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Use the Latest Online Resources and Social Networking in Your Genealogy Research
HOW TO…
The Internet has grown and evolved over the past few years beyond our wildest expectations. New resources and tools have become available and genealogists have seized the opportunities they present to learn more, create content, communicate with other people, collaborate with other researchers, and expand their research horizons. This chapter provides an introduction to the most important Internet-based resources available to genealogists at this writing. Other innovative Internet-based resources will be introduced in the future that will become an integral part of your research toolkit. In the meantime, it is important that you take the time to explore those that are currently available to you.
Locate and Use Blogs
The term blog is short for “web log.” A blog can be created and maintained by an individual, somewhat like a diary or journal, with regular entries being added with commentaries, descriptions of events in which he or she is participating, and possibly graphics and video. Blogs are also popular for companies wishing to communicate with the public.
After the introduction of blogging technology, genealogists quickly began blogging on a wide array of subjects: their research experiences; surname research; geographical research; record types and/or methodologies; cemeteries; ethnic and religious research; obituaries; technology; photography; preservation; and more. Unlike message boards and mailing lists that focus their attention on similar subjects, a blog primarily contains the writings and supplemental media of a single author. Readers may often add comments if the author enables that feature. Genealogy blogs offer a tremendous amount of information to the reader, and you will find blogs that mirror your interests so closely that you will eagerly anticipate every new entry.
Each blog entry is referred to as a post or posting, and postings are displayed in reverse chronological order—from most recent to oldest. Archives of older entries are typically stored in groups by month, and the majority of blogs incorporate a search facility that allows you to locate postings with the term(s) you enter. In addition, a blogger will often try to organize his or her postings by adding one or more labels or keywords, also referred to as tags, to each posting. These help to organize blog postings about a single subject and quickly locate all such entries.
You can quickly establish your own blog. Free blogging services are available on the Internet, and they employ simple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) formatting similar to what is available in a word processor. Three of the free blogging services are: Blogger (www.blogger.com), which is a product of Google; WordPress (http://wordpress.org); and LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com). Figure 14-1 shows a Blogger page into which you type your blog content. Notice the toolbar over the body of the text and the similarity to that of a word processor. Note, too, the labels box at the bottom. This is where you enter the tag(s) that you want to be associated with this blog.
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FIGURE 14-1 Blogger is a free blogging service on the Internet, and this is the WYSIWYG template it uses.
Now that you know what a blog is, how do you find those that might be of interest to you? There are two excellent resources to help locate blogs. One is the Genealogy Blog Finder at http://blogfinder.genealogue.com, shown in Figure 14-2. Another is GeneaBloggers at www.geneabloggers.com, which lists blogs in alphabetical sequence and by type (or category), and which also includes Blog Resources, a collection of educational resources for bloggers.
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FIGURE 14-2 Genealogy Blog Finder is an excellent tool to use to locate blogs of interest, by category.
Individual blogs are as different from one another as snowflakes. Each author communicates his or her ideas on a subject and supplements them with other media. The Irish Family History blog at www.irishfamilyhistory.ie/blog, shown in Figure 14-3, is more text based, while Steve’s Genealogy Blog at http://stephendanko.com/blog/ contains textual descriptions of his Polish research, scanned images of documents, and transcriptions.
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FIGURE 14-3 The Irish Family History blog
You can subscribe to a blog by examining its webpage for the subscription button or link. Look for an orange icon labeled RSS (Really Simply Syndication), a link labeled “Comments RSS,” or some notation about subscribing. Click the icon or link and you will usually be given the option to add a link to this blog to your customized Google home page or add it to your favorite blog reader, such as Google Reader. (You must have a Google account in order to customize your Google home page, and you must be logged in before you can add a blog to Google Reader.)
Use Wikis and Collaborate with Others
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of a collection of interlinked web pages using a web browser and software embedded in the wiki. The term wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for “fast” or “quick.” A wiki is usually the result of collaborative work among many people. A person starts an informational article entry on a new web page in a wiki, and then other people contribute to it and/or edit it. More details may be added, graphics may be inserted, and source citations and attributions may be added. While not every contributor may be an authority on the subject, the group collaboration tends to increase the quality and authority of the content. A wiki is created and edited using wiki software on the Internet. There are several software providers, and each uses a WYSIWYG template. You are probably already familiar with the largest wiki on the Web, Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org.
There are several very important genealogical wikis on the Internet that you will want to use:
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FIGURE 14-4 The main page of the FamilySearch Research Wiki
Enjoy Podcasts and Online Radio Broadcasts
The growth of transmission bandwidth on the Internet has allowed for faster and more data-intensive communications. Online radiocasts have been available for a number of years. There are two types of broadcasts, podcasts and live radio broadcasts.
A podcast is a recorded audio program that you can listen to at the broadcaster’s website, download from the same website, or subscribe to and receive the file electronically from iTunes or other sites. There are a number of great podcasts that you can access:
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FIGURE 14-5 The podcasts page of The National Archives (UK)
There are also some live radio broadcasts being produced for genealogy. Two very prominent ones are:
Both of these live programs are recorded and audio files are available for later download.
Learn More About Genealogical Research with Internet Videos
Bandwidth growth has also made it possible for explosive growth in the availability of video files on the Internet, and this also stretches to genealogy. You will find that there are several places where you can access instructional videos for free or for a small fee:
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FIGURE 14-6 YouTube contains many excellent genealogical lectures and related video files.
Attend Live Webinars and Access Recorded Webinars
The webinar is becoming one of the fast growing resources of the Internet, and genealogists are actively involved. The time and expense involved with attending one class or an entire conference has grown. People are more and more willing to attend online educational classes, and this includes webinars.
A webinar is an online training class, most frequently presented live on the Internet in real time. These virtual classes can include presentations created in PowerPoint or Keynote software with accompanying audio and video of the instructor. The presenter can share with the audience anything that he or she can bring up on the computer screen. Students can ask questions via a chat room message board, via audio in the webinar, or via telephone call in, depending on the webinar software used and the presenter’s preference. Most webinars are also recorded for later access and playback.
You usually have to register in advance to attend a live webinar. Many are free while others are accessible for a fee. You will receive an email confirmation of your registration that contains a link to the webinar. Be sure to keep this email until the webinar is over. The organizer usually will send a reminder email during the week before the event. Calculate your time zone and when you will be attending. On the day of the webinar, use the confirmation email you received and click the link to connect to the online meeting room. Make sure you arrive early. Most webinars are limited to the first 1,000 attendees to arrive. And yes, some genealogy webinars are that popular!
When you go to the virtual meeting room, you will be asked to download and install a small piece of webinar software. This is a temporary program file that will be deleted from your computer when you disconnect from the webinar. You will listen to the audio portion of the webinar using your computer speakers, via headset, or by telephone (if that option is available).
There are many webinar resources available to you. First of all, GeneaWebinars at http://blog.geneawebinars.com is a blog that publishes news about genealogy webinars and a calendar. This site will alert you to upcoming events and will also allow you to home in on webinar providers whose previous webinars were recorded. You can always go back to download and enjoy them. Some of the best genealogy webinars available are listed here:
Look for other webinars at the GeneaWebinars site and take advantage of these excellent online learning opportunities.
Learn About and Use the Latest Social Media Resources
A social network can be defined as a social structure consisting of individuals who are acquainted with one another and share some type of relationship. This may be a friendship, a familial or professional relationship, or some other type of connection. Regardless, the individuals share some common interest or other link. A family is a social network. A church is a social network. A workplace is a social network, as is a neighborhood, a school, and more. We could go on and on to identify and describe many, many other types of social networks.
The Internet provides us with electronic tools with which to communicate with other people. Starting with email, mailing lists, and message boards, genealogists have been networking with one another to expand our research reach, to share information, and to collaborate with one another. However, the past several years have seen rapid development of new social media—those electronic tools that facilitate communication and interaction with other people. That includes computer-based tools and mobile device–based tools. Let’s explore the most prolific of these social media resources that are available at this writing.
Facebook
Myspace (www.myspace.com) was the most popular social networking site in the world in June of 2006. Its main competitor, Facebook (www.facebook.com), overtook it in April of 2008, and Myspace has since been sold and has substantially declined in the social network rankings. Facebook had more than 750 million active users as of July 2011. It also has attracted a huge number of users among genealogists, particularly in the English-speaking world.
Facebook allows you to create a profile for yourself, engage in live chat with other users who you have accepted as “friends,” post messages to those friends, upload photos and group them into “album” collections, create and join groups of people sharing a common interest, play online games, and otherwise stay in touch with one another. It is not unusual for a genealogist to post a message asking for opinions and suggestions about a research problem. The collaboration and support can be very helpful. (See Figure 14-7.) The site is free. There is also a mobile app for Facebook.
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FIGURE 14-7 A portion of a sample Facebook page
Genealogy Wise
Genealogy Wise (www.genealogywise.com) is another free social networking site, and it began operations in 2009. The National Institute for Genealogical Studies (NIGS) acquired the site in 2010. Like Facebook, Genealogy Wise is a social networking site that allows you to set up your own web page, invite people to be your “friends” on the site, upload photos, chat, and more. Of particular interest are the nearly 4,000 user-defined Groups on the site (see Figure 14-8). These groups include photographs, a discussion forum (message board), a common wall for user comments, and external links. You can visit a group and/or you can join it. By joining a group, you can always quickly find it again whenever you log in by clicking the link to My Groups.
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FIGURE 14-8 A portion of the Genealogy Wise page for the Wales and Welsh Genealogy Group
NIGS is affiliated with the University of Toronto in Canada and offers high quality genealogy courses and certificate programs in a variety of genealogy-focused areas.
Google+
Google+, also written as Google Plus, debuted on the Internet at https://plus.google.com in June of 2011. Within one month, more than 20 million people had joined and begun using it. Google+ is a new social networking site, owned and operated by the same company that runs the ubiquitous Google search engine.
Google+ is free and is another Google resource available when you log in to Google. All you need to do to start is to register to use Google+. It allows you to log in and create a profile for yourself and upload photographs (see Figure 14-9). You can also invite friends, but, unlike Facebook and Genealogy Wise, you assign them to one or more “circles.” The predefined circles are Friends, Family, and Acquaintances. You can, however, also create new circles. People can be added to circles in multiple ways, including via drag-and-drop.
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FIGURE 14-9 A portion of a Google+ page
Google+ on its website features a facility call Hangouts. Hangouts allow you to create or participate in a live video chat with up to nine other people. Sparks is a facility that allows you to search for an interest by keyword, just like in the search engine, and then add that interest as a standing link on your Google+ page.
The mobile app for Google+ has a feature called Huddle. This feature allows you to define the addresses of the people you communicate with most often and exchange text messages with them from your cellular phone all at once.
Twitter
Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a social networking website that offers a messaging or micro-blogging service. Twitter was launched in July of 2006 and has experienced explosive growth. At the time of this writing, estimates are that there are at least 200 million Twitter users in the world, and that approximately 350 billion tweets are delivered each day.
Twitter users send short text messages, or posts, up to 140 characters in length, which are known as tweets. Messages are addressed and grouped together using what are known as hashtags. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the “#” character. Corporations and organizations define a hashtag for themselves and begin using it to help group traffic. They also can submit it to a directory where it can be listed and people can find it.
What do Twitter and hashtags have to do with genealogy? A genealogical society that is planning a conference may be interested in allowing attendees and interested parties to exchange messages in real time about the event. The conference planners can define a hashtag to identify the conference. They will then probably publicize that there is a Twitter hashtag for the conference, and people can then send tweets addressed to that hashtag. All of the tweets will be grouped together so that, when an interested person searches for the hashtag in Twitter, he or she will be able to see all the recent tweets made that contain that hashtag. Please note that a tweet can contain multiple hashtags, and that makes the posting available to search using multiple terms.
A common use of Twitter by genealogists occurs when they attend seminars or conferences. If there is a hashtag set up for that event, they may tweet short messages about their experiences. For example, perhaps a lecturer makes what I feel is a great point or observation. I might take out my cellular phone (which is on vibrate, of course), start the Twitter app, and send a quote of the speaker to the hashtag for that event. I also might add a hashtag of #genealogy so that anyone searching for #genealogy would see my tweet.
You can learn all about Twitter at a number of places on the Internet. One good starting point is The Twitter Guide Book at Mashable.com (http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/). This primer includes text, video tutorials, instructions on how to find people on Twitter, and more.
Summary
We’ve covered a huge amount of ground in this chapter. It is important to recognize that technology does not stand still. New resources are being developed all the time. When I began working on this edition of the book, there was no such thing as Google+. As of this writing, there are more than 40 million users!
You will want to learn more about social networking and take advantage of these dynamic new tools. Social Networking for Genealogists, written by Drew Smith (Genealogy Publishing Co., 2009) is a landmark book that explains in detail some of these resources.
Our journey together has taken us from things we find at home to many types of documents, into libraries and archives, to courthouses and cemeteries, into databases and searching the Internet, and finally to electronic tools and social networking resources. We have discussed using your critical thinking skills and experience to analyze evidence. We examined the reasons for and formats of good source citations. Along the way, I have tried to instill the idea that you must combine the traditional research materials and methods with the use of electronic resources. Blending these different types of resources together can accelerate your research. However, it is essential to take the time to carefully analyze what you find and to develop reliable hypotheses.
You now have built a foundation for performing scholarly research and are poised for success. I urge you to enjoy the thrill of the chase and to savor the people and experiences you encounter on your journey of discovery.