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The annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies continued today in Springfield, Illinois. (You can read my report of Day #1 at http://goo.gl/Wb68I.) The morning started with the keynote session. FGS President Pat Oxley welcomed the attendees and made several announcements.
Probably the most interesting announcement was the number of attendees: more than 2,000 have already attended and this is only the morning of the second day. That number is expected to grow even more as more "walk-ins" appear in the next three days. In short, this is one of the largest FGS conferences ever held. The 2,000 attendees include people from 48 different states (including Alaska and Hawaii) and 5 countries. Not bad!
On September 5, I published an article (at http://goo.gl/DM0wq) that stated, "It is interesting to note that this conference will be a great time to obtain a deeply discounted ticket to the RootsTech conference, to be held next February in Salt Lake City. FGS attendees who register for the RootsTech 2012 conference during the FGS Conference can do so for only $99."
I have now been told that the $99 offer is available to EVERYONE. It is not limited to FGS conference attendees. If you are planning to attend the RootsTech 2012 conference on February 2 through 4 in Salt Lake City, you can purchase an admission ticket now for $99. The discount is nearly half off the full registration price ($189) and an additional $30 discount off the early bird registration price ($129).
One thing: the special price is only available this week. To obtain the low price, you must purchase your ticket no later than midnight Saturday night, September 10. I'm not sure which time zone is used for that expiration so I'd suggest being conservative and not waiting until the last minute to purchase a ticket.
The following announcement was written by the Illinois State Genealogical Society:
Illinois State Genealogical Society Debuts New Guide for Family Historians with Prairie State Ancestors
September 8, 2011 – Springfield, IL. The Illinois State Genealogical Society (ISGS) proudly announces the debut of the Insider’s Guide To Illinois Genealogy – a handy reference guide for family historians and genealogists. With the Insider’s Guide researchers will find everything they need to get started to find Prairie State ancestors.
The 2011 conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies opened today in Springfield, Illinois. This year's conference is co-sponsored by the Illinois State Genealogical Society. The weatherman cooperated perfectly; we enjoyed bright blue skies and rather cool temperatures. It was a perfect day for walking around the neighborhood.
The conference is being held in the Prairie Capital Convention Center, which appears to be a great venue for a conference of this size. I haven't seen all of it yet, but the conference center seems to be well organized with meeting rooms that are modern and with good acoustics. Best of all, the conference center is providing free wi-fi connectivity for all attendees. I found it easy to sit in a presentation and to take notes and even write blog or Twitter entries during each presentation.
You can see a bit unusual view of the convention center in the photograph to the right. You can click on the image to view a larger picture. It shows the convention center as seen from the 26th floor of the Hilton Hotel. You will note the shadow of the Hilton is falling directly onto the convention center. This is similar to the view we will have at Saturday evening's EOGN dinner, to be described later.
Kirkwood professor Gail Brown, coordinator faculty of the Geographic Information System program at Kirkwood Community College, has been working on pioneer cemeteries in Linn County, often with her Kirkwood students, for more than two years. Pioneer cemeteries are defined by the State Association for the Preservation of Iowa Cemeteries as cemeteries with 12 or fewer burials in the past 50 years.
Brown typically records information about each tombstone, including its precise longitude and latitude, then shares the information freely with genealogy and historic preservationists. She is interested in finding a way to make the information more easily and freely accessible.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch Adds Millions of U.S. Civil War Records
Records Also Added to Canada, England, Mexico, and South Africa Collections
7 September 2011
FamilySearch.org added millions of new records this week of both Confederate and Union soldiers who served in the American Civil War. Also now available for viewing are newly added notarial records from Canada, church records and civil registrations from Mexico, and miscellaneous records from England. Begin searching now at FamilySearch.org.
Food! Beverages! Watch the sunset from 29 stories above Springfield! Time with friends! What better way to spend Saturday evening after the close of the FGS Conference in Springfield?
For years, I have hosted dinners shortly after the closing of many of the larger genealogy conferences. I always invite the readers of this newsletter and their guests. I am delighted to announce that there will be another such dinner this Saturday, September 10, 2011, immediately after the end of the Federation of Genealogical Societies' conference in Springfield, Illinois.
YOU are invited!
We will meet on the 29th floor of the Hilton Hotel, across the street from the conference center. The view is outstanding from 29 stories above Springfield. We will be seated at dinner and will be able to watch the city change from dusk to darkness as we all converse with friends.
I was surprised at the rankings of only one of the sites: FamilySearch.org is the fourth-most popular, according to statistics compiled by Alexa.com. I would have expected it to be higher.
The Federation of Genealogical Societies' (FGS) annual conference will be held later this week in Springfield, Illinois. (Details may be found at http://fgs.org/2011conference/.) It is interesting to note that this conference will be a great time to obtain a deeply discounted ticket to the RootsTech conference, to be held next February in Salt Lake City. FGS attendees who register for the RootsTech 2012 conference during the FGS Conference can do so for only $99.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Adobe's popular PDF file format is often used in genealogy work. Many of the CD-ROM disks reviewed in this newsletter have been published in PDF format, as has much of the information found on genealogy web sites.
The Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) has become the de facto standard for electronic documentation distribution. Once a file is created in PDF format, anyone can read your document across a broad range of hardware and software, and it will look exactly as you intended — with layout, fonts, color, links, and images intact. In short, it will look like a document published with a desktop publishing program. It will look the same on any operating system, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux, UNIX, OS/2, and even handheld computers. Best of all, the required software to view your PDF document is completely free. As a result, everyone can read your document.
The following announcement was written by 1000memories.com:
Online story sharing platform spearheads efforts to collect and preserve family history
SAN FRANCISCO, C.A. (September 1, 2011) — 1000memories.com, the online platform that allows people to collaboratively record family stories, today announced a partnership with the Internet Archive to preserve the expanding number of family stories, photos and documents on its website.
“Imagine your computer as a new Gramophone purchased for family and friends to enjoy in your home parlor.” That's the statement on the Library of Congress' new new National Jukebox web site.
The web site contains more than 10,000 recordings created between 1901 and 1925 on Victor 78rpm records. The selections include band music, opera arias, dance music, monologues, and musical theater. Included on the site are some pre-selected playlists to get you started – check out the “Gems from the Jukebox” which includes a comedy dialog with orchestra called “Chimmie and Maggie at the Hippodrome” from 1905, and “Flirting Whistler”, a charming one-step performed by Conway’s Band in 1915.
Sometimes I think news reporters don't stop to think. A perfect example is shown in an article by Alessandra Da Pra in the Seminole Heights (Florida) Patch. The article describes a case of tax fraud in which the thieves reportedly found Social Security Numbers on Ancestry.com and other web sites and used those numbers to file tax returns for the deceased individuals, claiming refunds. The refunds were to be sent to "new" mailing addresses for the deceased taxpayers, typically vacant homes or innocent bystanders’ homes, where the crooks intercepted the mail. Refunds were also sent via direct deposit into fraudulent bank accounts.
The article at http://goo.gl/BB6JG insinuates that the publication of Social Security Numbers is the underlying cause of the identity theft. I have a one word response to this article:
Howard Metcalfe has released a new version of Personal Ancestry Writer II, aka PAWriter, the free genealogy program for Macintosh users. Version 100 includes the following changes:
The appearance of the PAWriter application icon was improved.
The FrameMaker MML report features have been deleted. The Write MML menu item in the File menu and all its submenu items have been removed. FrameMaker for the Mac is an MacOS 9 application and has not been supported by Adobe Systems Incorporated for many years.
Most of the desktop publishing capabilities of FrameMaker now appear in Nisus Writer Pro (see the Nisus website at http://nisus.com/), and in some cases the capabilites in Nisus Writer Pro exceed those in FrameMaker. RTF files generated by PAWriter using the Write RTF menu item in the File menu are opened in Nisus Writer Pro by default (as well as being readable by other Mac word processors such as Microsoft Word, Pages, TextEdit, Tex-Edit, AppleWorks and Quick Look).
Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Carol Christian warns that thousands of historical Texas documents are at risk of theft, loss or destruction by bugs, rats or weather, according to a report released Wednesday. Some of the documents ar even stored in boxcars.
Issued by the Texas Court Records Preservation Task Force, the report studied preservation in the state's 254 counties. Conditions range from excellent to abysmal, despite most county officials' good intentions, the group said.
Genealogists have always been taught to record our sources of information. We not only record the name of the book or other source of genealogy information, but we also record the location of the building (repository) where we found it. Typically we record the building’s name, street address, city and state.
With today’s technology, shouldn’t we also be recording the geographic coordinates? With GPS receivers and the plethora of high-quality on-line maps, it is now easy to find the exact latitude and longitude of any address. Unlike street names, the longitude and latitude will never change.
I have written about finding cemeteries and other locations of genealogical interest by using GPS receivers. Shouldn’t we be recording the exact latitude and longitudes of those cemeteries into our genealogy databases? Perhaps the cemetery’s location alone isn’t enough. Should we record the exact location of the ancestor's tombstone?
The following announcement was written by by findmypast.co.uk:
Aye Aye Captain - Merchant Navy Archives Reveal Photos of UK’s Forgotten ‘Fourth Service’
Churchill’s ‘fourth service’ who helped to make Britain ‘Great’ Fascinating photos of British merchant mariners from 100 years ago A ‘floating United Nations’, women and men, young boys, ‘donkeymen’ and manicurists, as well as personal descriptions such as tattoos 54% of the UK population have no idea who or what the Merchant Navy is Merchant Navy Day is on Saturday 3rd September 2011
One million 20th century Merchant Navy Seamen records are going online for the first time ever, as Britain approaches Merchant Navy Day on Saturday 3rd September. But when asked what the Merchant Navy was, 54% of the British population couldn’t answer correctly, even though almost 90% have heard of them. This is a sad fact considering the Merchant Navy was integral to putting Britain on the trade and industry world map and were named by Churchill as Britain’s ‘fourth service’. The revelation comes as findmypast.co.uk, a leading UK family history website, publishes these fascinating records online in partnership with The National Archives.
Archives.com has been a smaller player in the genealogy marketplace. However, today's announcement should thrust the online site into the spotlight. Not only is Archives.com now making all the available U.S. census records available online (as do some other sites) but is doing so at a lower price than the competitors' pricing: $39.95 per year. This new competition should be interesting to watch!
The following announcement was written by Archives.com:
Family History Website Archives.com Brings Extraordinary New Value to Users and Pledges 5 Million Dollars to Digitize Additional Historical Records
Today Archives.com, the web’s most affordable and easy-to-use subscription-based family history site, announces the addition of the U.S. Federal Census, the single most valuable collection of U.S. historical records. The U.S. Census collections were made available by FamilySearch International, the world’s largest genealogy organization, as part of a joint effort to introduce more records to family historians worldwide. In conjunction with the Census effort, Archives will also embark on a joint project with FamilySearch to digitize tens-of-millions of additional historical records, the majority of which are not currently online. Archives has pledged a minimum of five million dollars to this important project which will positively impact the entire community.
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