Genealogy Events

Upcoming Genealogy Events

Do You (Canadians) Care Who Knows Your Secrets in 2098?

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Do you care who knows your secrets in 2098? is another article about the Candian Census, and this time around being able to opt out of having the information revealed in 2098. It’s by Peter Van Harten,writing for the The Hamilton Spectator, and it gets into some of the issues faced by Canadians over just how much information they want revealed for people in the future to see (whether genealogists or family members). With so much of this information coming online and being easily accessed, and with the questions expanding quite a bit, it’s fast becoming a hot topic.

Virtual Tour of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

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The USGS (US Geological Survey, not the US Genealogical Survey!) and Google have teamed up to provide a virtual tour of the “Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906”, and it helps put things in perspective. For many genealogists who have done research in regards to that area of California, it’s caused quite a few problems. It’s one of those major events where many important records are lost (not just genealogy-related but historical as well), people are uprooted, people died and were buried in unmarked graves, etc.

You can access it at the USGS site

Internet Genealogy Community Study is Back!

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The Internet Genealogy Community Study and its blog are back in action, starting up this week (monday to be precise).

Kylie Veale and her site, are, in her words, An Australian ‘Internet Studies’ PhD student researching online genealogy within the broader context of hobbyist Internet usage. How do genealogists use the Internet? What are the consequences of the development of genealogy as a significant Internet-based activity?

She has now published a “rolling draft” of her Thesis Outline, located here, where she breaks everything out (what else would an outline be?). It’s very interesting that while genealogy has spawned more than a few degrees, this is one of the few, if not the only, degree/thesis based around the study of genealogists themselves, and how they use the internet.

It’s a great premise, after all, the two most revolutionary things to occur in genealogy in our lifetimes have been the advent of personal computers and access to the internet.

Ancestry’s Newsletter Morphs Into Blog

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Look’s like Ancestry’s Yearly/Weekly/Daily NewsJournal/Newsletter thing has morphed into a blog.

The title, “24/7 Family History Circle!” refers to them spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, thinking up ways on how to get you to use Ancestry.com. I’m kidding, I jest, I have the “Super-Duper Membership” package, where my paycheck goes straight to Ancestry’s offices to cover my monthly bill. Again, just kidding.

To be honest, it’s interactive, that’s a good thing, and I like the look, it’s a lot cleaner than the old newsletter thingy, and easier to read.

As much as I kid them here and elsewhere, I do believe they have tried (and succeeded in many ways) to improve the look of their services, and the new blog is a reflection of that. When you are on dial-up, you want as little clutter as possible, and way too many genealogy services sites are way too busy, both from a loading perspective, and from a “where do I go from here” perspective, and Ancestry and their newsletter used to be that way.

A friend who is into useability-type stuff, both web and print, commented on the blog and their site and said they have got some good designers that paid attention to complaints about clutter and load times.