GenealogyClassBlog

Kathy Huber, Genealogy Librarian at the Tulsa City-County Library’s Genealogy Center, will be presenting a 2-1/2 hour workshop on Saturday, 31 January, to help students learn to begin the search for their ancestors. Kathy’s program will be 10:30 am to 1:00 pm.

Mark your calendar, too, for another TCCL genealogy program on Saturday, 21 February, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. Liz Walker, Library Associate, will present a program on Free Genealogy Web Sites. The description says that she “will show you some useful free genealogy Web sites to help you with your family search.

Both events will be in the Harmon Foundation Meeting Room at the Genealogy Center, 2901 S. Harvard, in Tulsa, are free and are targeted to adults. No reservations are required.

Two Saturdays ago I presented a program on Genealogy Software for the Tulsa City-County Library. To those who attended, I handed out a checklist that I’d created to use while comparing various genealogy software solutions. There are many factors that need our attention when we try to choose a program or other solution for organizing our genealogical data or in networking with others. As I had prepared what I was going to say about features to compare from one solution to another I realized that my students would need a place to make their notes about what they’d found. I suggested that they watch for whether the web site of the product was helpful and attractive, whether a demo version was available, whether there was a users forum or access to technical support. Not only is price important, but so is platform, version, and format. I also suggested that each person might be able to define some capabilities that would be deal-breakers for them, such as whether the solution could output onto large charts, whether it could handle multimedia, and whether their genealogy data could be transferred with little or no hiccups from their cousin’s computer to theirs. I hope that this checklist will be a useful tool for making those comparisons.

I am making the Genealogy Software Comparison Checklist available in .PDF format, and I am also removing the file I had previously uploaded, which was created in Microsoft Office 2003 (for Windows). Feel free to download this for personal use. You may need Adobe Reader to open the file (unless you have a Mac, and then Preview will do it for you). You can download Adobe Reader at http://get.adobe.com/reader/. I hope there are no compatibility issues with this one, so I’d like to hear about any problems that I might be able to correct, or any suggestions as to how the content could be improved.

And for those who attended the program, thanks for coming! Any success with finding a genealogy software solution?

The Tulsa Genealogical Society will be offering a mini-workshop on Monday, 26 January, at the TGS Library, 9136 Briar Village Shopping Center. Janice Meredith, FTGS, TGS Librarian, will be presenting the topic, which is entitled, “Tracing Your Ancestor Using Land Records.” TGS offers these mini-workshops periodically as fundraiser events, asking for a donation of $7.50 to attend.

Land records of our ancestors can be the solution to difficult genealogical puzzles and they provide insight into the lives of our ancestors. The records are very important yet they can be confusing. Janice is an excellent speaker and I encourage you to attend if you get the chance.

I have been asked to present a mini-workshop for TGS on Monday, 27 April, on one of the topics I will be presenting at the FGS Conference in September — “How To Be a Power Hitter: Improve Your Online Searching Skills.” I’ll write more about that soon. Both workshops will be held from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. To watch for other mini-workshops, or for a map to the TGS Library, visit the Tulsa Genealogical Society’s web site.

Welcome, former students and friends, to my new blog!

I wanted a place to post the interesting news and tips that I can’t share when there is no class in session. Of course, when class is in session, not all of my students can attend, and so I’d like a place to communicate what I’ve found or what I’d like to pass along. This blog will be like a bulletin board in the sense that you can come check it to see what is new. Sometimes it’ll be more like a chalkboard, where I can write what I’m trying to teach.

I’d like to hear from you about what you’ve been doing to continue the pursuit of your family’s history. I hope that you’ll want to leave a comment, but I have two reservations. First, this blogging is new to me and I’m not sure how much of a problem I’ll have with spam comments. I’ve set up the blog so that I can moderate the comments before they appear on the blog, so you won’t see your comment until I’ve had a chance to ok it (a little like grading papers).

My second reservation is that I don’t think I’ll be able to respond to all of the comments. I hope you won’t be discouraged from writing comments. Your comments will be just as much for the other readers of this blog as they will be for me — just as we did in class.

You may remember from class that I like to inform as well as to instruct. There are things happening in the broad genealogy community and in Tulsa and in Oklahoma, just since the most recent genealogy class at Boston Avenue ended on November 4, 2008. I look forward to having a cyberclass with whom to share things I hear, read, or learn.

I hope you can come back again and again.

Best Regards,

Barbara

Leland Meitzler has started a new blog and will be writing about all things genealogy. He had a very active, successful blog until several months ago when it was pulled. Read his “About” page and his first entry to learn more about what happened. The situation resulted in his losing all of his archived blog posts.

So, he is starting over. I’m sure that ihis blog will be informative and enjoyable to read. I will be adding it to my blogroll (list of other blogs). To visit his blog, go to http://www.genealogyblog.com.