The Genealogist and Web 2.0 - the best blogging
Published: Thursday, October 2, 2008 3:54 PM CDT
The Family Historian
By Mary Alice
Dell - Genealogical Society of Kendall County
Are you a blogger?
Are you a part of Web 2.0? If you have been involved in genealogy on the
Internet for very long, you probably have been a blogger and not realized
it, and hence part of the Web 2.0 Internet. That is because a forum (or
message board) is one form of a blog.
So what is a blog? It is
merely the posting of information on the Internet with the provision for
others to add their comments. We genealogists have been doing that with
our surname message boards and lists for years.
When I first heard about Blogs, I was not interested as I had
dismissed them as little better than the old party telephone lines where
people gossiped about their neighbors.
I associated blogs with the
bashing of political figures, entertainers and anyone else in the news. I
considered blogs only as another negative means of
communication.
So, I almost “threw out the baby with the bathwater”
until I discovered there are positive, informative blogs.
Among the
good ones are genealogy blogs, some of which have taken the format of
newsletters such as that of Dick Eastman Online Genealogy Newsletter (http://blog.eogn.com/).
Dick posts
the latest information on genealogical happenings. The reader has the
ability to comment on the item he has presented. Dick will be the speaker
at the San Antonio Genealogical Society seminar in November. For
registration form and information visit www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txsaghs2/Pages/News.htm.
There
are many other blogs, such as dearmyrtle (blog.dearmyrtle.com/), offered
by those prominent on the lecture and conference circuit. They are filled
with information, research hints and discussions on subjects of interest
to genealogists.To find genealogy blogs Google those
words, consult cyndislist or blogfinder.genealogue.com/.
MY
FAMILY BLOGS
There are also the family blogs, such as those
sponsored by MyFamily. These are closed blogs and only those invited to
participate can view the postings.
They are ideal for families who
want to share genealogical information.
I currently belong to two
family blogs, one for the Newsoms and the other the Bentleys, both
concentrating on southeast Kentucky research.
MyFamily can be a
blog setting for other than families. We set one up last spring for the 48
members of our genealogy course. Everyone posted their picture and some
information about themselves.
As instructors, we posted the weekly
homework assignments. Students could ask questions or make comments about
the material we covered. Many posted information about new Web sites or
research ideas.
Ideas expressed on the site resulted in two
post-course sessions on searching the census and on computer tricks useful
for genealogists. We even shared a few recipes, just for the fun of
it!
Many families or individuals working on family lines are
setting up private collaborative Web sites where they can add their
information to a continually growing data base.
Wikis are another
part of Web 2.0 (which is defined as the socially interactive Internet -
you don’t just visit a site, you participate in it).
The best known
of the wikis is the Wikipedia, which has been compiled entirely by the
public and as a result is comparable in accuracy and completeness to
commercial encyclopedias.
Many encyclopedias are appearing devoted
to one subject or hobby. And of course there is one for
genealogists.
The Family History Library staff has one in the beta
stage now that promises to be outstanding. It is intended as a “how to
successfully research a kind of record or subject or place”
encyclopedia.
Genealogists skilled in researching certain areas
will be able to add their expertise in making this a storehouse of useful
data.
FREE FAMILYSEARCH DATA NOW ON LINE
And speaking of the
FHL staff, their technicians are digitizing books and other library
holdings at an amazing rate. As soon as the information has been indexed,
it is being placed on their FamilySearch Record Search Web site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html.
When
you visit the site, click on the link to view the current collection, then
go back to the opening page and enter the name of your ancestor if you
feel he may be in one of the data bases.
More volunteers are needed
for the indexing project, and there is a link to the site that will tell
you more about that. Spending a few hours a week helping with this project
may not only benefit you as records of your ancestors are made available,
but may help many others with their research.
There is no charge
for the information posted on a FamilySearch site.
Don Anderson,
director of the Family History Library and Worldwide Support, who was the
keynote speaker at a recent seminar we attended, said that all the
genealogical records now on the Internet are probably less than 1 percent
of those which exist.
New data are being posted at an amazing
exponential rate and is changing the way we do research. He warned that as
more data are made available, we will learn new information about our
ancestors that may change our previous conclusions about our family
lines.
We may find that many of our brick walls are there because
we were pursuing the wrong family line. Challenging thought!
It’s
time to become socially active on the Internet - become a blogger, or at
least a blog reader.