Follow Friday Newsletter: 24 June 2011

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Next best thing to being there

There were many enjoyable posts last week on the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, and this week the experience was beautifully summed up by Donna Pointkouski at What’s Past Is Prologue in “10 Things I Learned at Jamboree.”


I’m going there when I grow up

In a similar vein, there have been several blog posts about the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research at Samford. Several excellent posts on this topic were written by Susan Farrell Bankhead at Susan’s Genealogy Blog; her final post, “Samford 2011: Recap,” provides a good summary of this experience.


Saturday Night Genealogy Fun provokes interesting debate

Over at Genea-Musings, Randy waxes philosophical in response to a couple of comments left on his most recent Saturday Night Genealogy Fun in “Thoughts on Classical and Scientific Genealogy.” The potential for debates of this types is one of the many things that makes it interesting to be a member of the genealogy blogging community. This has led to further posts on the subject, which are listed in Randy’s second post on the subject, “More Thoughts on ‘Scientific’ and ‘Traditional’ Genealogy.”


From a legal point of view

James Tanner at Genealogy’s Star is starting a series wherein he discusses evidence and proof in genealogical from the viewpoint of their original context, the law; first post: “What is evidence? What is proof?”


I like the happy ending of this story

Jenny Lanctot at Are My Roots Showing? tells the story of how she looked and looked and may finally have found the genealogical society that is right for her in “I Finally Joined a Local Genealogy Society.”


And another happy ending!

Missy Corley at Bayside Blog has great news: “The Friends Album Has Found a Home!” We have been following Missy’s extraordinary work with this album, and this is the happiest of endings to the story.


What say ye?

Heather Kuhn Roelker at Leaves for Trees has suggested that “What we need is a genealogy blogger research database, don’t you see?” Sounds like a good idea, and Thomas Macentee’s idea for the form it would take looks good, too. So what do you all think?


I’ll tell you about mine if you’ll tell me about yours

At Roots and Rambles, Marian Pierre-Louis has posted “The Top 5 Books on My Bookshelf,” which I think would be an interesting topic for a genealogy blogging meme - Saturday Night Fun, anyone (Randy)?


Why hide and seek is our favorite game

Susan Farrell Bankhead has listed some common reasons why you can’t find your ancestors and strategies for finding them anyway in “Census 103: Family Members Missing in Action” at Susan’s Genealogy Blog. Yup, I’ve encountered all of these reasons and used all of these strategies. Things have improved with member-submitted corrections and “updated and improved” indexing of the censuses, but we still need to keep these approaches in mind.


Why didn’t they teach history like this at my high school?

In “Ancestry and Academics,” Kathleen Brandt of a3 Genealogy tells about her experience in using genealogy and family history to get students involved in learning - and not just history! I am fascinated by this classroom approach and think that this is a great idea for use in the classroom.


For more suggested blog reading

Check out “Follow Friday: This Week’s Finds” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist, and “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy.


This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

Emmasology

Family Pilgrimage

Lessons Learned in Genealogy Research

Nuts from the Family Tree