Arizona Vital Records

Rede was asked how he found death certificated for just one town in Arizona. In this video I show you how to use "FamilySearch" https://www.familysearch.org/ , and "Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificate" http://genealogy.az.gov/ websites to research one town. Even though he only used Arizona in video it might help you search other places.

Download Video

Rede has licensed this work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Create A Free Genealogy Website Part 2: Add & Hide Your Email Address

Part 2 of Rede's series on making a genealogy website, here he helps keep your email address safe from spam bots.

Rede:
In this video I show you how to get, add, and hide your email address to keep the spam bots from finding it.

I recommend you get a separate email account from your own & use an instant messaging program to check & see if you have any new emails.

Links:
Gmail http://mail.google.com/
Hotmail http://hotmail.com/
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/
Pidgin http://pidgin.im/
ReCaptcha http://www.google.com/recaptcha

Download Video

Rede has licensed this work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Create A Free Genealogy Website Part 1: Using DropBox To Make A Website

It was nice when I first started there was so many people sharing their genealogy on their own website. Rede is making a series of videos on how a person can make thier own website for free.

Rede:
It has been my experience that more people will contact on my own personal website than any other genealogy website. In this video I show you how to use DropBox as a place to put up your own free genealogy website. I don’t know if or how well the search engines index DropBox but it will give you a chance to experiment & share your genealogy.

Also in this video I mentioned a video on how to backup your genealogy file, I will list it below. He uses RootsMagic but any genealogy program will work the same.

Links:
The Quick and Easy Way to Share an HTML File on the Web
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/05/the-quick-and-easy-way-to-share-an-html-file-on-the-web.html

Store Your RootsMagic Backups Off Site with DropBox
http://genealogytools.com/store-your-rootsmagic-backups-off-site-with-dropbox/

DropBox
https://www.dropbox.com/

Download video

Rede has licensed this work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Google News Genealogy Style

In this video Rede shows you how to search Google News Archives & how to filter out the pay per view hits. Some of the papers are kind of spotty on the issues they have, but you can’t complain about the price ;-)

Maybe not as good as subscription sites, but on the other hand I have found information not on them.

Direct link to Advance Archive Search:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search?ned=us&hl=en

Just remember to change the “Price” to “No Price” for the free papers.

Download Video (let me know if you like the download link):
http://bit.ly/9imcXT

Rede has licensed this work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Plotting Land With Google Earth

For me land records are fun & useful when researching your ancestors.

In this video Rede shows you how to use Google Earth, Earth Point, and FS Capture to find and plot land with Google Earth.

Links used in this video:

• Google Earth http://earth.google.com/
• Earth Point http://www.earthpoint.us/Townships.aspx
• Portable FS Capture http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=775

Reference links:

• Federal Land Patents http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/
• (Video) Searching Land Patents Part 1 http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/506725/
• (Video) Searching Land Patents Part 3 http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/506740/

Free Rede Videos

Rede has organized some of his videos into 2 CDs & they can be downloaded for free. They work like a website but can be run on your computer, your memory stick or burned to CDs. No internet required to play them, just an internet browser & flash 9 or higher, which is probably already installed on your computer. Just extract (unzip) the “ZIP” file, open “Index.html” and your on your way.

Free Internet Research
(free_genealogy_research.zip 522MB)
http://bit.ly/b8NJUC

• Get The Story: Examples on how to make a story from your sources.
• Online Family Trees: How to use other’s information.
• Online Book: How to use free online books
• Census: How to search HeritageQuest censuses, but the technique works on other sites.
• Newspapers: How to search free online newspapers.
• Land: How to find locations & land records, and plot them on a map.
• Internet Search: Tips on using search engines.
• Tips: Computer tips.
• Useful Links: Free links on the internet.

Repairing Old Photos With GIMP
(gimp_photo_repair.zip 362MB)
http://bit.ly/bnWaeJ

• Introduction: Introduction to GIMP
• Picture File Format: Pros & Cons of different picture formats.
• Scanning & Acquiring A Photo: Loading pictures into GIMP.
• Using The Selection, Curves & Levels Tools: Using different tools in GIMP.
• Wrinkle Repair: Repair wrinkles and other defects with GIMP.
• Fixing A Torn Picture: Fixing a picture torn in half.

Rede has licensed this work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

So feel free to copy, share, remix just respect the license & keep it free.

GenealogyScrounge Has His Second Year Anniversary

Were has the time gone??? Rede and his genealogy channel turns two on October 20th 2009 and has authored over 50 videos. His 1st video went up on October 20, 2007 on http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/ , a couple of months later he started putting non genealogy videos on ShowMeDo http://showmedo.com/videos/?author=3583 , and finally started uploading to YouTube to reach the most people http://www.youtube.com/genealogyscrounge . He started out to teach & demo the tricks of free research, and along the way he was noticed by RootsTelevision, Dick Eastman, Genea-Musings, TraceYourRoots and others.

Finding Hard To Find Locations

Genealogy Videos In The Quartzsite Library

Rede put together a twin pack video CD series, Newspaper Research & Internet Book Search, for the Quarzsite Library that runs on your computer. This will be ideal for people on dialup Internet & can’t view his videos online.

Newspaper Research
Resent Newspapers:

• American Newspapers/NewsBank (may require a non resident library card)
• Local Newspapers Websites
• Legacy.com for obituaries 30 days old or less

Older Newspapers

• ICON: Many free & pay websites, they are clearly marked.
• Utah Digital Newspapers
• Olive Software Newspapers
• Newspaper Archive

Internet Book Search

• Google Books
• Google Scholar
• Heritage Quest (may require a non resident library card)
• Internet Archives
• Family History Archives

Should you wish any other topics, please leave a comment.

Family History Archives

Google Scholar

Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com is a very good site for doing your research. More & better sources for the people you are looking for, without all the hits that won't do you any good.

Rede says "This was a very tough video to make because I just kept getting too much good information and suddenly I was in research mode" ;-)

Free Online Newspapers

I have talked about ICON in the past "ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers", and "Newspapers On The Library of Congress Website". Rede has been working on some tutorials on how to use free online newspapers. ICON is a great place to start http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm . If anyone has problems using any of links off ICON maybe he can make another tutorial video on it.

Online Newspapers - ICON
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1499639/
ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers http://icon.crl.edu/ is a wonderful place to get started looking for your family in your genealogy. What I like the most is the free & pay sites are clearly marked. The database for the individual newspapers can be found here http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm

Online Newspapers - Utah Digital Newspapers
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1508426/
Using online digital newspaper to find gems on your family. In this we are exploring Utah Digital Newspapers http://digitalnewspapers.org/ . Several tips on how to do a successful search.

Online Newspaper - Historic Missouri Newspaper Project
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1514425/
A demo of online newspapers that use the older ActivePaper by Olive Software. In this video I briefly go over the Historic Missouri Newspaper Project http://newspapers.umsystem.edu/ .

Online Newspapers - Chillicothe Constitution Tribune
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/1518694/
In this I use the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune http://chillicothe.newspaperarchive.com/ a free Missouri newspaper from NewspaperArchive. More & more libraries are offering NewspaperArchive so check out your county & state library system to see if it is available. If not ask for it ;-)

Death of X-Drive

On Friday, March 30, 2007 “Online Backup” & Storage & Monday, March 12, 2007 “Need Extra Storage Space” I talked about X-Drive, a free online storage service. Well on January 12, 2009, AOL will permanently close the Xdrive Online Storage Service. If you signed up for it and haven’t already done so you can download everything as a ZIP file.

Mozy is still a good backup service with 2 gig free, but I liked X-Drive as a place to access files when I’m away from home. Box.net http://www.box.net is a good storage place but there is only 1 gig free and with some file size & bandwidth limits. Live SkyDrive http://skydrive.live.com is another one I like as much as X-Drive, SkyDrive has 5 gig free & with larger file size limits than box.net (wonderful for sharing files too big to email).

Rede Videos

Rede has now authored over 20 videos on ShowMeDo, so I added the Author Button for an easy access to the site (scroll down below links). Some of the videos that might interest to the genealogist is Reparing Old Photos with GIMP, and editing sound files that you could use with lectures, podcasts or interviews.

Don't forget aboutt his GenealogyScrounge videos on blip.tv and youtube.

Giving Back - Genealogy Style

Direct Link

Elyse90505 is going a great job of teaching genealogy, it is simple to understand. In this video she talks about giving back, a way to help others. She mentions UsGenWeb, unclaimed persons on facebook, make you own genealogy website, offer to do lookups for others.

IGI Batch Numbers

I don’t know if I haven’t been paying attention or if this is new to http://www.familysearch.org. Please see this page for the explanations of the batch files http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm .

I went to familysearch and ran some names through it and got several types of results:

1. Messages: Record submitted after 1991 by a member of the LDS Church.
2. Messages: Record submitted by a member of the LDS Church.
3. Messages: Record submitted by a member of the LDS Church. (Has a Batch Number)
4. Messages: Extracted birth or christening record for locality listed in the record. (Has a Batch Number)
5. Messages: No source document or additional information exists. LDS Church membership record of a deceased person. (Has a Batch Number)

In my opinion the IGI is still just an index and shouldn't be used as more than just a clue, but only the last 2 came from real records and the others you just can’t verify the accuracy of the information.

New Video From Rede

Labeling Your Digital Images
http://blip.tv/file/1117029
How to label your digital genealogy images so you & others can easily identify them later. There are plenty of free good programs out there, you will just need one that you can change the canvas size & add text. For this I will use GIMP http://gimp.org/ , a good free program.

Embedding Information In A Digital Photo
http://blip.tv/file/1117482
How to embed text in an image with properties

Pro Photo Tools Part 1
http://blip.tv/file/1119127
Pro Photo Tools http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/ , a free program to embed text into your digital photos. This video will go into location name, GPS coordinates, identify location on a map, view images on a map.

Pro Photo Tools Part 2
http://blip.tv/file/1122813
A brief explanation of other text you can embed in a digital photo and other information you can view with Pro Photo Tools http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/ . This will include description, date time, other, categories, shot, camera, and photographer.

Site Search Genealogy Style
http://blip.tv/file/1123735
Using Google Tool Bar's "Site Search" to help you search a website, or use "site:domain.com" in a search engine to speed up you genealogy searches.

Descendant Book Numbering System
http://blip.tv/file/1148456
The Register System is a very easy way to use a descendant book. I hope this video will help you enter the information into your genealogy.

Internet Book Search

Rede has done some videos on Internet book searching worth checking out.

Google Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/927705/
<http://books.google.com/>

Heritage Quest Book Search:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/934918/
http://www.eogen.com/HeritageQuestOnline for availability>

Internet Archive Books:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936597/
<http://www.archive.org/>


Getting Books With Interlibrary Loan:
http://genealogyscrounge.blip.tv/file/936622/
<http://www.worldcat.org/>

Should you be on dialup you can download the WMV file which average 1-2 megs a minute or review some of my older write-ups.
Interlibrary Loan:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2007/10/interlibrary-loan.html

Google Book Search:
http://quartzsitegen.blogspot.com/2006/11/google-book-search.html

Relatively Speaking, Radio Talkshow

I was searching for new genealogy podcasts & stumbled on ksl radio in Utah "Relatively Speaking with Jackie McKay & Mary Slawson". You can listen to it live on the internet Sunday afternoon 4-6 mountain standard time, I believe that would be 3-5 AZ time in the summer (http://www.ksl.com/ , click radio & click listen live). It also has a toll free number you can call in on to ask questions.

Looks like they only save the last 3 episodes for downloading. but you can check it out here:
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=640045


I guess I'm a bit behind the times, it has been around a couple of years.

Spam proof your email address

For those of you that have your own websites I found a cool way of making it harder for spammers to get your email address. Carnegie Mellon University is doing a digitization project with Internet Archive http://www.archive.org. They give you a special URL that you can make a hyperlink into your page. Then people that want to contact you have to transcribe 2 words before they will give them the email address.

All you do is register your email address with http://recaptcha.net/ (no you don't even have to sign up, just click email protection). Then add that link they give you into your webpage.

Read more about it here:
http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/May/may24_recaptcha.shtml
http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html

I'm not much of a script writer, so the only problem I had was making their webpage open in as a new page. But I now have it running on my blog & google pages.