Today's focus was on Scanning Photos and Documents.  Before we got into the main topic, we discussed:

1) Our own 52 Stories project.  LDS has created 52 questions to be asked one a week for a year. These questions could be send to parents, Aunts/Uncles or done yourself.  You get the question and take 10-15 minutes a week to answer it and store it.  After 52 weeks of questions you have a wonderful repository of information to make a great story.  If you are interested in receiving these notes, contact Lynn Baker at bakerlynnd@gmail.com.

2) RootsTech 2019 started today.  There is an excellent iphone, android or ipad app for RootsTech 2019 that will tell you all about the activities. It even gives you access to the handouts "for free".  Also, you can go to RootsTech.org and see the schedule of 4 live streaming events a day that you can observe "for free".  After RootsTech is completed they will post a number of the sessions on line for us to access - I will let you know when that happens.  You can join the learning fun over the next few days "for free".

Our main topic of Scanning Photos and Documents included a demonstration of using the flatbed scanner and the offer for any DIRT member to borrow the scanner to do their own scanning at home without purchasing a scanner.  The key to scanning is being aware of the "scanning resolution" to preserve, save and share.  Here are the handouts:

a. Scanning Photos and Documents handout: Click here
b. Computer terminology: Click here
c. 31 Web sites to find Old Family Photos: Click here

For using your iphone to scan documents (pdf) while doing research, I use the app: Tiny Scanner.  Here are some others: Scannable and iscanner.

For March, our afternoon session will be extended from 1:30-3:30 and extra hour.  During the 3:30-4:30 period we will focus on Family Tree Maker, FamilySearch, AncestryDNA and questions to help with the beginners doing research.

Our session on Wednesday (Feb 13) went very well.  We talked about some tips on using FamilySearch.org fan charts and then focused on:

1) Organizing your digital genealogy
       - handout: click here
       - Some of the slides that were requested: Click here
2) Discussed how to draw a Genetic (DNA) pedigree chart and use it to determine who should you get tested to help with your genealogy: Click here
3) Feb/Mar Genealogy Calendar: Click here