Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Genealogy Training Course

Genealogy Training Course
With Carol Brown

9:30 am - 11:30 Thursday’s (Except as noted)
December 6, 2007 - February 14, 2008
In the building beside the Bouse Public Library
44031 E. Plomosa Rd, Bouse, AZ 85325 phone 928-851-1023
Sign up - contact nrcmackey@yahoo.com
Everyone Welcome

Suggested donation is $5.00 per class per person
Each week Carol teaches a different aspect of genealogical research followed by an open discussion session. All classes are approximately 2 hours in length. You do not have to attend every session. You can choose the topics you wish to attend.

  • December 6 - Class 1 - Beginning Genealogy, Record Organization and Source Citation
  • December 14 (Friday at 1:00) - Class 2 - Computers and Genealogy on the Internet
  • December 20 - Class 3 - Census and Social Security Records
  • January 3 - Class 4 - Researching in Libraries and Court Houses
  • January 10 - Class 5 - Immigration and Migration Patterns
  • January 17 - Class 6 - Genealogical Societies and Magazines
  • January 24 - Class 7 - Over Coming Dead Ends
  • January 31 - Class 8 - Preponderance of Evidence
  • February 7 - Class 9 - Researching in Military Records
  • February 14 - Class 10 - Sharing Your Family History

Monday, November 12, 2007

Communication

I can’t stress the importance getting out on there and contacting other researcher, via message boards, people that have posted their genealogy to the Internet, etc… But to avoid spammer you may want to get another email address because the spam bots are out there reading email address that have been posted to the web.

There are many free places out there to get emails but it can be rather tiring always checking them just to find nothing. The way I handle this is using the instant messaging programs that are also offered with them. Myself I use a free program called Pidgin http://pidgin.im/ , it capable of connecting with AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, SIP/SIMPLE, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour, Zephyr, MySpaceIM, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ all at once. It will notify me when an email comes in & will give me the sender’s name & subject of the message. The disadvantage to this program is no voice or video chatting. But what I like the best is it doesn’t change or add things to my browser, you can choose to have it load at boot up or manually load it, and I can several identities on one mail server.

Now you may want to scan and organize your pictures and documents because they are great things to trade with, and people will go more out of their way getting you information if you give them something they don’t have.

When first starting out Surname message boards are good, but I have more success with county & religious message boards. County histories & Church records are wonderful in your research.

A good thing to remember what goes around comes around. So find out what local resources are available to you and volunteer to help other via message boards and lookup services like www.raogk.org and www.usgenweb.org county sites.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Making A PDF Document

People ask, why would you make a PDF file when all you can do is print or view this document? The main reason is different computers and even different word processor programs will not open a document the same. So when layout is important, like when a document with an index or newsletters or limit how people can use your document you will want to do it as a PDF file.

One I use a lot is PrimoPDF http://www.primopdf.com/ , it work like a printer driver so if you can print it, you can make a PDF file and best of all it’s free. I see the last version the horizontal printing problem has been fixed. To a horizontal print click “custom” when PrimoPDF’s screen comes up.

There are many different free PDF creators out there so look around & see what you like. They all work about the same, you click File > Print > select the PDF creator > click OK > tell it where to save the file > click OK. The only differences are how you change the settings.

Rede’s demo with PrimoPDF:
http://blip.tv/file/476452