Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Registration open for NGS conference

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Registration is now open for the National Genealogical Society’s 2016 conference! It will be held May 4-7 in Ft. Lauderdale. I attended the 2015 conference and was very impressed by the quality of the sessions I sat in on. I’m planning to attend this year’s conference and am really looking forward to it.

For the past two years, I’ve attended RootsTech and have enjoyed it as well, though I found the enormity (15,000 or more attendees) a bit overwhelming. This year, it’s being held February 3-6 in Salt Lake City. I decided not to attend because we have a new puppy and I don’t want to saddle my husband with all the work. (Plus, I’d miss Bix, my puppy!) I hope to get back to RootsTech in 2017.

I’m also giving serious consideration to attending the Southern California Genealogical Society’s Genealogy Jamboree once again. I loved it last year. It will be held June 3-5 in Burbank, California.

Do you attend genealogy conferences? Which conferences will you attend this year? If you’re planning to be at NGS or the Jamboree, please let me know in the comments!

SCGS webinars: The deal of the century

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I live in Missouri. California barely makes an appearance in my genealogy. Yet I’m a happy member of the Southern California Genealogical Society (SCGS). Why? Because of their amazing educational opportunities, available and pertinent to all.

SCGS offers twice-monthly webinars from big names in genealogy. For $35 a year, I became a member so that I could watch the webinars on demand. But here’s the great thing: You can watch the webinar for free, if you watch it being streamed live. However, you must register in advance. To do that, go to the webinars page, then click on the title of the webinar you’re interested in. That will take you to a registration page.

On Saturday, November 7, Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List fame) will be presenting Building a Digital Research Plan at 10 am Pacific time. Here’s a description of that webinar:

Using Internet databases and catalogs we will build a research plan to answer a specific research question. We will walk through the process of planning, researching for the plan, and keeping track of what has been researched.

I think that sounds tremendous (it’s right up my alley). If you invest $35 a year to be a member, you can view the webinar any time you want and you can also view archived webinars. You could have your own mini-genealogy conference in the comfort of your home.

Speaking of conferences, SCGS sponsors the Genealogy Jamboree in June in Burbank, California. I attended in 2015 and it was excellent. The webinar series is an extension of the Jamboree.

I am so grateful that the SCGS offers resources to folks all over the world. Membership truly feels like the deal of the century!

What Orderly Roots guides should I write next?

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10 things I wish I'd known when I started doing genealogyThis week, I debuted my first two Orderly Roots guides, 10 Secrets to Organizing Your Genealogy Research and 10 Things I Wish I’d Know When I Started Doing Genealogy. I have come up with eight more topics, but I haven’t written them yet.

I’d love to have your input to help me decide in what order to write and publish them. So I created a little poll.

Please check the topics that interest you. (You’re not making a commitment to buy one!) You can check up to three boxes. If you’d like to see an Orderly Roots guide on a topic not in the list, feel free to enter that topic in the Other box.

Thank you!

Announcing new Orderly Roots guides!

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10 secrets to organizing your genealogy researchI’m very excited to announce the launch of a new series of downloadable pdfs that I’m offering for sale here on Organize Your Family History.  I’m calling the series Orderly Roots, and the first is now available for purchase.

The Orderly Roots guides give me a way to go a little more in-depth on genealogy organizing topics than I can on the blog. 10 Secrets to Organizing Your Genealogy Research, the first of a planned series of 10 such guides,  is available now!

Each guide is delivered as a downloadable pdf with ten pages of text. They sell for $8.99 each. Here’s the list of topics I’m planning so far:

I’d love your input on topics. Do any of these particularly float your boat? Are there any topics not on the list that you’d like to see me explore in an Orderly Roots Guide?

10 Secrets to Organizing Your Genealogy Research is hot off the (figurative) presses and I plan to make 10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Doing Genealogy available this week. [Update: I just made it available for purchase!] The rest, I hope, will be completed by year’s end.

I’d love your input on topics and may create a poll to post on the blog. In the meantime, feel free to give me feedback in the comments!

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.