resources I don't know about - in short, they may have a nicer toolbox.  And genealogists are always very willing to share their tools.

One way to find new tools (ideas, approaches, websites, apps, software, and gizmos) is the blogosphere.  There are more genealogy blogs out there than there are "stars in the heavens". Really. Some of you might think you barely have time to do all the things you already have on your plate - how in the heck are you going to find time to read a couple of dozen blogs each day. Well, it's actually rather easy.  I follow 38 different blogs and look at them every day. It takes me about 10 minutes. There are many blog organizers out there - and today I am going to share the one I use.

Feedly (www.feedly.com) is a blog organizer that is free, intuitive, easy to sign up for and use.  I have my browser set up so that each time I open it, all my most-used stuff is tabbed across the top.  

So my Feedly is always available for me to browse. Once you have a Feedly account, you can add blogs to your list as you find them. Just add the mini Feedly extension to your browser-of-choice. If you have a blog opened in your browser the little Feedly extension shows up in your browser bar.

To add the blog you are reading to your Feedly list, just click on the extension and Feedly adds it to your list. You can organize your list of blogs by topics - I have my Feedly page organized into sections for blogging, Evernote, Genealogy, Writing, Computer Info and Technology.  

Any time you have a minute or two, you can click on the tab, and Feedly will present you with a list of snippets of unread blogposts from the blogs you have chosen. You can scan the snips, decide what you want to read and/or save, or which one's you want to ignore and delete.  

It is easy to get bogged down trying to keep up with everything the internet can serve up.  There is a lot of useless stuff out there mixed in with the good.  But there are a lot of truly good genealogy bloggers who can serve up stuff you can use.  

Below I have listed some my favorites. Also, websties such as Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Rootsweb, etc. have their own blogs.  If you use/subscribe to one of these and are building your family tree there, it would be a good idea to subscribe to their blog.  If you are interested in the DNA aspect of your family history search, there are dozens of those you can pick through.  If you would like to take a look at the list of the best 100 genealogy blogs for 2015, click here.  Take a peek and start a Feedly list of your own!

Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems

The Armchair Genealogist

Genealogy Tip Of The Day

Geneabloggers

Dear Myrtle's Genealogy Blog

The Disciplined Genealogist

The Legal Genealogist

Oooops!

Never try to do four things at once.  When I wrote the post entitled "Researching the Internet Archive", I copied an incorrect link into the text.  If you go back to the original post, the problem has been corrected and you now should have access to the PDF you are looking for.  Or, you can click here to get there quicker!

Thanks for your patience!

Denise

Researching The Internet Archive

Who doesn't like something for free?

This past week, one of my favorite genealogists, Thomas MacEntee, offered a couple of free ebooks to his Geneablogger subscribers.  Amazon messed it up - and Thomas felt bad about it.  As a result, he has offered a free copy of the syllabus from his "Researching The Internet Archive" course.  I decided to share it with all of you.

Click here to get some very useful tips on using the Internet Archive for your family history research.

Make A Chart

This is a GREAT idea from the "Genealogy Tip Of The Day" blog.

When information is inconsistent or you are trying to sort out individuals, consider making a chart or table to summarize the information that is conflicting or does not make sense. Sometimes just the process of thinking about how to organize what you have and then organizing it will help you to notice things that you did not notice before.

Click here to visit the website.

-- submitted by Denise Doyon

Had to Share ...

Jacqi Stevens writes a genealogy blog entitled "A Family Tapestry". It is one of the many genealogy blogs I follow regularly. If you attended D.I.R.T.'s 12 Aug meeting, you got to see my list and how I manage to, at least, skim each of them every day. Again, if you are serious about your genealogy research then I highly recommend you find some of these blogs and read them.  They are full of useful information for people just like us from people just like us.

Anyway - Jacqi had a recent post entitled When Life Teaches You Genealogy which I felt was worth sharing. Using he accepted definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results) as it applies to the hunt for our ancestors and the documentation we need to turn our finds into facts - she tackles a hotel shower dilemma.

Enjoy the story and keep on looking for the same things over and over again until you get the results you need!

-- submitted by Denise Doyon