The Tree of Me

This post is a thank you to Geniaus and her blog Genimates . I was profiled on this blog in March 2011.  Earlier this year I was contacted by a Glock (Uralla) relative of my husbands. I was overseas at the time and promised to make contact when I returned. It turns out that this gentleman was going on holidays and would speak to me upon his return. He said he was coming to Coffs Harbour for his holiday which is actually where I live. To cut a long story short we arranged to meet and swapped some information. I asked him how he had found me and was shown the copy of my information on Genimates. So thank you Jill for Genimates.

Yesterday, my copy of Inside History magazine arrived. I sat myself down and forgot to start getting tea. This is always the case when it arrives. I always need to set aside some time to peruse the latest edition and this one was no exception. I was quite surprised when I began reading an article titled Entering the blogosphere by Jill Ball, aka Geniaus . In the article she mentioned 50 blogs which are worth following. These blogs included institutional, society, personal, international and organisation blogs. Amongst the personal blogs there was a recommendation to read and subscribe to this blog. I was quite pleased that I actually follow most of the blogs that Jill mentioned. The remaining few have been added to my blog reader, Feedly . Like Jill, I enjoy reading blog posts and more often than not I can find posts that are relevant in some way to my families, posts that make me wish I had more time to devote to my passion, posts that give me clues to help me in my personal researc...

One of the goals I have set myself this year is to take part in Amy Coffin's 52 weeks of Abundant Genealogy . I'm not sure how I'll go, but if I don't make a start I certainly won't finish! Week 1 - Blogs: Blogging is a great way for genealogists to share information with family members, potential cousins and each other. For which blog are you most thankful? Is it one of the earliest blogs you read, or a current one? What is special about the blog and why should others read it? I have my genealogy blogs in three sections on Feedly - Aus-Genie, British genealogy and Genealogy. When I check Aus-Genie I am always excited to see a post from Geniaus . I first met Geniaus at least 10-12 years ago when she came to Coffs Harbour and presented to a group of Teacher Librarians. I can still remember her talk was presented with a webpage to accompany it. She was enthusiastic and that enthusiasm rubbed off. I didn't know then that we shared another passion, that of g...

Today is the second last day of October and I see that I have only blogged twice. So what have I done that has been keeping me away from blogging? Paid work, work, work! I have not had time to look at my TNG website which I had hoped to have live by now. (Perhaps a job for the Christmas break!) However, I have been able to grab some time to scan documents - something that I really needed to do. I kept putting it off because I wasn't happy with my electronic filing system. Originally I had my files prefixed with the ID number from Reunion for each individual. However, earlier this year I decided to combine some of my Reunion files. I had one family file for my husband but three for my side. I have now combined my three and have spent many hours merging the identical people. I'm now happy with this part of my research. Of course, after merging the files the ID numbers changed so my filing system was useless. I asked Geniaus earlier in the year to describe her filing system....

The holidays have arrived for me and I have set myself a mammoth task. I've finally decided to put my genealogy data and family information on the net. Following the lead of Geniaus and Twigs of Yore who both use The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG ) written by Darren Lythgoe , I decided to bite the bullet and get myself organised. My new website can be found at The Tree of Me . Now for some advice please. Am I being silly? I have not uploaded a Gedcom file as I started using PAF back in the 1980s. I later switched to Reunion for Macintosh . My reason is that I want clean data, with well organised sources. Should I upload a file? However, it could only be for one section of my family as I have three files for my side and one for my husband. I think I will reduce this to a tree for me and a tree for him. My next task for today it to try and get the map feature working as this is one of the features that I really like.

Many thanks to Geniaus for alerting us to this free course run by the National Institute of Genealogical Studies . I have now enrolled in Social Media for the Wise Genealogist beginning March 15, 2011. The course covers social media tools vital to today’s genealogical research including social networking sites, RSS, bookmarking, and more. This course utilizes Drew Smith’s book Social Networking for Genealogists. The internet is changing rapidly, social media is the mode of communication commonly used to connect genealogy researchers around the world. By completing this course the student should become “Social Media Genealogy Wise”!