{"id":4,"date":"2005-07-27T12:41:26","date_gmt":"2005-07-27T17:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/randomgenealogy.com\/randomgenealogycom-the-history\/"},"modified":"2019-07-11T19:41:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T01:41:15","slug":"about-random-genealogy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/randomgenealogy.com\/about-random-genealogy\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: May 2018<\/strong> – Please see our Privacy Policy<\/a> changes.<\/p>\n

17 August 2010 – we have an update.<\/p>\n

Please see this post: An update for Random Genealogy and me<\/a><\/p>\n

For Random Genealogy in the past:<\/strong><\/p>\n

13 December 2005<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, Random Genealogy has slowly evolved into sort of a genealogy news reporting service (although at times it seems its turned into CNN – Cemetery News Network<\/strong>), where I find myself more and more mentioning media coverage of genealogy and genealogists. It’s not that I was steering it that way, it just sort of evolved into it – I don’t want to overlap or duplicate other genealogy websites, and the US and Canadian media is really starting to cover genealogy a lot more (in areas like the UK, genealogy is already covered in the mainstream news). You’re starting to see more genealogy columns in newspapers and magazines, as well as mainstream coverage. Although it was already happening (and I didn’t realize it at first), you’re going to see RG become more media-coverage oriented – I’m going to try and point you towards regular genealogy columnists in newspapers and the like, and I’m going to try and point you towards mainstream media coverage of genealogy – it won’t be hard, since as I said, the site was already headed that way.<\/p>\n

For the most part, we’ll avoid these topics (since they are covered by the sites listed next to them):<\/p>\n

Humor and obscure genealogy information: The Genealogue<\/a>
\nArticles and in-depth analysis of genealogy methods and information: Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

As always, everything genealogy-related: Cyndi’s List<\/a> .<\/p>\n

Fair Use and Copyright<\/strong> We excerpt articles to report about them, which should get people interested in reading them on the original site – this is covered under the ‘Fair Use’ clause of US copyright laws. We try to excerpt the bare minimum to get the point across (to get people interested), and in all cases we present this information as an excerpt, while displaying a prominent link to the originating site. We are not out to replace or duplicate any content in full. Our goal is to increase genealogy awareness, and we do this by pointing people towards the media’s coverage of genealogy. In theory, if various media sites see an upswing in genealogy stories being read on their websites, the chances are good that they will continue publishing genealogy stories, and\/or increase the frequency of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you are the owner of material we publish excerpts from: Even though what we publish is covered under Fair Use, if you wish us to remove the material, you only have to contact us<\/a> and we will remove the material.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A very brief history of randomgenealogy.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

The site may have technically come into being on 26 July 2005, but it owes its existence to a small mailing list I started several years ago.<\/p>\n

I like to collect random bits of genealogy information, whether it’s humor, news, trivia, or anything else that I find interesting. I started emailing these little tidbits to a few friends and family members (completely at random, of course). I would put them together in an email and send them out. Sometimes a week or two would go by (at one point a month). People would ask me questions, and I wrote a bit here and there to cover their questions.<\/p>\n

Recently, I found out that the 20 or so people I had on my mailing list, had in fact been forwarding it to several other people, who also found the tidbits amusing or interesting (and they perhaps even forwarded it to others). Somebody offered to host a site, if I went out and registered a domain name, and set everything else up.<\/p>\n

I realized it would be a lot easier to collect and disseminate this information, if I did in fact set a site up, and so there you have randomgenealogy.com<\/p>\n

What you will find here, is humor, obscure genealogy information, overlooked genealogy sites and software, and interesting genealogy-related news that shows up in the media every now and then.<\/p>\n