Saturday, December 26, 2009

New Year, New Ideas for Gena's Genealogy

As we end 2009, I've thought a lot about the coming year and what I would like to accomplish. And that also brings me to think about what I want to bring to my blog and making it worthwhile to those who read it. It's hard when you blog because you don't know what people think or whether anyone even reads your blog. There are so many blogs out there that it's hard to know where your blog rates in the scheme of things.

As I think about my blogging "style" and what I want to convey to my readers, I've decided on some ideas I will implement in 2010. If you are a regular reader to my blog you may know that I tend to try to post article, websites, and tips that will help you in researching your ancestor. My hope is that these ideas will help you and provide new ideas for your research and new discoveries.

So for 2010 I will continue with Church Record Sunday. This is a series that I developed where I write about church records, websites, and other sources having to do with your ancestor's religious records. I try to highlight all kinds of religions and sources.

I will also start a weekly series 52 Weeks of Genealogy Sources (ok, I'm not very good at coming up with snazzy titles). I will explore 1 resource a week and explain it and where you can find it. These will be sources that can be found on the internet, at a library or an archive. My hope is to bring up some sources that you may not have known about.

Peppered into those postings will be social history websites, books I love and other ideas for your genealogy.

I hope you will take this week leading into the New Year and think about your genealogy and how you want it to be different next year. This is the time to think about lines to research, new aspects of genealogy and history that you want to learn about, conference and events to go too. Now is the time to think of what you want to discover this year and start making plans.

I know I will be....

9 comments:

GeneRooter said...

You set a very high bar. Congratulations and Best of Luck!

Celia Lewis said...

And in your spare time, you do ... what?? This is very ambitious, and kudos to you!! I can hardly wait to check out your blogs in 2010! Cheers - Celia

Miriam Robbins said...

Gena, I love your blog, especially your Church Sunday posts (one of my favorite series!). I look forward to what you will be sharing in 2010!

Gini said...

Looking forward to your future posts.

Amy Coffin, MLIS said...

Looking forward to reading your blog in 2010. I can't wait to see the 52 sources posts.

Karen Packard Rhodes said...

I hope you can shed some light on sources for church records for me. When I went back to the church I (and my husband) attended as a child, teenager, and young adult, I was treated extremely shabbily, like they were convinced I was an identity thief up to no good when all I wanted was some genealogical information on my aunt and on my husband's grandfather.

That really left a bad taste in my mouth and put me off pursuing church records.

Good luck to you, and I will be interested to see what you have to say on every day, not just on Sunday!

Cindy said...

Gena I've been away for a while and look forward to reading all your new topics and tips in the new year!

Gena Philibert-Ortega said...

Karen-

I'm so sorry about your experience. I think we live in a world that is so worried about identity theft we've gone a little crazy. I always think it's funny when states don't want to release death records. What kind of identity theft would a person do with a death record? And before people start emailing me, yes I realize it's in the realm of possibilities but it's very small compared to the way identity theft is usually done.

A large amount of identity theft is done by someone the victim knows. Then we have a large amount done by those on the computer stealing credit cards numbers and such. I doubt they are paying to go to the county recorder's office to purchase a death certificate....

Anyway...as I try to access records I try to be as kind and humble as possible. If an entity is weary of letting me have the information, I point out what I already know about the person. That way I try to present it as I know most of the information anyway, I'm just verifing it.

I try to write first and then if it is a place I can visit, ask when it is a good time to do that. Technicially places like churches, funeral homes, etc don't have to give you any information. We all know that they have living people to take care of and that our requests aren't their priority. So I try to make it as easy as I can for them to give it to me. In the case of a church, a donation can't hurt.

I hope you don't give up Karen, try again but write a letter and provide a small donation. Sometimes people have bad days.

Gena

Evelyn Yvonne Theriault said...

I have found having series - as you mention - is good for a blog even if there are interruptions. One of the main features of my blog is my postcard collection and I find that people enjoy it when the postcards are organized by theme (e.g. Montreal in the time of tramways). It helps me too because my blog feels more organized to me and it encourages me to keep creating different types of posts.
thanks for a useful article
Evelyn in Monteral