Looking For Cemetery Volunteers

I am looking for some people that are willing to go out and transcribe & photograph headstones. I know the Quartzsite Cemetery needs to be checked for errors, and Brenda needs to be photographed. Then we can upload the information to the free genealogy websites for La Paz Co.

I have a digital camera that will hold around 250 pictures with 2 batteries, but the battery only do about 40 pictures each. So if we can get a few people with cameras & paper & pencils I think this could really help others.

Please contact me via this page http://www.blogger.com/profile/20597318 if you are interested.

Google Book Search

On Google Book Search http://books.google.com there are a lot of books here that are copyright free which are nice for research. Just enter your keywords and your results will be “Full View”, “Limited Preview”, “Snippet View”, or “No Preview Available”. But you do have the option to limit your search as “Full Page” only, which will get you mostly the copyright free books. Another nice feature is your keywords are highlighted so they can be easily found. “Advanced Search” will give you a chance to search by Title, Author, Publisher, Publication Date, and even search by ISBN (barcode).

Options when you found a book:

• Browse: Will let you look at the book page by page.
• Search within the book: Will let you search for more keywords within the book.
• Buy the book: Doesn’t guarantee that the book will be there but might help.
• Find reviews: Doesn’t pop up much on the copyright free books, but might help if you plan on buying the book.
• Find it in a library: Will tell you if a library has it, and you might be able to use the interlibrary loan to get it from your local library.
• Learn about the publisher: Will get you to the publisher’s website.

For more information on Google Book Search can be found at http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html.

Collaborating Research

Collaborating with a cousin was the way I learned most about research & is one of the quickest way to get things done. Google has made this easier for you with Documents, Spreadsheets http://docs.google.com/ & new to Google Labs “Note Book” http://www.google.com/notebook/. Everyone must have a Google account, but signing up is free.

Documents: I don’t see a lot of good unless several people are writing a family history together. But it does have nice features, export as HTML, RTF, Word, OpenOffice & PDF. You can Insert Images, Links, Comments, Bookmark, Separator or Special Character. View what revisions have been made. Choose who can views or who can make changes. Publish to the web (a unique URL on Google) or to your Blog. It has some of the same features you will find in a Word Processors, but personally find it a little bit limiting. It will solve the problems of people using different Word Processors.

Spreadsheets: I don’t use spreadsheets very often so I’m no expert. But if you are transcribing something like a cemetery, indexing or anything you might need the use of a spreadsheet, this can be very useful. Each of you can take a portion of what you are doing and work on the same project together.

Note Book: I really like this one, forget about bookmarks you can a select section of a page & come back to look at it later (images are also saved). It requires a little plugin on your browser, but after that is installed all you do is highlight the portion of the page you want, right click and select “Note This” or click the new little notebook icon on the right side of your browser & select “Add Note”. It won’t do PDF files on the web, but it does let you type or copy/paste the text & have a link to that file. I did find a problem with long pages, seams to have some problems with pages that would be much over 2 pages in my Word Processors, and Netscape browser doesn’t seam to be supported.

Genealogy Classes At The Bouse Library

Put on by professional genealogist Carol Brown

Cost $5 per class for expenses. Located at the old Bouse Elementary School, 44031 Plomosa Road (look for the flag pole), in the building just east of the library.

Classes scheduled so far:

• Class 2 - Friday - Nov. 3, 2006 - 9:30 am- Class 2 - Computers and Genealogy on the Internet
• Class 3 - Thursday - Nov. 9, 2006 - 9:30 am - Class 3 - Census and Social Security Records
• Class 4 - Tuesday - Nov. 28, 2006 - 1:30 pm - Class 4 - Researching in Libraries and Courthouses
• Class 5 - Thursday - Nov. 30, 2006 - 9:30 am - Class 5 - Immigration, Emigration & Migration
  

Not scheduled yet:

• Class 6 - Genealogy Societies, Magazines and CD-ROM's
• Class 7 - Overcoming Dead Ends
• Class 8 - Preponderance of Evidence & DNA
• Class 9 - Military Records - Service, Pension & Bounty-Land
• Class 10 - Publishing You Family History

Check the calendar for updates