GenealogyClassBlog

“Genealogy: Beyond the Basics” is the title of the upcoming class at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church’s School of Continuing Education this time. Over the years that I been teaching genealogy classes at Boston Avenue (since 1994) I have changed up the format maybe five times. This time I would like to help the students explore, with an “experienced guide,” what they might find, “beyond the basics.” Here is the course description:

“After a quick review of how to begin the search for your family history, we will earn together how to build your skills and how to locate some of the newest and best resources. We will also explore genealogy software, online resources, and DNA testing; all while communicating outside of class on the Genealogy Class Blog. Basic understanding of your computer and the Internet is a must.”

The school will begin on Wednesday, 5 October and last five weeks through 3 November. See more information about other classes offered in a downloadable booklet at Boston Avenue’s website. The $15 fee covers a whole day of interesting classes, but the Genealogy: Beyond the Basics class itself will be from 2:30 to 3:30 pm every Wednesday. To register, call 918-583-5181.

Most of my students know that I don’t use Windows at home. Mine is primarily a Macintosh household. To keep track of various genealogy research, from personal to client work, I use Reunion, which is only available for the Macintosh. I do have a dream to be able to spend hours trying out various genealogy software packages so that I can answer questions and possibly make recommendations about particular genealogy software packages. But, the amount of time spent on each different software program would be considerable and I just do not have that kind of time.

There aren’t too many people that would have that opportunity, or who would bother to take the time, but Richard Eastman does. He keeps his eye out for new developments and reviews new products and upgraded versions in his online newsletter. In his June 17 Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, he provided a list of twelve genealogy software programs for Windows. Each of the listings includes a brief description, the producer, distinctive features or attributes, the selling price, and the link to the producer’s website. To introduce the list, Dick says,

“The following is a list of all the more popular genealogy programs that I know of that are actively being marketed for Windows users in North Americas. In fact, more than one hundred genealogy programs have been offered to Windows users over the years and a handful of them are still available for purchase today. However, not all of them are being actively developed and supported. For this list, I will focus only on the products that are current and still have developers writing updates, bug fixes, and new releases.”

The list includes, in alphabetical order:

Ancestral Quest
Branches
Brothers Keeper
Family Historian
Family Tree Builder
Family Tree Maker
GRAMPS
Legacy Family Tree
The Master Genealogist
My Blood
Osk
Roots Magic and Roots Magic Essentials

Dick also writes,

“The above is NOT a complete list of all Windows genealogy programs. A complete list would fill perhaps 30 or 40 pages! Instead, the above is a list of the more popular Windows genealogy programs sold in North America. Several of them are produced in other countries, however.”

In a few cases, Dick has provided links to interviews with the developers of the programs. A few of the above programs are also available for Macintosh and/or Linux.

Dick is a great source of this kind of information, because he actually buys and tests out genealogy programs on his PCs and on his Macs. Visit, or better yet subscribe to http://blog.eogn.com to receive a daily email newsletter. Read what Dick has to say about genealogy software, websites, events, television shows, or about related equipment (from cameras to the iPad). To find earlier articles, use the search box on his site (search for the word, “Macintosh,” for example), or click one of the category links in the list on the right-hand side of any of his web pages.

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?

I will be presenting a program for the Tulsa City-County Library’s Genealogy Center on Saturday, January 10 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The topic is Genealogy Software — what it does, how genealogists use it, and how to select a new genealogy software program. See the library’s description and find information about how to find the library at their Event Guide listing: http://www.tulsalibrary.org/eventguide/oeg.asp?Keyword=Genealogy

I have a link to the handout material, which is a list of the relevant links to helpful web sites, on the home page of my web site: http://www.desktopgenerations.com. As of today, the handout is much the same as it was when I prepared it for the same program I presented in July 2008, but I’ll be updating it this week.

The address of the Genealogy Center is 2901 S. Harvard. Their hours on Saturday will be 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.