Seattle Genealogical Society President's Blog

Have you got a Genealogy Bucket List?

2012-01-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

Jill Bell, author of the Geniaus blog, wrote about creating a genealogy "bucket list" yesterday. She's preparing for a trip to Salt Lake City and RootsTech2012 as an official blogger. Here's her suggested list of questions to use in creating your list:

The list should be annotated in the following manner:

Things you would like to do or find: Bold Type

Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type

You are encouraged to add extra comments after each item

1. The genealogy conference I would most like to attend is...
2. The genealogy speaker I would most like to hear and see is...
The geneablogger I would most like to meet in person is...
The genealogy writer I would most like to have dinner with is...
The genealogy lecture I would most like to present is....
I would like to go on a genealogy cruise that visits....
The photo I would most like to find is...
The repository in a foreign land I would most like to visit is...
The place of worship I would most like to visit is...
The cemetery I would most like to visit is ......
The ancestral town or village I would most like to visit is......
The brick wall I most want to smash is...
The piece of software I most want to buy is....
The tech toy I want to purchase next is .....
The expensive book I would most like to buy is...
The library I would most like to visit is.....
The genealogy related book I would most like to write is....
The genealogy blog I would most like to start would be about....
The journal article I would most like to write would be about...
The ancestor I most want to meet in the afterlife is....

Is there anything else on your Genealogy Bucket List?

A number of bloggers have posted their bucket lists. You can see their responses (and Jill's) at

Geniaus: The Bucket List Geneameme - The Posts

What does your bucket list look like?

How can completing such a list help you organize your genealogy research?

Resolutions for 2012?

2011-12-31T16:24:00.000-08:00

Do you make New Year's resolutions? Do you make resolutions specifically related to your genealogy hobby?
I'm not one for making resolutions, but this week I've been reading resolutions--for both last year and this year--written by other genealogy bloggers.
They go from the very simple--Thomas MacEntee's "Abundance"--to a detailed list--see Everyday Genealogy's list here.
I'm thinking I should just take the first item in Everyday Genealogy's list and see if I can make progress on it. Pattie's #1 resolution is:
I resolve to catch up on my filing and get rid of clutter.
It's highly unlikely that I could accomplish this one task, given the state of my genealogy files, notebooks, loose notes, etc., but it's definitely worth a try.
I would certainly love it if more Seattle area genealogists would ascribe to some of her other resolutions, like:
    2. I resolve to join a genealogical society (specifically SGS!)
    4. I resolve to submit an article to a local genealogy or state newsletter/ quarterly. (the SGS Bulletin, of course!)
    7. I resolve to attend one county or state-level genealogical event this year. (preferably the SGS Spring Seminar with George Morgan)
What genealogy resolutions have you made for 2012?
If you share them with other readers of this blog, we'll try to help you stay on track this year.

Holiday Wishes

2011-12-18T21:42:00.000-08:00

Genealogist's Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas
When all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even my spouse.

The dining room table with clutter was spread
With pedigree charts and with letters which said...
"Too bad about the data for which you wrote;
Sank in a storm on an ill-fated boat."

Stacks of old copies of wills and such
Were proof that my work had become too much.
Our children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

And I at my table was ready to drop
From work on my album with photos to crop.
Christmas was here, and such was my lot
That presents and goodies and toys I'd forgot.

Had I not been busy with grandparents' wills,
I'd not have forgotten to shop for such thrills,
While others bought gifts to bring Christmas cheers,
I'd spent time researching those birth dates and years.

While I was thus musing about my sad plight,
A strange noise on the lawn gave me such a great fright.
Away to the window I flew in a flash,
Tore open the drapes and yanked up the sash.

When what with my wondering eyes should appear,
But an overstuffed sleigh and eight small reindeer.
Up to the house top the reindeer they flew,
With a sleigh full of toys and 'ole Santa Claus, too.

And then in a twinkle, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of thirty-two hoofs.
As I drew in my head, and bumped it on the sash,
Down the cold chimney fell Santa--KER-RASH!

"Dear" Santa had come from the roof in a wreck,
And tracked soot on the carpet, (I could wring his short neck!)
Spotting my face, good 'ole Santa could see
I had no Christmas spirit you'd have to agree.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work
And filled all the stockings, (I felt like a jerk).
Here was Santa, who'd brought us such gladness and joy:
When I'd been too busy for even one toy.

He spied my research on the table all spread
"A genealogist!" He cried! (My face was all red!)
"Tonight I've met many like you," Santa grinned,
As he pulled from his sack a large book he had penned.

I gazed with amusement--the cover it read
Genealogy Lines for Which You Have Plead.
"I know what it's like as a genealogy bug."
He said as he gave me a great Santa hug.

"While the elves make the sleighful of toys I now carry,
I do some research in the North Pole Library!
A special treat I am thus able to bring,
To genealogy folk who can't find a thing."

"Now off you go to your bed for a rest,
I'll clean up the house from this genealogy mess."
As I climbed up the stairs full of gladness and glee,
I looked back at Santa who'd brought much to me.

While settling in bed, I heard Santa's clear whistle,
To his team, which then rose like the down of a thistle.
And I heard him exclaim as he flew out of sight,
"Family history is Fun! Merry Christmas! Goodnight!"

Gathering data from living relatives

2011-12-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

I know we've all wished a thousand times that we'd thought to ask our grandparents and/or great-grandparents about their personal histories. I'm now realizing how little I know about my own parents' lives. In digging through both of their military records, I'm discovering that what I thought I knew is not true. And it's very frustrating.
In last week's Hickory County [MO] Index newspaper, I came across a small article that was undoubtedly submitted by the Missouri State Agricultural Extension Service. They suggest talking with your family during holiday gatherings about their lives. This, of course, is what I suggested in my last blog post.
But wait; there's more!
The Greene County Extension Center has published a 20-page printable PDF called "A History of Me" that's available at http://extension.missouri.edu/greene for anyone to download and use. I'm thinking about printing it out and sending it with our Christmas letter to all my relatives. I have no idea whether any of them will sit down and write down some answers or not, but at least it might get them talking/thinking about information to leave for future generations.
Come to think of it, maybe I should sit down and complete one of these booklets about my life for my kids.

A Genealogy Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

By now you all know that I follow Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings blog. Last weekend his "Saturday night genealogy fun" topic was Thanksgiving. You can read his post here.
As usual, Randy's challenge got me thinking.
What genealogy resources am I most thankful for? ....people, published works, digital databases....?
My answers to Randy's challenge are:
(1) my maternal grandmother, who helped write a history of the Boone family and got me interested in helping her with Pennsylvania resources;
(2) any collections of "minor" or previously "hidden" records for my geographical areas of interest;
(3) FamilySearch for the zillions of records they make available for FREE, especially those that can be accessed digitally.
Expanding this train of thought a bit, what am I most thankful for about SGS?
(1) our wonderful dedicated volunteers who continually amaze me by their willingness to take on hard tasks and keep SGS rolling;
(2) the support of our landlady, Verla Kwiram, who has graciously kept our rent stable for the last 4+ years;
(3) members who attend our programs and share their stories, allowing us all to keep on learning.
Thanks to all of you who keep SGS running and keep us all learning.
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and have lots to be thankful for.

RootsTech 2012 Opportunities

2011-11-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't noticed, each of the "official" RootsTech 2012 bloggers have been given one free RootsTech registration to give away for free.
Most of them seem to have pretty much the same rules--check out the RootsTech schedule at http://www.rootstech.org/schedule and then email the blogger about a session you'd like to attend.
RootsTech 2012 will be held in Salt Lake City on February 2-4. I know a couple of SGS members attended last year's inaugural RootsTech conference and were quite impressed with the speakers and sessions.
Act fast and you may be able to win free registration to this year's conference at:
http://www.luxegen.ca/genealogy/rootstech-2012-win-free-registration [ends tonight]
http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/11/win-free-registration-to-rootstech-2-4.html [ends tonight]
http://geniaus.blogspot.com/2011/11/rootstech-2012-official-blogger.html [ends Nov 16]
Several of the official bloggers' contests have already ended. Sorry. I missed them, too.

How do you learn?

2011-11-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

SGS tries to offer a wide range of educational programs for our members, but only a small fraction of you ever attend any of these offerings. There seems to be a core group of members who attend our classes and presentations, but the vast majority of you stay home.
My question to you is--Why? Is it because we're not offering programs of interest to you? Is the timing or location inconvenient? Do you prefer learning from books or online rather than in a lecture setting?
While we are in a transition period (our Director of Education, Cary Bright, has resigned and we are searching for a replacement), I would like to know more about why more members don't attend our educational offerings. Please take a moment to answer the brief survey in the upper righthand corner of this page, leave a comment below, or email me directly at sgspresident@gmail.com.
Oh, and BTW, this Thursday's technology presentation focuses on webinars and podcasts. You'll be amazed at the number of FREE online offerings available.

Are you in my photo?

2011-10-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

I just received notice of a new photo sharing website called "Are you in my photo?" It's at http://areyouinmyphoto.com/The purpose of the website is to allow people to post photos containing unknown people, places or things and have other people identify those unknowns for them. Their theory is that most of the photos we have are not unique; there were multiple copies printed. If the people holding the multiple copies can be connected, there's a much better chance the people (or places or things) in the photos can be identified.
In order to post photos, you have to sign up for either a free or paid account. Paid accounts allow you to enter contests, though I didn't see anything posted about contests yet.
When Dan Lynch spoke here on behalf of HQRL two years ago he encouraged the development of this type of website. It's also something SGS has considereed--posting photos of unknowns and asking for help identifying them. If this site takes off, it could be a real boon to identifying all those unlabeled photos we all have.
Check it out and share your thoughts.

October is Family History Month!

2011-10-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Family History Month! As the days get shorter, wetter and cooler, it's time to return our attention to family history. What projects have you got lined up to accomplish this month? What topics do you need to learn more about? What "brick walls" do you need to get over, under, around or through?

If you haven't completed your research into your military ancestors, by all means plan on attending the SGS Fall Seminar on Saturday, October 22nd. In honor of the 150th anniversary of the start of the US Civil War, the entire day will focus on U.S. MILITARY RECORDS. The full list of presentations and registration materials are available on our website at http://seattlegenealogicalsociety.org/content/2011-fall-seminar-schedule. Note that the registration deadline is Oct. 14th for "regular price" and lunch orders. This year you can register online and pay through PayPal if you'd like. The links are on our website. Please invite your friends, as our seminars generate essential revenue for SGS.

SGS will also be holding a special LIBRARY OPEN HOUSE this month on Sunday, Oct. 16th. Do you have friends, cousins, or neighbors who might be interested in getting started on their family trees? Help SGS attract new members by inviting them to stop by on Oct. 16th. We'll have experienced researchers available to help them fill out family group sheets and ancestor charts, as well as experienced desk volunteers to provide tours of the SGS library. If you'd like to help, please email Michelle at sgsvolunteers@gmail.com.

There are several special giveaways going on right now in honor of Family History Month. Ancestry.com is giving away a prize each day through Oct 15th in honor of their 15th anniversary. You need to register each day at http://www.ancestry.com/15anniversary to be eligible. Family Tree Magazine is also offering daily drawings in their "Daily Deal & Giveaway" at http://www.familytreeuniversity.com/daily-deal-giveaway. Our own Director of Volunteers won today! If you're a fan of geni.com, they're giving away one-month "pro" subscriptions each day this month. You can check out their contest at http://www.geni.com/blog/celebrating-family-history-month-370597.html.

October is also Archives Month. While SGS has lots of archival material, it's not very accessible or organized, but we're trying. There's an Archives Fair at the downtown Seattle Public Library this Wednesday, Oct. 5th and again on Oct. 29th. Find out more at http://archivaladvocate.wordpress.com/seattle-archives-month-2011/activities/ You'll also note that there are free archival training sessions at the Puget Sound Archives and at NARA this month. Learn more at http://www.dahp.wa.gov/blog/2011/09/free-workshop-the-basics-of-archives-2/.

And if that isn't enough, Thursday, Oct. 6th, has been declared the inaugural "Day of Digital Archives" (See: http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org/2011/09/day-of-digital-archives-october-6th.html ) What are you doing to celebrate?

SGS's New Website

2011-09-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

So, have you checked out our new website yet?
It's at http://www.seattlegenealogicalsociety.org/
Catchy name, eh?
No more Rootsweb.
No more Ancestry.
Our very own URL on a non-Ancestry server.
Director of Publications Annette Dwyer and her web design team (Dawn Bingaman, Michelle Khuon, Jamie Shaffer, and me) worked for over 6 months to totally redesign our website. With the help of volunteers from the Seattle Drupal Users Group, we then held a "barn raising" to create the new site using the free Drupal software.
What do you think?
There are still a few "glitches"--like the font size control not working on any of the pages, some alphabatizing glitches in the library catalog listings, and the calendar not working the way we'd like.
But other than those things, what do you think?
Do you like being able to renew using a webform and PayPal online?
Do you like being able to make donations to SGS online?
Would you like to help with the next major effort of creating a "Members Only" section of the website? We've talked about being able to post actual searchable records (such as the King County Court Records Index and our Index to Washington Territorial Land Claims) there, as well as handouts and short summaries of programs held at SGS.
What else would you like to see in a "Members Only" area?
Would this be a place you would visit often?
Please share your thoughts by filling out the "Post a Comment" box below.
Thank you.

TechTips at FamilySearch.org

2011-08-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Julie Monson and Leslie Edmunds presented a fantastic program at SGS today on "What's New at FamilySearch.org." It was aimed at the intermediate researcher--the level over half our members identify with.
I've spent quite a lot of time trying to keep up with all the changes at FamilySearch.org, the totally FREE LDS genealogy website. It seems to be changing almost constantly. Lucky for us, most of the changes are definitely for the better!
One new item I hadn't noticed is the new "TechTips" section. At the top of the home page (http://www.familysearch.org/ ) you'll need to click on the word "Learn" in the navigation bar at the top of the page. On the "Learning Resources" page scroll down to below the pictures and 3 columns, where you'll see:
Discover technologies that will improve your family history research and knowledge. Try TechTips
Click on the blue hyperlinked words (the ones above should work) and you'll go to the entry page for TechTips. It's an amazing collection of useful technology information. The purple nav bar near the top of the page shows 6 categories of links:
1. How To's and Tips
2. Learn About
3. Apps and Tools
4. Learn How to Buy
5. Viewpoint
6. Contribute
There is an incredible wealth of information on this sub-site that should prove useful to both beginners to computer genealogy (Learn About File Formats; Learn How to Buy a Computer) and advanced users (Viewpoint article on whether to digitize photos; web and phone apps). The "Contribute" section provides guidance on how to share information you think might be useful to others.
I'm pretty sure TechTips hasn't been around very long. I'm guessing it's an outgrowth from the first RootsTech conference this past February. Do take some time to browse what's available. As people add articles and opinions, I think this is going to be a very useful resource for genealogists. And, like all LDS resources, it's FREE!
Thank you to Julie and Leslie for sharing so much great information with us today.

Google+ for Genealogists

2011-08-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning (our time) Legacy Family Tree broadcast a webinar titled "Google+ -- The Next Big Thing." I actually sat here and listened/watched the entire webinar, which ran almost two hours. It was very interesting and well presented. You, too, can watch the webinar, at least for the next week, at http://www.millenniacorp.com/_videos/webinars/2011-08-15-googlep/2011-08-15-googlep.html Sometimes Legacy charges for access after the first week, so watch this one now!
The webinar is divided into three distinct sessions with three different presenters. After some introductions, Paul Allen of FamilyLink.com (no, not OUR Paul Allen!), talks about the Google Plus website and how quickly it has grown.
Then Dan Lynch, Mr. Google Genealogy, demonstrates and talks about how to use Google+, including circles, streams, sparks, and hangouts.
Finally Mark Olsen, also from FamilyLink.com, demonstrates a "hangout," ie. a video chat room--live!
It was all quite fascinating, even for a relatively confirmed Facebook user like me. I can see that it would be quite helpful to be able to send specific messages and share particular photos with only some of your "friends," instead of having the share everything with all of your Facebook friends. I don't share much genealogy stuff on Facebook because I figure most of my "friends" would dump me pretty quickly. But on Google+ I can create a "circle" of genealogy friends and direct my genealogy comments just to them. Dan also showed how you can join existing circles based on your interests and geographic area. He was in one related to an ancestor's birth province in Italy. Pretty cool, eh?
The only catch is that you can only join Google+ if you're invited by someone already registered. And, of course, you need a gmail address (which is free) to register.
Just out of curiosity, how many of you are already registered users of Google+? What do you think of it?

Daily Inspiration...for Free!

2011-08-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

Do you need a little inspiration to jump start your genealogy research?
I certainly do.
Not that I have a lot of time for research these days, but when I do have some time, I often find myself at a loss for what to do.
Lately I've been finding inspiration and ideas for "next steps" in two places: Michael John Neill's "Genealogy Tip of the Day" blog at http://genealogytipoftheday.blogspot.com/ and Scott Phillips' "Onward to Our Past" blog at http://onwardtoourpast.blogspot.com/
Both tend to give very concrete tips for conducting family history research.
Michael's are short daily "snippets"; Scott's tend to be longer and more detailed "Tip(s) for the *Real World* Genealogist."
Both are available as Facebook feeds--meaning you don't have to visit their blogs every day to find out what they're saying.
Are there other daily genealogy tip sites out there?
If you know of one, please share it by leaving a comment below.

Order Family History Library Films from Home

2011-07-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

Woo-hoo!
It's finally here.
The Family History Library has finally set up a system that allows patrons to order their microfilms online and only visit their local Family History Center to view the film.
You can check this system out at http://films.familysearch.org
You'll need to identify the microfilms/microfische you need at https://www.familysearch.org/#form=catalog first, or course.
You will also need to create a user ID and password with Family Search to use this system. No fees charged to sign up. If you've already signed up as a transcriber, that ID will work.
It looks like you can pay by either credit card or PayPal.
Price is a bit confusing. At first, the price showed as $5.00. Once I entered my address, it jumped to $5.50. But that's still $1.00 less than I was charged the last time I ordered a film in person at the North Stake FHC.
Leave a note and let us know how this new system works for you.

Getting Ready for the 1940 Census

2011-07-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know.
April 2, 2012 seems a long way off.
But if you've lost as many ancestors as I have between 1930 and 1950, you're getting anxious to start digging into the 1940 US Census.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has now posted their 1940 census enumeration district maps online so that we can all get started figuring out exactly which EDs we're going to need to search when the 1940 census is released next spring.
To view the maps, go to http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/BasicSearchForm
In the SEARCH box enter 1940 Census Maps [county name] [state name].
For example, I entered 1940 Census Maps Hickory Missouri and was rewarded with two results. One of them has a small symbol to the left of the title that indicates "Digital Copy Available." Clicking on that first title takes me to a page with 4 tabs--Details; Archived Copies; Digital Copies; Hierarchy.
Clicking on Digital Copies rewarded me with 4 maps of Hickory County, each marked with the ED numbers for the 1940 Census.
If you've got people lost in US cities in 1940, I'd definitely recommend starting now to identify the probable enumeration districts they were in. Going from city directories to maps can be tedious.
There's no guarantee when indexes to the 1940 census might be made available, but we do know that NARA intends to release the digital census page images on April 2nd, 2012.

Are you a History Detective?

2011-07-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

OK. I admit it. I'm addicted to History Detectives on PBS.
Tonight's show is #3 in this summer's series (8:00 pm on channel 9/109). If you missed the first two, you can watch them online at http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/video/2031867592/
What I love about History Detectives is their "common man" focus. They track down the stories behind artifacts belonging to "regular" people. Many of these artifacts have been in families for multiple generations, along with stories about what they are and where they came from. The History Detectives find experts in all sorts of interesting places--tiny historical museums, universities, company archives--and they show the process of determining the historical significance of the artifacts featured, as well as the results of that process.
I've tried to get the History Detectives to research one of my family artifacts by filling out their online form. No bites so far.
Do you have a family heirloom or artifact with an interesting story? How about writing about it for the SGS Bulletin? With our new printer we can include photographs, maps, and other illustrations in our publications. You don't have to write a book--we can work in almost any sized article. Just scribble a few paragraphs and submit them to SGSpublications@gmail.com. You may soon see your name in print!

The End of an Era

2011-06-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today I attended Darlene Hamilton's retirement party at the Seattle Public Library. If you've done ANY genealogy research in Seattle, you've probably met Darlene. She has served as a genealogy librarian at the downtown Seattle Public Library since 1971--40 YEARS!
I can remember back in 1979 when I started working at Seattle City Light and needed something to do with my lunch hours. I used to ride the elevator through the old SeaFirst building and walk across the street to SPL and the genealogy desk on the first floor. Darlene pointed me to some great resources I may not have found without her assistance, especially the Boone Family Association files. What a windfall! And all those CDs the library used to have. I found all sorts of useful information in them.
One speaker at Darlene's retirement party today estimated that she had helped about 250,000 people in her 40 years at the library. I would submit that she helped EACH of those people with kindness, congeniality, patience and efficiency. She's probably broken down more brick walls for patrons than anyone else in Seattle!
What's perhaps more amazing is that Darlene has sat on the SGS Board for 40 years. That means she's sat through over 400 Board meetings without even having a vote. Darlene has been the "corporate history" of SGS for all these years and I, for one, have relied on her to tell us when we're trying to reinvent the wheel (so to speak). I can't imagine what we're going to do without her, but I sure hope she'll come back as a volunteer after she's finished kicking up her heels a bit.
Thank you, Darlene, for all you've done for Seattle genealogists and for genealogy in Seattle!

SGS to be part of GiveBIG!

2011-06-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

On June 23rd, the Seattle Foundation is sponsoring a one-day major donation effort to help support Puget Sound non-profits called GiveBIG. SGS has registered with them, so we are eligible to receive donations through the Seattle Foundation website on June 23rd AND to share in the "stretch dollars" that will be allocated proportionately to all non-profits that receive donations on that date.
I know that many of you sent in donations with your recent membership renewal. We don't want to hound you constantly about donating to SGS, but if you have friends and neighbors who aren't SGS members but possibly understand the importance of maintaining our library and facility, please mention to them that SGS is part of GiveBIG. Here's a link to our page on the Seattle Foundation's website: http://www.seattlefoundation.org/npos/Pages/SeattleGenealogicalSociety.aspx?bv=nposearch
We are listed under "Neighborhoods & Communities" and can most easily be found by putting "genealogical" in the search box. The only other genealogy society listed is the Jefferson County Genealogical Society.
Anything you can do to help get the word out about this special opportunity for SGS to receive donations would be most appreciated.
Thank you.

Is SGS hard to find?

2011-06-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

One of the topics discussed at Sunday's SGS Annual Meeting was whether or not our current space fills our needs. Now that our Archives Committee has discovered how many archival records are stored in our closet, it's pretty clear that we either need a bigger space or that we need to get rid of some of our current holdings to open up space for making our archival holdings accessible. There was a collective gasp when disposing library holdings was mentioned, but it is still an option.

During the general space disucssion, several people commented that even with the bright blue awning, the SGS library isn't very obvious to people driving by on Sandpoint Way NE at 40+ miles per hour. And it's even more difficult to tell if the library is open when you drive by. Suggestions for making the library more obvious included placing a sandwich board in the parking strip when we're open or installing a neon OPEN sign or a signboard in the planting area. What do you think? How can we make our SGS library stand out on a busy road?

Also, in case you haven't heard, our SGS website "raising" event is taking place this weekend. If you've ever been curious about how a website comes to life, stop by for an hour or two and observe the goings-on. If you'd like to learn how to create your own website using Drupal (free content management software that powers websites and applications), come on Sunday when our Drupal experts will be providing instruction. SGS is providing food for this event, so please sign up at http://drupal-barn-raising.eventbrite.com/ by 9:00 pm Thursday.

Appreciating SGS Volunteers

2011-05-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

The SGS Board sponsored a "Volunteer Appreciation Day" at SGS on Monday, May 16th. We provided lunch and/or dinner and offered help with research problems. I am thrilled to report that 35 of our dedicated volunteers came, but sorry to say that I didn't manage to talk to many of them. I was too busy searching for missing ancestors. Thank you to all who came and to the board members who made this event possible.
Several attendees asked me why one group of volunteers (the SGS Board) was doing all the work. My answer: We want to make sure that our member volunteers understand how important they are to the Society's well-being. Granted, Board members spend many, many hours volunteering on behalf of SGS, but we aren't the people who keep the SGS library open 30 hours a week, make most of the presentations, keep track of memberships, catalog new library books, inventory our archival materials, etc.
Director of Volunteers Becky Kaufman reports that 90 SGS members have volunteered this year. That's almost double the number we had last year. And that's undoubtedly the reason so much has gotten done at SGS this year. Please come to the Annual Meeting on Sunday, June 5th, and learn what SGS has accomplished this past year.

Reading Genealogy Blogs

2011-05-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Do you read any genealogy blogs on a regular basis? Please take the poll at right and let me know.
I've followed several geneablogs off and on for several years, but lately I've gotten hooked on Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings (http://www.geneamusings.com/). I've added his RSS feed to my Google home page, so when I open Internet Explorer I can see immediately if Randy's made a new post...which is every day, often multiple times a day. Certain days of the week are "theme" days, which many geneabloggers follow. Randy also summarizes what's happening on a large number of other blogs every week, which I find particularly helpful (since I don't have to check them all!).
Today Randy wrote about planning genealogical seminars (in response to a topic suggestion by Thomas MacEntee (http://www.geneabloggers.com/). Randy makes a number of very interesting points based on his experiences with the Chula Vista Genealogical Society. Check his comments out at http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/05/planning-genealogical-seminars-my-view.html and let me know what other seminar planning suggestions you have. I agree with most of his points...do you?

Archives Preservation

2011-04-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

Do you have old photos and negatives, letters, digital photos and files?
Would you like to learn how best to preserve them?
Attend a FREE Archives Preservation Roadshow at NARA on May 14th.
Bring your questions about preserving personal or family documents (in any format) and get advice from trained archivists and museum professionals from a variety of backgrounds and institutions around the area. Get in-person information about how to preserve: Photographic prints and negatives; letters and other family documents; moving images (films) and audio; electronic documents, and digital photos; and much, much more…
For more information, check out http://seattlearchivesroadshow.wordpress.com/
or email SeattleArchivesRoadshow@gmail.com.

Another limited time Freebie

2011-04-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Now that you've all exhausted the free Civil War resources at Ancestry.com, I'm happy to report another freebie. In honor of National Library Week, the Gale Press is offering free access to their databases. I'm not sure when a week turned into 14 days, but the free access is good from April 10th through April 24th, so there are a few days left to explore.
Just go to http://www.gale.cengage.com/NLW/ and scroll down to the database links. Of the 6 choices, I'm guessing those of most interest to SGS members will be the Gale News Vault, with over 10 million scanned and indexed pages, and the "Slavery and Anti-Slavery" archive.
Enjoy!

Free Ancestry Civil War Databases

2011-04-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about the FREE access that Ancestry is offering to their Civil War databases this week? The offer is good from today (April 7th) until next Thursday (April 14th). What's even better is that they've added a number of NEW resources. Here's a link to the list of CW resources now available to everyone: http://www.ancestry.com/civilwar_sub?flash=true&o_iid=47474&o_lid=47474
In addition, Footnote.com is offering free access to their Civil War records, too. Such a deal!
I spent a little time this afternoon playing with the "Civil War Draft Registration Records, 1863-1865" on Ancestry. They're organized by state (Union only), then Congressional District. After searching for a few of my Missouri names and finding nothing, I discovered that you don't have to put a name (of any kind) in the search box. I just put "Hickory County, Missouri" in the "Lived In" box on the left. Amazingly, I got quite a nice alphabetized list of all the men included in this county. Since so many of my family names are often horrendously misspelled, finding them by searching for my surnames is almost impossible. This way of searching led me to all the men in the county. Also interesting is that these records INCLUDE men who already served, with notations as to unit and length of service.
If you find other cool info in these free resources, please leave a comment.

Are you ready for the 1940 Census?

2011-04-02T16:48:00.000-07:00

I was just reading Randy Seaver's blog (http://www.geneamusings.com/), which is always entertaining and often thought provoking. Today he wrote about preparing for the release of the 1940 US Census in 364 days. Reading his list of people he'd like to find and where they were living on April 1, 1940 made me realize that I have a lot of work to do. I think both of my parents were in the US Army in April 1940, but am not really positive. How the heck am I going to find them in the census? I don't have a clue where my father's family were, so will need to do a lot of prep work on them. And my mother's parents and grandparents were all in "rural" areas--i.e., places with less than 2500 population (a lot less, in their cases!).
It's interesting to see what questions were asked in the 1940 census (check out Ancestry's info page at http://www.1940census.net/1940_census_questions.php). Also frustrating to learn that "supplementary questions" were only asked of 5% of the population--two people per page of 40 names. I'm hoping that at least the census takers had to ask those supplementary questions of adults, not just anyone whose name appeared on lines 14 and 29.
Randy suggests making a list of EVERYONE in your extended family who was alive in 1940 and trying to find a 1940 address for them now, before the census records are made public. Then we'll all be ready to grab those 1940 US census pages next year on April 2nd! Sounds like a good idea to me...in my spare time.

Presentations at SGS

2011-03-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

We've had two great presentations at SGS this weekend: Sharyl Swope gave us an introduction to Legacy genealogy software yesterday (Saturday) and Alan McCool taught about the importance of geographic boundaries in genealogy research today (Sunday). I attended both, even though I don't use Legacy and am a geographer by training. And I learned something new at both talks.
My question: Why don't more SGS members attend our educational programs?
22 people attended Sharyl's talk (a very respectable number, IMHO); only 5 of us attended Alan's presentation today. Why the difference?
Should we stop scheduling presentations for Sunday afternoons? Since the overwhelming response to last year's surveys was that we need to schedule presentations on weekends, NOT weeknights or weekdays, we've been trying to make use of both weekend days.
As Director of Education Jean Roth said this afternoon, it's embarrassing to ask a speaker to spend hours preparing and then have only a few people attend. How can we avoid this happening in the future?
Was it today's topic that wasn't of interest? Do you just not know what you don't know?
Did we not publicize today's talk appropriately or sufficiently?
We have 3 more Sunday talks scheduled in April and May. Should we try to move them to other times?
I really would like to hear your thoughts on this topic. You can post them here by clicking on the "COMMENT" button below, or email me directly at sgspresident@gmail.com. Thank you.
P.S.: Please take a moment to answer the new survey question at right.

Interesting Genealogy Survey

2011-03-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

A fellow named Myles Proudfoot, a marketing professional and genealogist, has created an online research survey about people's genealogy habits, attitudes and origins. This survey takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete. I found it pretty interesting myself. Since Myles has offered to share his results with anyone who's interested, I'm encouraging all genealogists to take it.

You can access the survey at: http://tinyurl.com/69kntun

New Family Tech Website

2011-02-26T09:21:00.000-08:00

Presumably all of you know about RootsTech--a big (over 3000 attendees!) conference held in Salt Lake City earlier this month focusing on genealogy and technology. The LDS church and their Family History Library were major sponsors of the multi-day meetings. From all accounts I've heard/read, it sounds like the meeting was very successful. Genealogy nerds everywhere were thrilled to meet and share their techie information, either in person or via the internet.
Unfortunately, my internet connection hasn't been dependable enough to partake of the real-time online broadcasts. And I haven't been able to find where the live broadcasts have been archived online--if, in fact, they have.
But I have followed a few of my favorite genealogy bloggers and their comments on RootsTech.
One "gleaning" from these bloggers is that FamilySearch has created a new "Family Tech" section on familysearch.org containing technology tips for genealogists and family historians. You can find it at http://familytech.familysearch.org/ There are five subareas to this site, focusing on Computing, Software, Devices, Internet and HowTos. Do spend some time browsing. There's a wealth of information here for all levels of technology skills, but definitely biased toward the neophyte. From what I can tell, the site is essentially a wiki, containing contributed articles on whatever technology-related subjects people want to contribute.
Do take some time to browse this site and bookmark it for future use. Especially with the demise of the SGS Computer Interest Group, most of us need new sources for obtaining answers to our genealogy computing questions.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" is Back!

2011-01-31T08:55:00.000-08:00

Surely all SGS members and other practicing genealogists know about "Who Do You Think You Are?"--the NBC/Ancestry.com TV program that focuses on tracing the ancestry of celebrities. Last year's debut season included some interesting stories. My one complaint was that it made the research process seem ridiculously easy. You show up at an archive or library and they hand you a completed family tree or letter written by or about your ancestor. Don't you wish? It will be interesting to see if this year's series is any more realistic.
Regardless, I'll be watching.
The first program in the new series airs at 8:00 pm on NBC (5/105 in Seattle) this Friday, February 4th. According to an email Ancestry sent out a couple of days ago, the first show will feature Vanessa Williams, former Miss America, and various of her illustrious ancestors. Week two will focus on Tim McGraw. Others in this year's series include Kim Cattrall, Rosie O'Donnell, Lionel Richie, Steve Buscemi, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd (order of programs unknown).
To hype up more interest in their program, Ancestry is offering an opportunity to win a $20,000 trip to you ancestral home land. Follow this link to the contest entry form: http://www.ancestry.com/wdytya2011?o_iid=46903&o_lid=46903
Good luck!
If any of your friends get interested in genealogy because of this program, please let them know that SGS will be hosting an "open library--getting started" day on Sunday, March 6th, from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. We'll be happy to get them hooked on searching for their ancestors!

Are you ready to lead SGS?

2011-01-12T21:38:00.000-08:00

SGS elections occur in April. But before elections can occur, we need nominees. We elected a nominating committee last Spring and they are now hard at work trying to find qualified members to serve on next year's Board.
Much as I've enjoyed serving as SGS president the last two years, I am not running for re-election. No previous president has served for more than 2 consecutive years and I don't see any reason to be the first.
There are certainly many things I'd still like to see happen at SGS--like getting more members involved in our activities, starting/finishing indexing some of our records, upgrading our computers, establishing a computer lab area, moving into a larger space with a separate meeting room.... My "wish list" is quite long. But I really need to be more available for travel with my husband, who isn't getting any younger.
Hopefully some of you appreciate the changes at SGS over the last year and a half--increased program offerings, more communication with members, searching for and obtaining grant funding, operating more like a business (adopting policies and procedures to guide our activities). If so, I hope some of you are willing to run for Board positions. SGS doesn't run itself; we need dedicated volunteers to keep the Society functioning. Please take a few minutes to check out the short job descriptions on our website at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~waseags/2011SGSElectionInformationPage.pdf and then send an email to Bruce Finlayson, Nominating Committee chair, at sgsnominate@gmail.com with an offer to run. Thank you.

New Years Resolutions

2010-12-31T15:04:00.000-08:00

Do you make New Years resolutions?
There was a time in my life when I actually wrote out a list of resolutions for the coming year on January 1st. That time is long past.
I've been quite amused this week by the various genealogy blog posts on resolutions. Lorine at Olive Tree Genealogy (http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/) posted her 5 genealogy resolutions from last year and admitted to not accomplishing ANY of them. If I had made any, I'm sure I'd have a similar score.
Michael John Neil (http://genealogytipoftheday.blogspot.com/) recommends picking one genealogy task that you might reasonably accomplish, writing it on a post-it note, and sticking it onto your computer. "If it won't fit on a post-it note, it's probably too long!"
About.com lists 10 Top Genealogy Resolutions to add to your "to do" list at http://genealogy.about.com/od/basics/a/resolutions.htm. These are all quite honorable goals, but none is easy. I've probably put "get my genealogy notes and records organized" on every resolution list I've ever made. Has it happened? Of course not!
What are your genealogy resolutions? If you make them, how about adding "get more involved in SGS"? We need people to write articles for our Bulletin, people to make presentations, people to share their brick wall solutions, people to serve as genealogy mentors, people to run for SGS director and officer positions, people to serve on various committees (nominating, elections, program, seminar, editorial). As an all volunteer organization, we depend on our members for EVERYthing that happens at SGS. Please consider helping out more in 2011.

Leaving your legacy

2010-11-28T20:29:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or have the rest of you noticed a sudden interest in what happens to our research after we leave this earth? I read two blogs regularly and ran across related articles in both of them today. In Eastman's Online Newsletter today was an article titled "From the In-box: What to do with Collected Data" (http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/11/from-the-in-box-what-to-do-with-collected-data.html), which basically asked for readers' suggestions on how to handle our collected genealogy research materials. It generated a large number of responses. Then on Michael John Neill's rootdig.com was "Cleaning Mother's House" (http://rootdig.blogspot.com/2010/11/cleaning-mothers-house.html), a purportedly fictional account of one family's handling of the deceased mother's research. I suspect I'll be having nightmares from that one!
Both articles got me thinking about the role SGS should be playing in helping our members (and others) make their research available to others who might benefit from our research in the future. Right now we have at least 20 to 30 boxes of member's research files stacked in our storage area. Our Library Trustees have recommended creating a Director of Archives position and making part of the library into a genelaogical archive. At the present time, we have neither the space nor the funds needed to do this. Should we be weeding our book collection to make space for an archives area? Should we be madly fundraising so that we could move into a larger space? Which is more important to you--a library or genealogy archives? Please cast your vote at right and leave your comments below. Thank you!

Is DNA Testing for You?

2010-11-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

I attended the SGS DNA Special Interest Group this morning for the first time. Actually, that's not strictly true. I was present at one of the group's first meetings, but didn't understand much of what was said. The DNA SIG has developed a new format so that both beginners and more advanced genetic genealogists have a chance to learn. They are now meeting quarterly (rather than every other month), but for a longer time period at each meeting. The first hour is for beginners. Today's first hour covered the basics of what the different tests are, what you can expect to learn from them, and who should use which tests. I think I finally know enough to start working on my uncle to get tested. He's the last male in my mother's line and if I don't get him tested, I've lost my only chance to verify that family line.
The second hour went into more detail on how to learn more about genetic genealogy. Cary Bright and Ida McCormick, the co-presenters, provided a great handout with suggested books and websites. It looks to me like there's plenty of material to keep me busy for many, many hours.
At the end of the meeting, a group member talked about his experience with genetic testing--without going into all the technical details. Because he started testing a number of years ago--before many of today's tests were available--he has had to go back and purchase additional DNA testing multiple times.
Unfortunately, these tests cost money.....and not inconsiderable amounts of money, at that. We can all save a little by ordering through the SGS SIG or through a surname or geographic area group.
For the first time I came away from a DNA discussion thinking that I really need to jump on this bandwagon. With family names like Collins, Campbell, and Sharp, I've still got lots of brick walls that pre-date most US records. Hopefully DNA will provide the answers that my record searching has not.

Genealogy Tip of the Day

2010-11-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

Have you discovered Michael John Neill's "Genealogy Tip of the Day" blog yet? It's absolutely free!
Check out: http://genealogytipoftheday.blogspot.com/
Michael posts short genealogy tips to his blog at least once a day. If you're on Facebook, you can become a fan of his companion page and the "tips" will show up on your page, too.
To go to Michael's Facebook page, follow this link:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Rio-IL/Genealogy-Tip-of-the-Day/136180964378
Michael has been a professional genealogist for some time, specializing in research techniques and resources. He also writes a weekly genealogy newsletter called "Casefile Clues" for paying subscribers. These are in-depth analyses of specific records and research questions. You can obtain samples for review from his website at http://www.casefileclues.com/ Right now he's running a special--$12.00 for a year of his e-newsletters (a savings of $5 off the regular price).
While I've been doing family history research for a very long time, it never ceases to amaze me what I don't know. Reading Michael's "tips" and "Casefile Clues" has definitely opened my eyes to new avenues of research.

2010 Best State Websites

2010-10-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

Family Tree Magazine has compiled a list of the 75 "best" state websites for genealogy and is kindly making that list--complete with links to take you directly to the sites--available to everyone. What a great way to celebrate Family History Month and Archives Month! Check the list out at:
http://familytreemagazine.com/article/2010-best-state-websites
And, this Family Tree Magazine article reminds us “If you can’t visit your ancestor’s state archives in person, find out whether you can borrow materials or order photocopies through interlibrary loan. Many archives offer research services for a fee, or you can hire a local researcher to do lookups for you.”
Of course, our own state's Digital Archives site is included, as is the Washington Secretary of State's digital newspaper site.
Take some time (when the rains begin) to explore the state sites for places where your families resided. It's pretty amazing how many digital records some of the states have posted.

In other news, I'm thrilled to report that we have over 100 pre-registrations for our Fall Seminar this Saturday. I saw a copy of the syllabus this morning, and it's chock-full of great resources for genealogists at all levels of experience. I'm sure everyone will learn something useful this Saturday. Hope to see you all at the Nordic Museum.

October is Family History Month!

2010-10-03T16:37:00.000-07:00

How are you celebrating Family History Month this year?
How about learning a new genealogy skill or introducing a friend to genealogy?
The SGS Fall Seminar is scheduled for October 23rd this year and is focusing on U.S. migration routes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of our ancestors arrived in the U.S. on the east coast [think Castle Garden, Ellis Island, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore....] but didn't necessarily stay there. Future generations tended to travel west. This all day seminar focuses on the routes our ancestors took and how to track their travels. Do you know when and where your ancestors first arrived in the U.S.? Do you know how and when they moved and what routes they took? Is there a gap (or two?) in your family history and you're not sure where to look to fill it? There's a good chance your family followed the same routes as thousands of others in their quest for land or a better living. Come to our Fall Seminar and learn where to find the records you're missing. Registration information and a list of topics and speakers are available on our website at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~waseags/2010FallSeminar.html Early registration ends October 15th; after that, the price increases, so please send in your registration now.
Leading up to the Fall Seminar we have two related presentations. On Sunday, October 10th, Karen Sipe, a Seattle area professional genealogist, will be speaking on Passenger Arrival Records. You'll learn where to find them, what they look like, and what information you can gain from them.
On Monday, October 18th, Jean Roth will be speaking and illustrating New York Emigrant Arrivals. She's got some great photos of the immigrant experience at Castle Garden and Ellis Island. Have you been told that your ancestor's name was changed at Ellis Island? Come and learn why that's probably not the case.
On Saturday, October 30th, the SGS Library will be open to non-members for a free day of research. If you've got friends who might be interested in family history, bring them by the SGS Library on the 30th and show them the many and varied resources we have available.
Information on all of these programs and events is available on our website.

End of an Era?

2010-09-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

The SGS Computer Interest Interest Group (CIG) was the first of its kind in the US, formed in January 1981. Due to our inability to find anyone willing to lead (or co-lead) this group, the CIG missed its regular September meeting and is likely to be discontinued. Ironically, a member has volunteered to do the tasks that previous leaders of the group have found the most tedious--scheduling meeting rooms, maintaining the email and attendance lists, and communicating with SGS Publications and Education directors. What we don't have is anyone willing to find and schedule speakers on topics that combine genealogy and computers.
Several members have suggested that this might be a reasonable time to discontinue the CIG. Unlike 25 to 30 years ago, virtually everyone doing genealogy these days uses a computer in their search for those elusive ancestors. And virtually every SGS presentation includes information on websites or other computer-related resources.
Personally, I already miss the learning that occurred on those second Saturdays. While I probably qualify as a computer nerd myself (having worked with computers since 1968), I learned something new almost every month. There are so many new applications coming out every year that there's no way one person can keep up with all of them. Some of my favorite sessions have been the "holiday sharing" and "new toys" sessions, when I got to see all the cool computer toys other CIG members with larger genealogy budgets had acquired. And I really loved that we had a wide range of computer experience in the audience every month.
So...this month's poll question is simple: is it time to permanently disband SGS's computer interest group? Please take the poll in the upper right corner of this page and share your thoughts by using the comment button below or email me directly at sgspresident@gmail.com.

Confusion

2010-09-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

Last week SGS sent out two mailings--our fall seminar brochure and our Newsletter. The seminar brochure went to all current and former members (back to 2007) and non-members who have attended one or more of our conferences in the last five years. The Newsletter was only mailed to those who either requested a printed copy or paid the optional $6.00 printing/mailing fee. Since both items went out bulk mail last Thursday afternoon, they could be delivered to your mailbox anytime in the next week. An email was sent to our SGS-Members listserv on Friday letting members know that a digital version of the Newsletter is available on our website.
At the same time, we have been moving all members who did not renew for our 2010-2011 membership year (which started June 1st) to "inactive" status and removing them from our SGS-Members listserv. Unfortunately, our listserv adminstrator erroneously sent a message out to the listserv last week that was meant for our Director of Membership. That message seemed to suggest that everyone who received it was being removed from the listserv. That was certainly not the case, but the erroneous message resulted in many outraged emails. People who were removed from the SGS-Members listserv were then added to our SGS-Announce listserv (for non-members to receive seminar announcements). Everyone removed from the SGS-Members listserv received an email from Rootsweb informing them that they had been unsubscribed.
Unfortunately, it seems that our data entry quality control has not been up to snuff lately, and quite a few members who have renewed were not accurately recorded as such in our database. To be fair, the software we use for our membership and mailing database is not the easiest to use. Membership date information has to be entered correctly in three different places, and another check box marked for Newsletter mailings.
Some of our members have sent some pretty snippy emails to us, complaining about our record-keeping. Please remember that EVERYONE at SGS is a volunteer. We are all doing the best we can and sometimes we're not perfect. Our Membership team is working hard to correct our database. Please be nice to them.

Back to School

2010-08-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Ah, summer in Seattle.
Now that the temperatures have dropped 40 degrees, it's time to think about back to school....and school supplies.
Need any supplies for you genealogy research and organizing? Now's the time to buy them. Some of the deals are incredible.
I'm one of those who makes folders for every trip I take. I've seen the 2-pocket folders for as little as 10 cents a piece lately. Sure beats paying 89 cents each.
Notebooks, pens, pencils, paper, paper clips--everything's on sale right now.
Are you putting more of your genealogy records on your computer? You can pick up a pocket-sized back-up drive that holds 500 gigabytes for $50-$60.
Thumb or jump drives--the little backup drives you pop into a USB port--are way down in price. I picked up three 4 GB drives today for $24.
The deals are everywhere. Just check the pull-out ads in Sunday's newspaper.

Outreach at SGS

2010-08-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Last Friday evening SGS held our second Open House this calendar year. We invited anyone to stop by between 5 and 9 PM and learn about SGS. Each hour an "Intro to Genealogy Research" class was taught; we did census look-ups for all participants; we offered library tours; and we held a book sale outside. Unfortunately, we didn't have the turnout we did in March--only 12 people attended the classes this time. But we did have some great conversations and at least one attendee has decided to join SGS.
Jean Roth, Director of Education, gave a talk on Scottish Genealogy at the Highland Games this year. She also taught a class on Irish Genealogy during the Irish Week celebrations back in March. I've given talks on "Getting Started with Your Family History" to a number of groups, and am always looking for more.
Do you have ideas for other ways to "spread the word" about genealogy in general and SGS in particular? Should we develop outreach efforts to retirment communities? ...community groups? Which ones? How do we find them?
Please share your ideas by leaving a comment below or emailing me at sgspresident@gmail.com

Summertme at SGS

2010-08-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Once summer finally arrived in Seattle in mid-July, activity at the SGS Library really started heating up.
On July 12th and 17th, we had two great talks by local professional genealogists Evelyn Roehl and Sarah Thorson Little [see previous post].
On July 19th, BYUTV spent most of the day at SGS filming scenes for a future show in their Generations Project series. I've posted a few photos on our new SGS facebook page. You can check out other shows in the series on their website at http://www.byutv.org/thegenerationsproject/
On July 21st, our new Director of Library, Mary Alice Sanguinetti, began work on a complete SGS library inventory. THANK YOU to all of the great volunteers who have been helping in this effort. It's great to see so many new faces coming to help out. There's lots more work to do, as after the card file is brought up-to-date, we'll need to update our digital catalogue.
On July 26th, the SGS Board held a 5-hour session, combining our regular Board meeting with a mini "retreat" to get ourselves organized for a great year.
On July 31st and August 1st, Director of Education Jean Roth led a group of SGS volunteers to the Highland Games where SGS sponsored a genealogy booth. THANK YOU to our members who helped staff this booth through the weekend.
This week our library inventory has continued AND we have our second OPEN HOUSE scheduled for this Friday, August 6th, from 5:00 to 9:00 pm. New Director of Volunteers Becky Kaufman has been doing a great job of getting more SGS members involved in helping with SGS events. As Becky says, we've got a wide range of volunteer opportunites available--something for everyone!

Two Great Talks This Week

2010-07-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's too bad more SGS members can't make it to our many talks and programs. Last week featured presentations by two Seattle area professional genealogists. Both were interesting and informative. About 30 people attended each talk, which is a significant increase over the number of members who used to attend our monthly programs. Hopefully we're offering topics and speakers of greater interest to our members.
On Monday, July 12, Evelyn Roehl spoke on "Genealogy Quirks"--weird things in databases and indexes that genealogists use. Evelyn has been collecting examples of such quirks for many years, as witnessed by the article on the same topic she wrote for the SGS Bulletin back in 2000 (which has been scanned and should be posted shortly on the SGS website). For this presentation, Evelyn had numerous great examples of errors and omissions in databases we all use that could cause unsuspecting genealogists to turn prematurely grey or pull out our hair. Hopefully we all learned that you can't trust an index to be comprehensive and if you don't find someone where you know they should be, check to make sure the database you're searching is accurate and comprehensive.
On Saturday, July 17th, Sarah Thorson Little spoke about her "Whirlwind Research: 50 States in 50 Days." Sarah was hired by Dr. Ellen Fitzpatrick, author of Letters to Jackie, to obtain releases from authors or their descendants of over 200 letters written to Jackie Kennedy in 1963 following the death of her husband, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Sarah shared how she used every scrap of information contained in the letters and the envelopes they were sent in to fulfill her assignment. What was particularly amazing was that Sarah had less than two months to track down all these people, while continuing to hold down a job and deal with various fall holidays. Attendees at this talk learned a lot about carefully reading letters for every clue and making use of helpful librarians and other local resources to find living relatives.
This week we have the DNA Interest Group meeting on Wednesday evening and a special half-day Scottish Genealogy Workshop on Saturday afternoon. Hope to see you at SGS soon.

Is SGS ready for WorldCat?

2010-07-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

I think I've written previously about the proposals submitted to the Board by last year's Library Trustees. One of their many thoughtful recommendations was that SGS should place it's library catalog on WorldCat. Since none of the current Board members know much about the inner workings of WorldCat, we invited Gary Zimmerman, president of the Fiske Library (the second genealogy library to join WorldCat and the first to use WC as its digital catalog), to come and speak to us about the Fiske's experience. Gary was kind enough to accept our invitation and gave a very interesting and informative talk last Wednesday evening, July 7th.
One of the many things I didn't know about WorldCat is that it's operated by OCLC--the folks who coordinate interlibrary loans across the country. You have to join OCLC and pay them a monthly fee to list your holdings on WorldCat. You also have to join FirstSearch, which "seamlessly links your users to thousands of full-text articles, electronic books and journals, digitized special collections and more." What they are selling is "linkages"--to researchers on the internet, to other libraries, to a rich set of resources that support libraries. As a 501(c)3 we can join at a reduced rate of $1100 per year. Some of these costs can be offset by credits generated by listing our library holdings on WorldCat, but it's not clear to me whether or not we could offset the full costs or not. You can also get credits for sending your items out to other libraries via interlibrary loan (ILL), but there are some strict standards that have to be met (like responding within 72 hours to an ILL request; mailing the book on the same date as your "accept" the request; mailing from your library's zip code).
The Fiske has entered about 9000 titles in 3 years into WorldCat and are the envy of many libraries. They've also added bar codes to all of their books so they can track them efficiently. It's not clear how many hours of volunteer time this has required, but it was clear from Gary's talk that generating accurate library call numbers was a continuing challenge--and still is--for them. I can't imagine it would be any different for us.
There are definitely pros and cons to joining WorldCat and I, for one, don't have a clue how they might balance out for SGS. Your thoughts?
Next week our new Director of Library, Mary Alice Sanguinetti, will begin an inventory of our collection. Kudos to her for moving so quickly to get this important effort started.

Ready to roll....

2010-07-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report that the SGS Board of Directors is now complete. Our new Nominating Committee, chaired by Bruce Finlayson, submitted names of candidates interested in each of the four open Board positions (two contested, two not) and the Board, after reviewing the candidates' statements and their qualifications, elected the following to serve the remainder of the 2010-11 SGS fiscal year:
     Vice President: Bonnie Larson
     Treasurer:   Tom Hamilton
     Director of Membership:   Jean Morton
     Director of Volunteers:   Becky Kaufman
Please join me and the rest of the Board in welcoming these new officers/directors and really appreciate the level of interest shown in these positions. We look forward to another active and rewarding year.

The Board also confirmed the appointment of Marilyn Rose, former SGS President, to serve a three-year term as a Library Trustee. She will join Pat Younie and Ida McCormick, continuing Trustees, this year, to continue working on establishing appropriate library policies.

So, what is this now-complete Board working on? Right now, we have the following major projects on our collective plate:
1. Decisions related to the Library Trustees' proposals: So far we've had one working meeting and are trying to schedule more. Since many of the proposals are interrelated, we need to make sure that new library policies are totally consistent. One of the Trustees' proposals--to place the SGS Library catalog on WorldCat--will be addressed in an informational meeting with Gary Zimmerman, President of the Fiske Library (which was the first genealogy library to join WorldCat), on Wednesday, July 7th, at 7 pm at SGS.
2. New policies required by our new Bylaws: We have developed drafts of many of the required policies and now need to review them carefully before voting on approval.
3. New Board Job Descriptions: Our current job descriptions were written in 1999. Duties and responsibilities have changed a lot in 11 years, especially with this year's new Board position. We are working on revising all of the job descriptions and making them consistent and comprehensive.
4. Establish the year's calendar for SGS programs, meetings and events.
5. Establish performance measures for each Board member. Yes, we're all volunteers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate our efforts. Setting performance measures will help us gauge how well we're doing at meeting the goals of our positions and the Society.

If you'd like to provide input on any of these projects, please email us. All Board members have generic email addresses, e.g. President = sgspresident@gmail.com, Secretary = sgssecretary@gmail.com. We need to hear from our SGS members to know if we're on the write track, so please email us.

Digital Genealogy

2010-06-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

I suspect we all agree that doing genealogy in the 21st century requires some computer and internet knowledge and skill.
Hopefully we all agree that completing a meaningful and interesting family history also requires more than a computer and an internet connection.
The question I've been pondering lately is: What is the optimal balance between "old-fashioned" [ie, libraries, courthouses, family interviews, etc.] and digital research methods?
A corollary to the previous question is: How can SGS provide the best mix of family history research resources for our membership?
If any readers of this blog have suggestions or ideas to share, please click on the "comment" hyperlink below and let's get a conversation going.
Please share your thoughts.

Library Trustees' Proposal

2010-06-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

For those of you who didn't make it to last Saturday's SGS Annual Meeting, I thought I'd direct your attention to the Library Trustees' proposals for our library. They prepared a 36 page report to the Board; then developed an 8-page summary for discussion at Saturday's meeting. That summary is available as a PDF file from our home page [http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~waseags/ ]
The Trustees (Pat Younie, Ida McCormick, and Betty Ravenholt) have done a tremendous amount of work to develop policies for guiding collection development (acceptance, retention, disposal), creating a comprehensive library inventory and electronic catalog, and reorganizing our library "staff."
If you're interested in the future of the SGS Library, please take a look at the Trustees' proposal and provide your feedback to the SGS Board. I don't anticipate any votes on the specific proposals until the July Board meeting, when we will hopefully have a full Board, so you have another 6 weeks to submit your comments. They can be sent to SGSPresident@gmail.com, SGSSecretary@gmail.com or any other Board address [see inside Bulletin front cover].
Speaking of which....if you're interested in serving on the Board as Treasurer, Vice President, Director of Volunteers, or Director of Membership, please contact Bruce Finlayson, chair of the nominating committee, at SGSNominate@gmail.com. The committee will be forwarding names to the Board on June 23rd for appointment at our June 28th Board meeting. This is a working Board, and we need people who have open minds, a willingness to work as a team, and a desire to see SGS grow and prosper to keep the Society going. If you have some time and energy, please consider joining the SGS Board.

SGS Annual Meeting June 5th 1-3 PM

2010-05-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

One week from today is the SGS Annual Meeting.
Did you just yawn?
I hope not.
This year's annual meeting will be a bit different than those in the past.
Yes, we'll read the minutes of our last quarterly Member Meeting.
Yes, we'll formally "swear in" the SGS officers and directors for 2010-11.
Yes, we'll thank this year's volunteers.
Hopefully that's where the similarity to previous years' meetings will end.

Although not required until next year, I'll be presenting an Annual Report to the Membership, summarizing the Board's activities during the year. Both as a whole and as individuals, your 2009-10 SGS Board of Directors has done an incredible amount of work. Hopefully you've noticed some of the changes this increased activity level has produced.

Following the Annual Report, our Library Trustees, who have been meeting since October, will present their recommendations for the SGS Library. While the Board will need to approve implementation of any or all of their ideas, we would like to receive feedback from our members before making those decisions. The Trustees have made a host of wide-ranging recommendations which, if implemented, will result in major changes to our Library and procedures used for maintaining it. If all of them are implemented, the SGS Library will be a much different place.

Let's face it. SGS and other genealogy societies are at a crossroads. The majority of genealogical research is being conducted via the internet, not in physical libraries. Genealogists meet in hyperspace more than geographic space to share their information. What does that mean for the future of SGS and our library collection?

Please come hear the Trustees' ideas and share your own.
We want to hear from you.

SGS Spring Seminar a Rousing Success!

2010-05-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

Today's Spring Seminar with Elissa Scalise Powell was a rousing success! About 140 people attended and nobody got wet! Elissa's 4 topics contained something for everyone. She was surprised (as was I) at the range of experience among our attendees--from total newbies to 30+ years of genealogy research. I hope everyone learned something new.
One of the tidbits I picked up was in the very first session called "Hiding Behind Their Skirts: Finding Women's Records." If you're looking for women's diaries or letters about a particular area, search for a local university that has a women's studies department. Chances are, they will have collected at least a few diaries from that area. Now why didn't I think of that?
I also like her idea of searching for "church neighbors"--people who attended the same church but maybe didn't live very close to your family. I've got lots of families back in East Tennessee in the late 1700s/early 1800s and have looked for individual events in the church records. Now I'm going to go back and look at some of the other family names in those records and see if I can find more family connections.
In her "Twenty Years of Stuff--Now What Do I Do?" talk, Elissa suggested creating Home, Working and Resource files. That really sounds like a great (and relatively simple) idea. Maybe I'll try it after I get over the shock of hearing that she doesn't take her laptop into courthouses and libraries. The will codicil example Elissa shared with us is very similar to one that was published in the SGS Bulletin several times back in 2008-09.
Elissa's third topic was "Rubik's Cube Genealogy: A New Twist on Your Old Data." I really like the idea of creating timelines for records for the areas in which I'm researching. The graphics Elissa presented make it clear where you should be looking for records for specific people. I'm embarrassed to learn that Family TreeMaker can generate some of them for me and I've never used that feature. And that Burpee seed planting zone map was a kick!
As a geographer, naturally I liked all the maps Elissa showed in her final talk, "How Did My Pennsylvania Ancestor Get Here? Migration Trails Out of the Keystone State." We saw the Burpee seed planting zone map again, but linking it to European planting zones was fascinating. Several people were interested in the ethnicity maps Elissa showed from the 1990 US Census. FYI, the University of Virginia Library has a historical census browser available online which allows you to create tables or maps from US Census data from 1790 to 1960 for states and counties. Check it out at http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/
I hope everyone else who attended today's seminar learned as much as I did. My apologies for the mess-up on the lunches; it obviously isn't what we expected or thought we'd paid for. I'm looking forward to a relaxing dinner at Marie Callendar's and hope to see many SGS members there.
Thanks to all who attended and to Elissa for four wonderful presentations and to our SGS volunteers who made this happen, especially Jean Roth, Cary Bright, Linda Fitzgerald, Christine Schomaker, Pat Younie, Tom Hamilton, Elizabeth Howie, Rosemary and Jon Lehman, Mary Roddy and Ron Floyd.

Are we famous yet?

2010-05-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

What a great day for SGS!

Hopefully you've all seen today's Seattle Times feature article on Seattle Genealogical Society's cemetery survey of the Newcastle Cemetery. If not, you can see it at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011811817_newcastlecemetery08m.html
There's also a video showing scenes from our visit to the cemetery with Linda Fitzgerald, a member of the cemetery survey team, talking about why genealogists gravitate to cemeteries and what was found at Newcastle.
Before 9:00 AM, I already had received emails from three people either providing more information on the cemetery or asking for more information. Obviously people do still read their local newspaper!

It might surprise you to learn how long it has taken this article to make it into print. We first contacted the Seattle Times back in January with the idea of an article on our Newcastle Cemetery work during February, Black history month. We finally arranged a visit to the cemetery with the Times reporter, a photographer, and a videographer on April 14th. The article came out on May 8th. Even the reporter was surprised that it made the front page. I guess we just lucked out on a slow news day!

My apologies to the members of the committee that worked on the Newcastle cemetery project back in 2007-08. The reporter wasn't interested in listing the names of everyone who worked on the project, or in advertising our Spring Seminar and other upcoming events for us. At least she included our website address, so hopefully people will find us.

Speaking of the Spring Seminar, you've only got 6 days to get your registration into SGS. They're due by May 15th. We will be accepting day-of registrations, but they'll be at a higher price [$45 for SGS members; $50 for non-members], you won't be able to purchase lunch, and we can't guarantee having a syllabus for you. Elissa Scalise Powell is a very good speaker, with a lot of useful information to share. I suspect I'll get enough tips just in her first talk ["Hiding Behind Their Skirts: Finding Women in Records"] to make the day worthwhile. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to sessions 2 ["Twenty Years of Stuff-Now What Do I Do?"] and 3 ["Rubik's Cube Genealogy: A New Twist on your Old Data"]. I'm hoping they'll spur me to do something constructive with my 30+ years of "stuff." And though I don't personally have Pennsylvania ancestors who traveled West, I do have ancestors from Ohio and Vermont. Elissa's final session, "How did my Pennsylavania Ancestor Get Here: Migration Trails out of the Keystone State", will undoubtedly give me some new ideas on where to search for more records on them. Well-attended, successful seminars are essential to the financial stability of SGS. Please plan on joining me in this great educational opportunity on May 22nd.

Election Results

2010-05-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Elections Committee spent about four hours checking and counting the ballots in our recent election this afternoon. Thank you to the committee--Peggy Kirmeyer (chair), Anna Chavelle, Maureen Crawford, Jackie Lawson and Jan Walker. Thank you, too, to the 40% of our members who took the time and energy to vote. I was hoping for a few more, but we had close to 300 ballots returned, which is not bad given that none of the Board positions had multiple candidates.
I am pleased to report that BOTH the new Bylaws and the Newsletter printing/mailing fee were overwhelmingly approved. I must admit to being somewhat nervous about either issue passing, but both did with huge pluralities. The mailing fee will not be implemented until 2011, but I'm hoping that many members will voluntarily pay the $6 this year if they want to continue receiving printed/mailed Newsletters.
Thank you to all who agreed to run for the 2011 Nominating Committee. I can attest that this is a pretty thankless and time consuming task, having served on it two years ago. I hope that it will get easier as more members like what they see happening at SGS and agree to step forward and participate more fully in running the organization. Next year's Nominating Committee will start work almost immediately, as the new Bylaws include a new Board position, Director of Membership. Please let them know if you'd consider serving either as Director of Membership or as Director of Volunteers or Treasurer, positions for which we did not have candidates on the ballot.
Thanks again to all who voted and welcome new Board members, Kathleen Stamm (Vice President) and Mary Alice Sanguinetti (Director of Library).

Digital SGS?

2010-04-18T22:33:00.000-07:00

I called a meeting of people interested in SGS's digital future on Wednesday evening. It was a pleasant surprise when a dozen people showed up. They represented a wide range of SGS experience--from 40 years' membership to a newbie.
My assumption going into this meeting was that we'd discuss and prioritize what SGS publications and papers should be digitally scanned and indexed to make them more available. Much to my surprise, the people attending shifted the discussion to our library and the fact that we don't have a complete, comprehensive, searchable, online catalog. At least for those in attendance, it was quite clear that getting an accurate catalog of our holdings is much more important than scanning and digitizing. So...that's our first priority.
A side topic of this discussion was whether or not SGS should place our library holdings on WorldCat. WorldCat is a global network of library content and services that allows users to identify library holdings across the continent. It's not clear what the costs and benefits would be of joining WorldCat, but certainly it would be a lot of work. You can bet this will be a topic of discussion in the coming year.
I hope to be able to schedule a time to start the library inventory soon. The consensus at the meeting was that we should use our existing Procite database as a starting point, since it's already in a digital format. We know it's not complete, but at least it's a starting point. So, first step is to export that database into a format we can import into a spreadsheet or database program. Then we'll develop an inventory form and schedule one or more work parties. If you'd like to participate, please let me know [sgspresident@gmail.com]. If you've got ideas to share, please click on the Comments link below.

How can SGS benefit from the digital revolution?

2010-04-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems to me that SGS is missing the boat; the digital revolution has left us behind. Yes, we've had a website for over 10 years, but in my opinion, it really can't compete with those of other genealogy organizations. Many societies have years of digital publications--both newsletters and research/article-rich pubs--available on their websites. Some have iploaded large searchable databases, like area cemetery records or vital records, to their sites. Still others have full library catalogs, searchable family group sheets submittd by their members, and numerous other types of searchable records available on-line. Many genealogical societies limit access to these records to their members only; others let anyone access them.

What should SGS be doing? Should we be scanning and indexing records currently in our possession? Should we offer records to someone else [like Ancestry, Footnote, or FamilySearch] to digitize? What should come first? How should we proceed? Where will we find the volunteers, equipment, and funds to do this? I was digging around in some cabinets at SGS the other day and "discovered" about a dozen notebooks/folders of family group sheets submitted by our members in the 1970s and 1980s. Most have no source information. Are they worth scanning and indexing? Could they help someone break down a "brick wall"?

I've scheduled a meeting for this Wednesday evening, April 14th, from 7 to 9 pm, at SGS for people interested in making SGS more "digital" to share ideas and discuss what we should be doing in this area and how we should be doing it. If you're interested in this topic, please come. If you're interested and can't attend, please email me your interest [sgspresident@gmail.com]. The number of people who show up on Wednesday and/or email me their interest will determine how we proceed.

It's Election Time

2010-04-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

First, a big THANK YOU to all of our members who have already returned their ballots. Second, if any SGS members are reading this and have not received their ballot package yet, please either call the SGS office at 206-522-8658] or email me [sgspresident@gmail.com] and we'll mail one out to you. They were delivered to the bulk mail facility a week ago [Monday, March 29th], so if you're in the Seattle area, you should have it by this Monday [April 5th].

I have to say that it frustrates me that we don't have multiple candidates for each officer/director position. Heck, we don't have ANY candidates for two positions--Treasurer and Director of Volunteers. Why is this? There are some obvious reasons. Some of our members feel they're too old to serve on the Board. Other members are still working full-time and raising families. Many of our members dedicate their volunteer time to other organizations. What about the rest of you? SGS could sure use your help!

We will be including a volunteer form with your membership renewal form this year. Yes, I know. SGS has done this before and nobody ever called. I've heard that many times and even experienced it myself. But we are no longer the "old" SGS. This Board realizes how much we need more volunteers and the active involvement of as many of our members as possible. I will go out on a limb and guarantee you that IF you fill out this year's volunteer form and provide accurate contact information, you will be contacted by the end of July. If we don't have a Director of Volunteers by then, I'll go through the forms and contact you myself. Granted, it will probably be by email [I'm not a big phone person], but you WILL be contacted.

If you haven't sent in your ballot yet, please take some time to read the proposed Bylaws revisions and think about what is being proposed. It would be great to receive ballots from at least half of our members. Will you help make that happen? Please? Thank you.

Program Planning--Got Ideas?

2010-03-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

It's time for us to plan the next 4 to 6 months of SGS educational programs, covering June through October/November/December. Our Director of Education, Jean Roth, and I will be meeting the first week in April to see what we can put together. Right now I'm looking for ideas. It would be really great if we could get a discussion going in the comments section of this blog [just click on "comments" below and post your thoughts].
SGS offers classes [either one-shot or multiple sessions], workshops [one day events, 3 or more hours], and programs [evening/weekend/daytime]. The "Intermediate Research Series" we started in January has been incredibly popular. Topics presented so far are advanced census, naturalization [both by Karen Sipe], searching online databases [Gary Zimmerman], getting the most from your Family History Center [Bob Mullen], and Dating Old Photographs [Marilyn Rose]. Remaining programs in this series include maps and gazeteers [April 10th] and travel for family history [May 1st]. We've had monthly programs on DNA for Genealogy [Larry Jones] and MS PowerPoint for genealogists [Jeff Otjen]. Our April program meeting will be on the German Annenerbes [April 18th]. And we've held multiple Brick Wall and informal chat sessions. Classes offered this quarter have included all-day beginning genealogy and a two-session beginning computer genealogy. We are co-sponsoring a 5-week class in Swedish genealogy with the Swedish Cultural Center and the Swedish-Finn Historical Society [April 10-May9]. And, of course, our special interest groups--Canadian, computer, german, irish, Pennsylvania, Illinois--have continued to meet and offer educational programs.
So....my question to you is: What are we missing? What topics should we try to offer in the coming months? Are there speakers you would particularly like to hear? Would YOU like to give a presentation?
Please leave your comments below for all to see or email me privately at SGSPresident@gmail.com. I hope to hear from you!

SGS Open House a Success!

2010-03-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

A big THANK YOU to all who helped make the SGS Open House on Sunday a big success!
We had over 50 people visit SGS on Sunday afternoon.
It was quite a lively place, with 4 stations set up to help genealogy "newbies" get started.
38 people attended the "Getting Started" talks and many got help finding their ancestors in the US Census from our look-up volunteers.
Other volunteers helped visitors find information in our library.
And yet another member helped folks fill out Family Group Sheets.
It was great to see such a high level of activity at SGS.
We plan on hosting another open house next September and hope to get more members involved. Please consider sharing an afternoon helping novices get started. It was a lot of fun!
Special thanks to Linda, Chris and Cary for their intensive cleaning effort to clear space in the storeroom and remove the piles of boxes of books and papers from the back work area. It was great having that table available for setting up four look-up stations.

Appreciating where we live

2010-03-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

My husband and I just returned from an extended trip to the Arizona desert. We've stayed at this place for varying lengths of time the last three years, but this year I figured I'd take along a genealogy research project or two to work on. I had visions of having at least one project completed and several articles on various ancestors partially completed. None of that occurred, even though we had many wet, cool days that kept us inside.
I guess I'm just spoiled by living in a city with lots of genealogy resources. We have the wonderful library collections at SGS, the Seattle Public Library, and the Fiske Library--all with both books and online genealogy databases available to us, not to mention interlibrary loan services. We have a branch of the National Archives right across the street from our SGS offices. We have numerous Family History Centers. We have high speed internet just about everywhere.
Where we stayed in the Arizona desert was pretty much the opposite in terms of genealogy research capabilities. We stay in a park model trailer in a trailer park near Quartzsite, AZ--in the desert in southwestern Arizona. We were 12 miles from Quartzsite and about 100 miles from any place with a permanent population of 30,000 or more. There is a Family History Center in Quartzsite, but their driveway washed out in a storm the day after we got down there, so the center was closed the entire first week. When I went in to order a couple of films and use their computer in week 2, I learned that (a) the films wouldn't arrive for 3-4 weeks [so don't bother ordering them], (b) their printing microfilm reader was dead and they didn't expect it to be repaired any time soon, and (c) their internet service provider wasn't compatible with the Salt Lake City computers, so there was no access to any of the FHL online databases. The next closest FHC was 65 miles away, definitely too far for running back and forth to use their computers or films.
Yes, there is a library in Quartzsite. Yes, it has some public computers with internet access, but you're limited to 30 minutes on any one day and they have no genealogical databases. They're also only open until 4 pm on weekdays; no weekend hours at all.
Yes, there was wifi service available in the trailer park, and I paid dearly for it. Unfortunately, even though there was a wifi antenna attached to our rental trailer, we couldn't always access it, the speed varied from 24 mbps down to 2 mbps, and the connection mysteriously cut out without notice about every 5 minutes. Not really very compatible with trying to do research!
So...enjoy the genealogical research benefits of living in the Seattle area. Not everyone has easy access to the wealth of resources we do.

Will SGS Benefit from NBC/Ancestry's WDYTYA?

2010-03-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

Two days after I wrote my previous post about NBC/Ancestry's "Who Do You Think You Are?", Ancestry started sending emails to genealogical societies about helping them advertise their show....and suggesting ways we could leverage the show to our own benefit.
SGS is hosting an open house after the third edition of the show, on Sunday, March 21st, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. We're hoping that people who have been watching "WDYTYA?" and thinking about their own family histories will start looking for some help....and will find SGS. We'll be running 30-minute "Getting Started" classes on the hour along with having stations set up to help find ancestors in the US Census, learn about our library, and start filling out family group sheets and pedigree charts. If you'd like to help on Sunday, March 21st, please contact Cary Bright at SGSSecretary@gmail.com.
If you're not available on the 21st, how about talking up SGS and our Open House to your friends and neighbors, along with suggesting that they watch the TV show on Friday evenings. Except for a few too many close-ups of Sarah Jessica Parker "oohing" and "aahing" and saying "OMG!", I thought the first show was pretty interesting. I can't imagine walking into a local museum or NEHGS and having them hand me the kinds of materials that were handed to SJP, but then again, I'm not a celebrity. Hopefully people will realize that finding the kinds of documents and information that were handed to her takes time and effort. I'll be stopping at the El Dorado County Museum in Placerville, CA next week. Do you think they'll have a letter about one of my Gold Rush relatives for me? Hope springs eternal!

Grant Received!

2010-03-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, folks, but I've been awaiting formal notice about our 4Culture (King County's heritage funding organization) proposal. We received it today, and YES! We received an operations sustaining grant for 2010 in the amount of $3500. That's enough to cover one month's rent and utilities plus a mailing or two.
This grant alone won't make SGS suddenly financially flush, but $3500 represents 100 new individual memberships, a significant addition to our bottom line.
This grant proposal was a team effort by several Board members, with review by several long-time active members in SGS. Without this level of support, I'm sure we would not have been successful in this endeavor.
We anticipate applying for a similar grant through the City of Seattle's Civic Partners Program this Spring. If you'd like to help with this process, please let me know [sgspresident@gmail.com]. If you know of any other grant-making organizations to which SGS might apply, please let me know that, too.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" coming to NBC

2010-02-14T20:46:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you've all heard the hype about the new NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" NBC has partnered with Ancestry.com to develop and market this show, which is modeled after a similar, highly popular show that's been running in Great Britain. The US version will feature the family histories of Lisa Kudrow [who also serves as the show's executive producer], Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick, Susan Sarandon, Emmitt Smith and Brooke Shields. All just regular people, right?
Ancestry has been emailing all of its members, asking them to invite family and friends to watch the program...and sign up for a free trial Ancestry membership, of course. Ancestry writes...

Many of the reasons we partnered with NBC are the same reasons the genealogy community will be interested in the show – because "Who Do You Think You Are?" brings family history to the general public and presents new opportunities for the entire genealogy community. This means:

More people may want to join a local genealogical society
More people asking for help finding their stories
Increased media exposure for the family history community
More funding and resources for organizations focused on family history

What is wonderful about the show is that it will help people everywhere understand what they could discover about their own family stories.

Who Do You Think You Are? could very well be the next biggest family history phenomenon since Roots. America will see a renewed interest in family history.

This all sounds well and good, but what I'm not seeing is any support from Ancestry to local genealogical societies to help them leverage the interest in genealogy generated by the program into new members and program participants. Several SGS Board members have been bantering around ideas. What do you think? Anybody got ideas for ways that SGS can benefit from the new-found interest in family history generated by "Who Do You Think You Are?" If so, please comment below or email me directly at sgspresident@gmail.com. The first show airs March 5th.

SGS is Growing!

2010-02-07T20:15:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report that January 2010 was probably one of SGS's best months ever in terms of membership growth. Thanks to our 5-month special offer, we added almost 30 members this month. Compare this to the 22 members added in ALL of calendar year 2008 or the 71 added in 2009.
My question to you now is....what can we do to insure that these new members and all of our "old" members renew in May? We've been focusing on new programs and classes. Please check out our February through May offerings and let me know what we're missing. If you have ideas for speakers or topics, please tell me.
We added 5 new members on January 30th at the DNA Genealogy talk given by Larry Jones. Were you there? Did you enjoy it? I certainly learned a lot and was thrilled at the turnout. Several of you expressed interest in forming a Special Interest Group [SIG] on DNA Genealogy, but we haven't reached the 10 interested members needed for the Board to approve the establishment of a new SIG. If you're interested in exploring DNA Genealogy topics, please call SGS [206-522-8658] and have you name added to the list of interested members.

It's Nominating Time!

2010-01-28T22:11:00.000-08:00

This year's Board has spent numerous hours updating SGS policies and procedures and is now diving into recommended revisions to our Bylaws. It seems like most of our time has been taken up with housekeeping duties, and it has. I realize these are necessary activities, since the SGS Policy & Procedure notebook was essentially empty when we took office last June.
We are, hopefully, getting to the end of the policies and procedures work and will have more time for what I hope are much more creative and interesting deliberations--like whether to renew our lease (and if not, where will we go?), how to create new programs (and what programs to develop), how to increase outreach activities and our visibility to the larger community. Our recent planning survey will help us set priorities for the coming year, but it's up to the Board to make the decisions.
We'll have 4 openings on the Board this year--Vice President, Treasurer, Director of Library and Director of Volunteers. Are you ready to step into one of these positions? Or maybe run for one of the others? A sign of a healthy organization is multiple names on the ballot for each position.
There is a list of elective and committee positions posted to the SGS website at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~waseags/electioninfo.html. Please take a moment to look over the list and see where your skills might be most useful. We're also in need of people to help organize book sales, including ordering new books for sale, and folks to help take an inventory of our holdings later this spring.
If you're interested in an elected position, please contact Karen Thomason, Nominating Committee chair, at sgsnominate@gmail.com. If you'd like to volunteer for one of the other committees, please contact our Director of Volunteers, Rosemary Lehman, at sgsvolunteers@gmail.com. And, if you'd consider being on this year's elections committee, please let me know, as I have to come up with 5 people by March 20th [sgspresident@gmail.com].

No beginners?

2010-01-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

I've been sneaking a peak at the planning survey results this week.
The survey doesn't close until this Sunday, January 24th, at 9:00 PM, so you still have time to respond [click on Click Here to take survey to respond]. We're at 144 responses right now. Can we make it to 150? The Board will be reviewing and discussing the results at Monday's meeting, so let us know your thoughts.
Most of the results aren't too surprising--SGS members are predominantly female, over 50, and live in North Seattle/King County. Over half of the respondents consider themselves "intermediate" researchers and computer users.
I hope this means that our new intermediate research skills series of programs will draw in more members. The first session will be tomorrow with well-known local genealogist Karen Sipe presenting on advanced census research. As a long-time NARA volunteer and instructor, Karen has all sorts of great tips for getting the most out of census records. Come by SGS at 1:00 tomorrow and benefit from her experience.
I'm also deeply gratified that many of you took the time to answer the open-ended questions in the survey. We value your thoughts and ideas. Many of you provided thoughtful comments and creative ideas. Thank you so much for taking the time to share these with the Board and Long Range Planning Committee. Suggestions for specific areas--education, publications, library--will be sent to the appropriate director and/or committee.
Several of you who answered the final question--what skills are you willing share--failed to provide your name and contact information. We have no way of knowing who you are if you don't tell us, as the survey contains no identifying information. If you answered that question and don't hear from a member of the SGS Board by mid-February, please email me [sgspresident@gmail.com] and I'll be sure someone contacts you.
Complete survey results will be published in the next Newsletter, which will be out the end of February. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

SGS Outreach Efforts

2010-01-14T20:48:00.000-08:00

One focus I've had since becoming SGS President is getting SGS better known in the community. SGS has sent speakers to other genealogy societies in the area for many years, but now we're trying to broaden our outreach efforts. To that end, this Saturday Cary Bright and I are presenting an all day beginning genealogy class at the Nordic Heritage Museum. In February, SGS will be participating in a panel discussion on genealogy at the Rainier Club. In April and May, I'll be teaching a 5-week class for the Swedish Cultural Center.

What else can we do to get SGS better known in the community and possibly generate a bit of income? It seems to me that retirement homes--ones where the residents are relatively active--might be an ideal focus for outreach activities. But what can/should we offer them? Should we offer classes, library tours, individual assistance, something else? Who would provide these services? Do we need a new kind of membership to accommodate retirement homes and their residents?

How about reaching out to schools? Several members have suggested developing a program in genealogy for school kids. But at what grade level? Historylink.org has developed a new Education page that includes a section of Heritage Education Resources. For the most part, these appear to be history trunks--collections of materials for classroom exercises. Is this something SGS could/should be contributing to? Do we have members with experience in this area? Or should we be offering teacher training opportunities in using genealogy to teach history? What other possibilities are there? Anybody interested?

The response to our planning survey has been quite good so far, with over 110 completed surveys. I'm guessing those who read this blog have already completed the survey, but if not, please follow this link http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22A3YRU8WME The survey will close on January 24th. Is there any chance we could reach 200 responses?

For those of you who haven't noticed, there's a one-question quick survey to the right of this blog entry. Please share your thoughts on what you'd like to see in our Bulletin.

Publishing your family history

2010-01-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

Today's Computer Interest Group [CIG] focused on publishing your family history. Jill Morelli did a fantastic job of describing the process she used to publish a book on 3 generations of her Swedish ancestors, working backwards from her immigrant ancestors. I'm guessing at least half of those in attendance have already checked out http://lulu.com/ to see how it works!
Jill's book is absolutely gorgeous. She designed it for her "cousins" who aren't really into genealogy, so there are no computer-generated family reports, just a couple of pedigree charts at the back of the book. There are lots of photos, maps and descriptions of her ancestors' lives and locations. It's a very professional looking volume--complete with its own ISBN--that I dearly wish was on my family!
For those of us who aren't quite ready to write an entire book, the idea of writing a series of short stories on individual family members or events--as John Phillip Coletta recommended at last Spring's seminar--was mentioned. Speaking on behalf of our Director of Publications, SGS would love to get more member submissions of articles about their ancestors, brick walls that have been surmounted, research techniques that yielded results, descriptions of unusual records, and Pacific Northwest transcribed records. The quality of our Bulletin is directly related to the quality of the submissions SGS receives. Have you got an article in you? Please consider submitting it to sgspublications@gmail.com.

I hope that by now all of you have taken the SGS Long Range Planning Survey. If not, please take a few minutes and answer the questions at:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB22A3YRU8WME
We'd love to get responses from at least half of all SGS members. Please let us know your thoughts.

New Year's Resolutions?

2010-01-01T17:42:00.000-08:00

Several people have asked me if I'm going to post some new year's resolutions for SGS. Quite frankly, no. I'm really lousy at writing and keeping resolutions--as illustrated by my totally disorganized genealogy files and office. Resolutions just don't seem to work for me, whether I've got control over what I'm resolving or not.
In the case of SGS, as president I really don't have that much control over what happens. I could resolve to double membership, bring in $100,000--all sorts of things. But I really don't have the power to make them come true.
What I can do is set some goals.
My SGS goals for 2010 are:
1. That SGS become fiscally sound. I pledge to do everything in my power to try to increase revenues and decrease expenses at SGS so that the two will be in balance. Our year-end donation drive has yielded excellent results--over $4000 in donations. For this I thank all of you who sent in money, whether it was $5 or $100. But we need to find ways to generate revenue other than begging our members to send checks. To this end, I have agreed to teach courses for the Swedish Cultural Center and the Nordic Heritage Museum with payment going to SGS. Treasurer Mary Roddy and I submitted a grant application to 4Culture in early December for operating funds. We will submit a similar proposal to the City of Seattle's Civic Partners Program this spring. Should we sell our King County Records data to Ancestry.com? Publish another book? Establish a genealogy speakers' bureau with payments going to SGS? I'd love to hear your ideas....or just come into SGS and add them to the list on the flip chart in the family histories area.
2. Increase SGS dues-paying membership. I'm not going to put a number on this, but my review of our membership history shows that we've lost half of our dues-paying members (i.e., individual, dual and library memberships that pay annual dues) in the last ten years. At the turn of the century--Jan 2000, that is--we had 1008 dues-paying members; now we have 504. On the positive side, we're only down about 10 members from last year, but our membership has been declining steadily. Most of you probably realize this is "par for the course" for genealogical societies, but we need to do better. Last year, our annual dues covered barely half of the Society's expenses. SGS can't continue this pattern and survive for long.
3. Develop a viable plan for dealing with our library situation that reflects our members' desires. I've written before about our lease expiring in 16 months and my desire for more space and better parking. But what do YOU want? Our Long Range Planning Committee has drafted a survey that members will be asked to complete starting next week. It includes questions about the Library, as well as other SGS programs and activities. Please take a few minutes to let us know what YOU think.
4. Increase member participation in SGS activities. There is a small core group of members who are actively involved in SGS classes, special interest groups, committees, volunteering, etc. What about the rest of you? What activity or event would entice you to become more involved? Is there ANYthing I can do to get you more active? Any ideas would be appreciated.
5. Improve two-way communication with our members. I've tried to increase communication TO you through regular listserv emails, this blog, and the SGS Newsletter [which is now back on schedule]. Unfortunately, I'm not getting much feedback and haven't figured out how to do that. Any ideas? Maybe the new chat sessions [see Jan 14 on the SGS Calendar] will bring some of you in. I sure hope so!
[Added on January 2nd] 6. Replace the SGS website with one that is more up-to-date, easily navigable, allows posting of members-only items [such as our King County Court Records Index], provides for online payment of dues and fees, and encourages member and non-member interactions. This is not to say that there is anything "wrong" with our current website. It is just outdated and sits on an ancestry-owned survey, which makes me nervous about posting data.
As always, I am open to any and all suggestions for improving SGS. Please share your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" word below, emailing be directly at sgspresident [at] gmail.com or just answering our upcoming survey. If I'm still writing this blog next January 1st, I'll let you know how we did on these goals.

New Year's Wishes for SGS

2009-12-26T21:25:00.000-08:00

What would you MOST like to see happen at SGS in 2010?
I've been pondering this question for the last couple of days, trying to figure out where to focus my energies in the coming year (or at least 5 months).
One looming issue facing SGS is our library lease. Our current 10-year lease is up in April 2011. Since we really can't afford our current rent, I'm having grave doubts about our ability to negotiate a new lease that is within our financial reach. Ironically, the space we have--while in a great location--doesn't fit our current needs very well. We could really use a class/social room that will hold 30-40 people. We need more easily accessible parking. We need more space for computers and appropriate wiring to support them. BUT we can't really afford to pay even our current rent, so how can we afford a more spacious location?
How important is the library to SGS and its membership? The recent survey on this site and the library sign-in log indicate that it is only used by a very small fraction of our membership. Is it important to the rest of our members to maintain this library? What should its focus be?
The other issue I continually ponder is how to get more of our members actively involved in SGS activities. We've tried expanding our class and program offerings. Will more members turn out than the usual handful? If not, what would bring more members out to SGS? The state focus groups started in 2005 brought out a lot of members, but attendance at those meetings quickly declined. What programs could/should SGS offer that would interest more members?
I'd love to know your thoughts on these and other issues facing SGS. What would YOU like to see happen at SGS in 2010? Please click on the word "comment" below and let me know your thoughts.

There's always something new to learn....

2009-12-13T17:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Computer Interest Group [CIG] meeting was, as always, educational. Dawn Bingaman, CIG chair, shared a web-based application she "discovered" before taking off on a research trip this fall. It's called Evernote [http://www.evernote.com/] and is definitely worth a look. What Evernote allows you to do--for free!--is share notes, documents, photos, saved records, even videos and audio recordings with anyone you wish, or just yourself. These records can be accessed by ANY web-accessible device--desktop or laptop computer, web-enabled phone or PDA, Mac or PC based. Do check it out. Space is somewhat limited [40 MB/month] unless you want to pay a small fee, but Dawn found this web tool very useful on her research trip.
Lou Daly shared her new "toy"--a Livescribe pulse pen [http://www.livescribe.com/index.html]. Using special dot paper, the pulse smartpen records and links audio to what your write. Lou plans on using it when interviewing relatives, so she can focus on listening to their answers instead of trying to write down everything. This new system should make it so she won't have to transcribe what is recorded--the pen will do it for her! Is that cool or what?
There were about 25 in attendance at yesterday's CIG, a relatively low number for this SGS Special Interest Group. Please remember that ALL of our SIGs are here for YOU, our members. If you're not finding groups and meetings that meet your needs, please let us know. What are we missing? Are you interested in starting a new group? We just need ten people to express interest to start a new SIG. Let our Director of Education, Jean Roth [sgseducation@gmail.com] know your interests.

Holiday Party Musings

2009-12-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

Thank You to all who attended today's holiday party.
We had a little trouble with JoAnne's DVD, but had lots of treats and most people tried the genealogy holiday craft project. At least three people expressed interest in joining a genealogy craft group. Are there any other takers out there?
Special thanks to Cary, Jean and Mary for all their work preparing for the party.

Now, my question for the rest of you.....why weren't you there? Please answer the survey question to the right. I won't know who's answering what, but am curious to know if social get-togethers are just not desireable or you're not into holiday gatherings, crafts, ??? I've been thinking that maybe we need to start having more informal gatherings--like weekly coffee and chat sessions to "talk genealogy." Is that something members would attend?

By now all members should have received their latest Bulletin and Newsletter. I've had positive responses from about 15 of you, saying you like having the Newsletter available online. How about the rest of you? Please let me know by either leaving a comment below [they come directly to me] or emailing me directly [sgspresident-at-gmail.com (use the "@" sign instead of "-at-")].
Ginny

A new Query Website

2009-11-29T19:49:00.000-08:00

Back in the olden days, genealogists sent queries about their ancestors to genealogy societies in the areas where those ancestors lived, and waited patiently for someone to see the query, realize it's their family, and send a letter to the query poster. Sometimes it took many years to get a response. Sometimes you never got a response.
With the advent of the internet and groups like Rootsweb (now Ancestry) and Genealogy.com (Genforum), digital message boards were developed. I'm guessing most of you have posted to either or both of these. They both offer message boards for localities and surnames.
Now there's another message board site, http://genqueries.com/. Dick Eastman, probably the foremost genealogy blogger in the US, developed this site. It's essentially one huge database, with categories for locations and surnames and also ads (for genealogy services and societies) and event listings. It's very similar in concept to Craig's List, but for genealogists. GenQueries is advertised as having no fees, no spam, no account required, and no invasion of your privacy. You can even sign up for an RSS feed and monitor postings without searching through the site.
This site just went public the beginning of November, so it doesn't have a huge number of posts yet. But notice that you can search the entire site from the search box at the left top of the home page.
And yes, SGS was one of the first societies listed--back on September 21st.
Do let me know if you have any success posting to GenQueries. I'm still hoping!

November Board Meeting

2009-11-26T11:42:00.000-08:00

Monday's November Board meeting turned out to be quite lengthy, as one of the items on the agenda was a report from our Bylaws Review Committee by Bonnie Larson, chair. This group has been meeting on a regular basis, working through every article of our current Bylaws and evaluating how well they serve SGS and its members. We spent over an hour discussing their 2+ pages of initial recommendations. One issue that has not been dealt with yet is the extent to which SGS should allow digital communications to supplant in-person meetings or mailed notifications. Do you have an opinion on this topic? Have you read the Bylaws? Copies are available to all members at SGS. Your comments and suggestions would be welcomed by Bonnie and her committee. Please mail your comments to SGS, care of Bonnie.

The biggest issue facing your SGS Board is our rapidly deteriorating financial position. Our actual income/expenses to date since May are currently almost $5000 under budget. The Board had to make the difficult decision to pull money out of the Dave Ault inheritance bequest, which we had hoped to save for a down payment on our own facility, to have sufficient funds available to pay our rent through April. While the Board is working on one grant proposal and searching for others, we need your ideas and help to find additional sources of revenue to keep our library and programs running. There's a large note pad on an easel at SGS (in the family histories area) for your fundraising ideas, or email them to me (SGSPresident-at-gmail.com).

Our annual year-end donation appeal letter should be arriving in your mail box next week. We know this year has been financially onerous for many of our members, but please consider making a donation--however small--to SGS this year. All donations are tax deductible and will help us survive.

Getting the most from Special Interest Groups at SGS

2009-11-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

I happened to stop by SGS this morning while the Irish Interest Group was meeting. There were about a dozen people sitting around the big table. Jean Roth has been leading both the Irish and German interest groups for many years, and doing a great job coming up with topics and presentations. After the meeting, one of the regular attendees said to me, "You know, Ginny. I could put together a presentation based on some of my research for an interest group meeting." What a novel idea!
SGS supports Special Interest Groups (SIGs) focused on Irish, German, and Canadian research, computers and genealogy, and MAC computer users. We also still have a few functioning State Focus Groups--Pennsylvania, Illinois, Washington, Missouri, ??? [there may be others, but they're not coming to mind].
All of these groups are supposed to be forums for group learning and sharing. Group leaders should not have to bear all of the responsibility for preparing discussion topics. All of us who have been researching our families--whether for a year or multiple decades--have learned things in our research that are worth sharing with others researching in the same areas. Please consider offering to talk about something you've discovered, even if you've only got 15 minutes of material to share. Talk to your group's coordinator and let them know you're willing to help. And check the SGS calendar for future meetings of the groups that overlap your research areas. If you haven't been to an interest group meeting for awhile, drop in and start participating. What you've learned might help someone else break through their brick wall.

"What's New in Family History" according to Mary Slawson

2009-11-15T17:40:00.000-08:00

For those of you who didn't attend yesterday's LDS Family History Fair in Redmond, I'd like to report on Mary Slawson's keynote presentation on the above topic. It's a bit of a misnomer in that she focused on what's new in LDS family history--not the entire field. But other than that, it was very interesting and informative.
The biggest shock was Mary's comments about the Family History Library's plans to totally phase out all CDs and microfilm. Can you imagine NOT pawing through all those rolls of microfilm at the FHL? I can't! Don't start holding your breath yet, as it could take awhile to digitize and index everything on those hundred of thousands of microfilm rolls and thousands of CDs. But it was a shock to hear that there will be a time in the not-too-distant future when the FHL has no microfilm.
Mary also talked about the new Family Search Family Tree program being developed. It provides for on-line collaboration among people working on the same families, with detailed sourcing capabilities and provision for posting multiple conflicting facts. It's also designed to link to your existing genealogy software.
Another new LDS genealogy development is a set of style guides being added to the Family Search Wiki--articles on how to do genealogy in different countries written by FHL experts.
Of course, we all know about Family Search Indexing and the Record Search pilot site. But did you know the FHL is also involved in a huge book scanning project? They're scanning books from the FHL, BYU, Allen Co., Houston, Mid-Continent and many other libraries. Mary reported that they've already completed the scanning of over 40,000 volumes. If you go to http://familysearch.org/ and click on "Search Records" and then "Historical Books" [in the drop-down list], you'll see that they've actually scanned 52,743 books already! There are several search boxes to use for finding your surnames and/or locations in the scanned items.
If you'd like to check out some of the new features the LDS folks are working on, take a look at http://labs.familysearch.org/ You'll find links there to most of the projects mentioned above.
Thanks to Mary for a great keynote and to the Redmond and Bellevue LDS stakes for another great day of genealogy presentations.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

2009-11-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, but as some of you know, I’m off on a cruise. One of the relatively new features of Holland America cruises is a Microsoft “techspert” on every ship to get people hooked on Windows and Windows Live for writing blogs and posting photos.

This morning I attended a presentation on Windows Live Photo Gallery that demonstrated some of the program’s features. Basically it works like Picasa or any other photo storing and editing program—and it’s a free download from http://download.live.com

But there’s a particularly intriguing feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery—the ability to identify individual faces in uploaded photos and to have the program “learn” these faces and automatically identify them in future photos. Our techspert demonstrated how you can then search for all photos with a particular person identified in them without having to actually look at each photo. Pretty cool!

It seems to me that this might be a very useful feature for genealogists. If you can identify “Great Aunt Martha” in a series of scanned photos that you know are of her, Windows Live Photo Gallery might be able to identify her in other photos you’ve scanned but didn’t know exactly who was in them. It’s definitely worth a try. Just be sure to use the exact same name for each time an individual appears in one of your photos.

Do try this out and let me know how it works for you.

SGS Committees

2009-10-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

It seems like half of my time these first 5 months in office has been spent trying to find people to serve on various SGS committees. Maybe when the Society had 2000 members all of these committees were fully staffed, but now that we're down below 600, it's a bit more difficult, especially since we're also trying to keep the library open 30 hours a week, which means a minimum of 6 shifts per week [preferably 7, so there are two people for the evening hours[.
We now have active participants on the Library Trustees, Retention/Disposal, Editorial Board & Publications Committee [need more help], Long Range Planning, Audit, Seminar [need some new people], and Computer committees. We have not appointed anyone to the Security and Program committees yet; the Elections Committee is not appointed until March--but we'll need people for that. I would love to have a group of people willing to make presentations on behalf of SGS--a speakers' bureau--as we get requests for presentations fairly often. Wouldn't it be great to be able to introduce people in retirement homes to genealogy by bringing an introductory class to them?
Most of these committees don't meet very often and have pretty limited duties. They're a good way to "ease into" becoming more active in the Society.
If you're interested in becoming more involved in any of these activities, please email Director of Volunteers, Rosemary Lehman, and SGSVolunteers@gmail.com. She'll find a place for you.

How do you organize your genealogy research?

2009-10-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

Maybe the Board was just a little slap-happy after our almost 3-hour meeting today, but we decided to make this month's blog poll on how we organize our genealogy notes. We're most curious to see your answers...and read what you have to say about this topic.
Karen Sipe and I had hoped to spend some significant time talking about organization in the Beginning Genealogy class we taught during the Fall Seminar. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and barely gave the topic lip service. For this I apologize. We had hoped to talk about organizing files or notebooks by surnames, locations, time....there are as many ways to organize family history research as there are researchers, I suspect.
Personally, I've tried color-coded files, surname notebooks, and boxes by family line [with separate file folders inside], but somehow I always get too busy to file and end up with piles...and piles....and piles. If I'm lucky, I can figure out where a particular piece of paper I'm looking for is by how deep it is in the pile, but that hasn't been happening much lately. It's obviously time to get organized...again.
I'm thinking I might just wait until I hear what Elissa Powell, our Spring Seminar speaker, has to say on the subject. One of her four presentations will be "Twenty Years of Stuff. Now What Do I Do?" I'm hoping she's got some simple solution for my piles!
Please share your thoughts by taking the poll [column to right] and/or sharing your comments [click on green word "comments" below].

Funerals and Missed Opportunities

2009-10-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

I attended a funeral for a lady I'd never met the other day. It's not that I didn't try to meet her. But I never managed to convince her to talk to me. Her father was a step-brother to my great-grandmother, so we were two generations removed from each other. And I really, REALLY wanted to talk to her about my great-great-grandfather--the person I've spent 20+ years researching. Sadly, she was probably the last person alive who might have known R. H. Collins. If I could just have talked to her.
This past weekend's SGS conference focused on Oral History. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to ask this lady questions. And since I was busy teaching during the seminar, I didn't get to attend any of the sessions that would have made me a better interviewer/listener. Maybe next time.
The SGS Seminar Committee had a de-briefing session this evening. The speaker evaluations were overwhelmingly positive, with several speakers receiving the maximum possible scores. It's a shame more people didn't come to hear them. Hopefully those that did attend won't let their relatives become missed opportunities like I did. The lady I never met sounded like a really interesting and wonderful person.

SGS Fall Seminar a Success!

2009-10-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who participated in the SGS Fall Seminar yesterday.
Attendance was a bit lower than last year's event, but those who attended gave the sessions rave reviews. Of special note was our keynote speaker, John Hughes, who was called "a wonderful speaker" and "totally fascinating!" and Cary Lynn Bright, who presented 30+ ways to Bring Your Family History to Life in Your Home.
The members of the Seminar Committee [Karl Kumm, Jean Roth, Pat Younie, Cary Bright, Linda Fitzgerald, Christine Schomaker, Mary Roddy, Tom Hamilton, Jean Morton, Jan McNair] deserve special thanks for their hard work pulling together such a well-run event. Set-up helpers Mollie Fitzsimmons, Sharyl Swope and Bruce Finlayson and clean-up helpers Cindy Stevens, and James Ryan were especially appreciated. A few more strong helpers at the end of the day would have been nice....
A big issue facing SGS now is finding a place for future seminars. The Sand Point Education Center, where we've held our last three seminars, has reverted to the Seattle School District and is on their list of schools to be re-opened next year. While there are many venues available for single-speaker events, locations for multiple simultaneous sessions are considerably rarer. If you know of any appropriate places for future SGS seminars, please tell us. Appropriate locations need to be wheelchair accessible, near a Metro bus line, have ample parking, and be reasonably priced. Contact us via the "comments" option below, by calling SGS [206-522-8658], or by emailing SGSEducation@gmail.com or SGSPresident@gmail.com.
Thanks again to all who helped produce another great event!

SGS Programs

2009-10-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

"Program, Program. Git Yer Program" was the title of one of the FGS presentations I attended last month. According to that speaker--and several people who have responded to this blog--programs are the key to building a genealogy society's membership.
Taking that advice to heart, Director of Education Jean Roth and I have been working hard to put together several new educational programs for the coming months.
I'm sure you're all aware of our two big seminars each year. They are a major source of revenue for the Society and a way for us to reach out to family history researchers in the Puget Sound area who may not be SGS members, as well as providing learning opportunities for our own members. Revitalizing these seminars has been a major effort the last two years.
Now we're turning our focus to educational programming for our members.
What kinds of programs does SGS offer?
First, regular monthly [more or less] speakers on a variety of topics. We've added a November program and have three NEW presenters/presentations scheduled for Jan-Mar 2010.
Second, instructional classes. We'll be offering another beginning genealogy workshop, a two-part beginning computer genealogy class, and a new intermediate genealogy research series in early 2010.
Third, special interest groups. Our computer, Mac, Canada, German and Irish interest groups continue to run their own monthly programs. Several state focus groups--Illinois, Pennsylvania, New England [yes, I know that's not a state, but they morphed into a region]--continue to meet and offer interesting area-specific programs. We have plans to better support these groups in the coming months.
So, what are these exciting new programs? Sorry, can't tell you. They'll be announced at the Fall Seminar this Saturday and in our upcoming Newsletter. If, after checking out our new offerings, you don't see what you'd like, please let us know. And if you'd like to help plan future events, we'd be happy to have your assistance.

HQRL's Seminar with Dan Lynch

2009-10-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

Along with about 150 other area genealogists, I spent today in Tacoma listening to Dan Lynch, author of Google Your Family Tree. I have to admit, my main reason for going to this all-day workshop was to try to drum up some more registrations for our seminar next weekend. After all, I've been doing genealogy for 30 years, working with computers for 40 years, and using Google for 10 years. What was I going to learn about using Google for family history research?
Answer: A LOT!
Dan is an excellent presenter. He's well organized, repeats the things he really wants you to remember, uses technology well, incorporates humor into his presentation, easily adapts to interruptions [like announcements over a loudspeaker], and makes time for anyone and everyone who wants to ask questions.
So...what did I learn? Without giving you too many free tips, let me just use keywords and symbols: "~" "translate this page" "+" Google Alerts "~vintage" "Language Tools"
Sorry, you'll have to buy Dan's book or attend one of his seminars to get the details.
The other thing I learned is that there is always something new I can learn by listening to other genealogists, even if the presentation is on a topic I think I'm pretty well informed about. We each have different approaches to using the tools that are available to us. You never know when that one new "tidbit" might open the door for your family research.

One suggestion Dan made is that family historians should post some of their information and photos online so that other researchers can find you. In answer to a question about WHERE and HOW to post family photos, he suggested that local genealogical societies create a photo sharing page on their website. What do you think of this idea? Please respond by clicking on the green comments button below. Also please take this month's one-question survey in the righthand column.

Visit to another genealogy library

2009-10-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a week's trip to Missouri to visit with relatives on my mother's side of the family. My husband and I try to do this at least once a year, as I like to get back there to do genealogical research and he enjoys the small town environment. This time there were 5 of us first cousins and my uncle, who is now 84 [going on 60].
Since we were only there for a week I tried to be on my best behavior and not run off to do my research. However, before leaving Seattle I discovered that a relative had donated a box of photos to the genealogical society in an adjacent county. Needless to say, I wanted to take a look at them. Since my cousins were also interested, we scheduled a little field trip.
This genealogy library is only open 12 hours a week--Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 AM to 2 PM. It's located in a former Carnegie Library that the Society managed to purchase for $90,000 [raised in 12 months] in 2002 in a community of about 10,000 people. Counting the floor space on both the first and second floors, I doubt they have as much space as the SGS Library and they certainly don't have the number of books, periodicals, CDs, and other research materials we have.
What they DO have that was impressive to me is an ACTIVE archival preservation and indexing program. The box of photos I found listed online had been carefully indexed and organized into a single archival box with photos separated by archival tissue paper, grouped by subject and placed in archival file folders. The entire second floor of the building housed shelves of ORIGINAL county records [what you'd expect to find in a county clerk's or recorder's office] and project work areas. This group is currently preserving and indexing all of the county's circuit court records from 1900 until 1980 [the State of Missouri is doing the same for all court records before 1900]. The record preservation process and care taken by these volunteers is impressive and the resultant indexes will be invaluable for researchers in this area.
My questions to readers of this blog:
   - Should SGS be doing similar record preservation projects?
   - Could SGS generate enough money to purchase our own building?
   - Is that a worthwhile goal?
Please let me know your thoughts by clicking on the green COMMENT button below or emailing me directly at SGSPresident [@] gmail.com.
Thank you.

Planning Meeting Musings

2009-09-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Thank you to the 20 or so people who showed up for yesterday's quarterly meeting. The meeting started with our Washington State Genealogical Society district rep, Bonnie MacDonald, presenting a volunteer award to Marilynn VanHise for her 9 years of work coordinating the King County Records Project. It was also announced that SGS has received written permission to publish this index however we please. Any ideas for how we can benefit financially from this project would be most appreciated.

After the usual "business" [minutes, treasurer's report, president's report], we reviewed the long range planning priorities generated at the quarterly meeting held last March. We also discussed SGS's financial situation--basically that over 80% of all funds generated by SGS go to support the library.

After some discussion, we broke into 3 groups for goal-setting.
The Programs/Education group came up with a long list of suggestions, from program topic and class ideas to suggestions for when and how to offer them.
The Membership/Volunteers group recommended that SGS take PayPal &/or credit cards for dues, move to digital newsletters and increased use of email notices [no more often than every 10 days to 2 weeks].
The Library group set more specific goals:

search for a new home for SGS--a good location with parking
strengthen relationships with other organizations; possibly combine with another historical or genealogical group for a new home
develop the uniqueness of the SGS library--identify our collection's strengths and advertise them.

These are all great ideas, and all need more member input. Since our lease is up in 18 months, it's time to seriously consider relocation. If you know of any potential space--3000 square feet or more that can bear our library's weight, is inexpensive, well located and has good parking--please talk to a Board member.

Fall Semianr Oct. 17th

2009-09-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

SGS hosts two seminars per year--one in the Fall and one in Spring. They generate a goodly chunk of our operating budget. Unfortunately, this year's Fall Seminar doesn't seem to be generating the interest we'd like--and need. What we need to know is--why are we not getting our usual number of registrations? Is it the topic--Oral History? Is it the timing--Saturday, Oct. 17th? Is it that we sent out the registration forms too early--ca. August 1st?
As with every aspect of SGS, the Seminar Committee is made up of volunteers. It's one of many SGS committees that could use some new participants. All of its current members are now either on the Board or doing other time-consuming jobs [like coordinating desk volunteers]. Would you like to help? If so, please call the office or email Karl [k.kumm [@] comcast.net].
If a seminar on oral history is a dud, what topics would draw more interest? If you've got ideas, please email me or come to the next Seminar Committee meeting. If you lost your brochure and need information, check out http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~waseags/2009FallSeminar.html

Where are we going?

2009-09-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

The SGS Fall Membership meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 26th [see details at right]. Will you be there?
SGS is struggling.
Our membership has been steadily declining.
We don't have enough desk volunteers to staff our library during posted open hours.
Our revenues are not covering our expenses.
What can/should we do?
Who will do it?
We started a long-range planning process in March with brainstorming. This exercise generated a list of priorities for SGS. Come hear how SGS is approaching these priorities and give us your input on how to move SGS forward.

Searching for Volunteers

2009-09-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

SGS has over 600 individual and dual members. So why is it that the work of running the Society and keeping the library running are left to so few members? Many of the jobs we most desperately need new volunteers for--like being a library desk volunteer, serving on the seminar committee, or helping with publications--do not require huge commitments of time. Desk volunteers can sign up for just one shift a month (5 hours). The seminar committee usually meets once a month for two hours; members spend a couple more hours performing their assigned duties. Our Newsletter is published quarterly and our Bulletin twice a year; not an onerous schedule by any means! Many hands make light work for all of us. What can you do to help keep SGS running?
For those who'd like to know more about becoming a desk volunteer, please sign up for one of the training sessions--Monday, Sept. 28th from 10 AM to 3 PM or Saturday, Oct. 3rd from 10 AM to 3 PM. Just let Pat Younie know you're interested by emailing SGSVolunteers [@] gmail.com.
BTW, a big THANK YOU to Annette Dwyer for the new banner. Quite spiffy, isn't it?

SGS's Computer Interest Group

2009-09-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

Oh, how I've missed our Computer Interest Group [CIG] meetings these last several months! Somehow I've managed to be out of town the second Saturday since May. I didn't realize how much I missed the CIG meetings until attending today's session. It was great!

Today's topic was Family Tree Maker 2009, with new member Jeff Otjen as presenter. Jeff did a really great job of demonstrating many of FTM's features. I've been an FTM user for many years--since it's inception, actually--and have been one of those reluctant upgraders. I'm so used to the "old" format [i.e., FTM 16 and earlier] that I've really had a hard time adjusting to FTM 2008/2009. After seeing Jeff's demonstration of the integrating features and mapping capabilities of FTM 2009, I'm ready to give it another try.

Speaking of special interest groups.....SGS is down to just a very few active ones. According to our last Bulletin, our only active special interest groups [SIGs] are Canadian, Computer, German, Irish, and Mac [as in Macintosh computers]. Is it time to resurrect some of our "lost" SIGs? Our Bylaws allow for creating a SIG if we have 10 interested members. What topics are of most interest? How about a SIG on research techniques, writing your family stories, or Scandinavian research? Other suggestions? Please leave your comments below or email them to me at sgspresident[@]gmail.com [remove brackets for correct address.

Reflections on FGS

2009-09-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

I've been back in Seattle since late Saturday, so now it's time to reflect on last week's FGS meetings and what, if anything, my attendance means for the Society. On the plane to Little Rock, I made a list of SGS issues I hoped to get help on at the meetings. These included reversing our declining membership, getting more members involved in Society activities, how to generate revenue from our library, how to keep our board meetings moving [and under 2 hours?], and how to move SGS into the digital age without offending our non-digital members.
I had high hopes that I'd gather a lot of great ideas from other Society movers and shakers. This didn't happen, even though I spent the entire first day in "Society Management" sessions [the only day such sessions were offered]. There just weren't any opportunities to sit down and chat with experienced Society officers. I did meet a great bunch of gals from Dallas [we stayed at the same hotel], but their society has the same problems SGS does, and they haven't found solutions to them either. And I met lots of people from genealogical societies located in small towns. Unfortunately, what works in small towns is not very likely to work in Seattle...is it?
This is not to say attending the FGS meetings was a waste of time. I heard a number of great speakers, learned a few new genealogy research tricks, talked to a number of vendors [which will hopefully yield a few more raffle prizes for October!] and got our Washington Donation Land Claims book scanned for free.
If you've got ideas to help SGS with the issues listed above, please send me your thoughts.
Ginny

FGS Days 4 & 5

2009-09-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Here I sit in the Little Rock airport, trying to catch up on my posts. It's so nice of them to provide free wi-fi for those of us with laptops!

Day 4 [Friday] I attended talks by George Schweitzer [again! as entertaining and informative as earlier], J. Mark Lowe, Elissa Powell [our Spring Seminar speaker], and Thomas W. Jones. All were truly excellent. If we ever decide to focus a seminar on Tennessee and/or North Carolina, I would definitely recommend Mark Lowe as a speaker. He had a wealth of information on researching in those states and presented it very well. Tom Jones definitely caters to the "more advanced" genealogists. The lady in front of me had attended this same talk a year ago and was hoping to understand at least half of it THIS time. Not a good sign. I did enjoy the talk, but doubt most of our members would.

This morning I attended talks by Elizabeth Shown Mills ["The Identify Crisis"], Paula Stuart-Warren [on school records], and Barbara Vines Little before heading to the airport. The first two were excellent. I'm sure Barbara knows her stuff [Virginia research], but her slides were not great and she had to keep backtracking, which drove a few of us batty. Elizabeth and Paula were both fantastic and I'd recommend either one of them for future seminars.

Personally, I've had enough heat and humidity for this year and am definitely ready to head home to Seattle, where I understand the weather is finally starting to act "normal." Now why I have to fly to Atlanta to get to Seattle is beyond me.....

Please let me know your thoughts, either by emailing me [SGSPresident [at] gmail.com] or clicking on the "Comments" link below.

Ginny

Day 3 in Little Rock

2009-09-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

The Exhibit Hall opened this morning. What a treasure trove of goodies! I tried to make a quick circuit of the exhibits between 9:30 [when it opened] and 11:00 [first session after the keynote], but only hit about half of the exhibits. All of the big genealogy companies are here--Ancestry, FamilySearch, Footnote, NEHGS, NARA, World Vital Records. I hit up a few of them for possible donations for our fall seminar raffle. Hope they come through!

After studying the FGS Conference schedule last night, I decided that I should focus on listening to presentations by potential future speakers for our SGS seminars today and tomorrow. I started with a presentation by George Schweitzer on "US Migration Routes and Settlement Patterns, 1607-1890." Ol' George is as entertaining and informative as ever, dressed in his frontier garb. Also heard "Tracing Scots-Irish Ancestors" by Dean J. Hunter [informative but very dry] and "Genealogical Applications of Historic GIS" [great slides; very informative; but very academic delivery]. Last presentation of the day [5-6 pm] was by Curt Witcher, a librarian with the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN and member of the FGS Board of Directors, on "Future Possibilities with Digital Libraries." Curt's presentation style and content were fantastic, but pretty depressing from the standpoint of generating revenue from our SGS Library. Literally hundreds of thousands of books and manuscripts are being posted to free websites around the world. If you haven't already visited them, check out a few of the sites he mentioned:
http://www.werelate.org/
http://www.archive.org/
http://openlibrary.org/
http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php
Allen Co. Public Library has already contributed over 7000 titles from their collection to Open Library.

Ancestry is offering free scanning today and tomorrow, so I lined up this morning to get a 15-minute time slot. By 2:45, when my time came for scanning, they were running 30 minutes behind. I was going to have them scan a few pages of our 1980 SGS publication of the Washington Donation Land Claims, to see if we might publish a digital edition. The scanning staff offered to scan the ENTIRE book for me if they could do it overnight. Needless to say, I accepted their offer. I should receive a USB drive with all 250+ pages on it tomorrow morning. Such a deal....for free!

I've now been "adopted" by the contingent from the Dallas Genealogical Society. We're all staying at the same inexpensive hotel about 1.5 miles from the conference center and they took pity on me being "all by myself." I was shocked to learn that they draw fewer than 100 to their annual seminars...and that they almost always lose money. Guess we must be doing something right in Seattle!

Day 2 in Little Rock, Ark.

2009-09-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

The FGS Conference started in earnest this morning with "Delegates 101." It appears that SGS has been missing most, if not all, of the benefits of membership in the Federation of Genealogical Societies. They sponsor a number of free programs to support member societies, including bylaws review, advertising for seminars, and conference/seminar planning guides.

The second session I attended was a presentation on cemeteries by Elissa Scalise Powell, our invited speaker for the SGS Spring Seminar 2010. I'm happy to report that Elissa is quite entertaining and has a wealth of information--and some great slides. Everyone will learn something from her, I'm sure.

The other 4 sessions I attended today were: "Program, Program, Git Your Program", "How to Control the Debate Dialogue in a Meeting", "Conducting Your Society Business in a Virtual World", and "Using Your Society's Webs Site (to attract new members)." All were uniformly informative and I've got 6 pages of handwritten notes to prove it! I'll be happy to share my notes and the syllabuses (syllabi?) for these talks to anyone who's interested.

I also attended the FGS Delegates Luncheon and an evening presentation by Ancestry.com. During the "sharing" period at the luncheon I mentioned our completed King County Records Project. The round of applause and shocked expression of the moderator when I stated the number of records indexed [over 1,560,000] were quite gratifying. More kudos to Marilynn Van Hise and her team.
The next three days offer numerous research topics, so I expect to come home well educated.
Ginny

Day One in Little Rock, Arkansas

2009-09-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that all's well in beautiful downtown Little Rock.
The actual FGS conference starts tomorrow. I got here a day early so I could spend some quality time in the Arkansas Archives. Didn't find much, but it's always great to be researching.
I'm staying at a less expensive hotel about a mile from the conference site. Went down to my free breakfast and noticed a woman in a t-shirt that said something about genealogists. Is that something SGS should sell--genealogy t-shirts? Would anybody buy them?
Spent about 7 hours [straight through] at the Archives and headed to the convention center to check in. Unfortunately, the capitol complex is a good two miles from downtown, and buses are few and far between, so I ended up walking it. Luckily, temps and humidity are mild for Little Rock [both in low 80s], so it wasn't too bad.
Had to get checked in so I could hit the free ice cream social. Got there just in time to grab the last ice cream cup--mostly melted, but still edible. Turned around and who was there? None other than our own Jean Morton. I knew she was coming to the conference, as she has in-laws here, but certainly didn't expect to run into her so soon! Does anyone know if any othe Seattlites are attending FGS? If so, please let me know so I can look for them. [sgspresident [at] gmail.com]
The opening session for Society Delegates starts at 8:00 tomorrow, so I will be up considerably earlier than usual. Hope I learn something useful about FGS and what they have to offer societies like our's. I'll be attending sessions on marketing, programs, controlling debate in meetings, and digital societies tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Ginny

Heading to FGS

2009-08-29T23:41:00.000-07:00

The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) is holding their annual meetings next week in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a new society president, I thought it might be a good idea to attend and network with more experienced society officers and learn from their experience. I'm particularly interested in how to transition SGS into the digital age without alienating members who aren't computer literate (and have no desire to be), how to increase our membership (an absolute necessity for SGS), and how to increase SGS member participation in our programs and events. If you have ideas on these topics, please respond by clicking on the "Comments" button below or emailing me at SGSPresident [at] gmail.com.
[Disclaimer: No part of this trip is being paid for with SGS funds; it's all on me.]

Board Business

2009-08-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what the SGS Board does at our monthly meetings?
This year's Board is focused on fixing the "messes" identified by last year's Audit Committee. Instead of just doing a financial audit, last year's committee conducted a complete functional audit. They assessed the Society's activities vis a vis our Bylaws and state and federal laws related to charitable organizations. Their final report, including appendices, is 56 pages long and is available for member review at SGS. It identifies numerous shortcomings in SGS's current day-to-day operations.
Our August Board meeting dealt with reviewing Board member job descriptions, approving committee appointments, approving a new key policy, establishing a fee schedule for seminar vendor tables and consignment items at SGS book sales, and establishing a safe deposit box policy.
We are trying hard to create a comprehensive new Policy & Procedure Manual for SGS that covers all of SGS's activities so that future generations of SGS members will have a single, comprehensive resource to turn to when questions arise about how SGS business is conducted. The Society has relied on "corporate memory" for way too long; documenting all the "how to's" is a major undertaking.
If you'd like to know more about the Board's activities, please contact any Board member. Our email addresses are published in the Bulletin, or you can leave phone or written messages for us through the SGS Library.

Welcome!

2009-08-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the SGS President's blog. As it says elsewhere on this page, this is an effort to improve communication between the SGS Board [via the President] and our members. I hope to post to this blog at least once a week and use it to keep our SGS membership informed about what's going on at SGS, what decisions the Board is making, and what members can do to help keep SGS moving forward. I also plan to post a monthly poll question to gauge member opinion on a topic important to the Society. Please take a moment to post your response.
If you'd like to discuss any of the topics presented on this blog--or anything related to SGS--please email me at SGSPresident [at] gmail.com [please replace "[at]" with "@" and remove the spaces].
I look forward to hearing from you,
Ginny Sommarstrom
SGS President, 2009-2010