Friday 2 September 2016

End of National Family History Month 2016 & Other News - Genealogy Notes 25 Aug - 2 Sep 2016

A super big week and this blog is a little late but I have been busily notifying excited winners in the National Family History Month sponsors prizes giveaway. The draw took place after I gave my 18th talk for the month at the Noosaville Library. It was my Love Sex and Damn Lies talk which generated a good deal of chat afterwards. All of my talks for August can be found on the Resources page of my website, scroll down to Presentations.

Noosaville Library generously agreed to host the drawing of the prizes and I offered two lucky door prizes - one was Jackie Moss' Me & My Family Tree which is a children's book introducing them to family history. Every time I have used one of Jackie's books as a NFHM prize, the grandparents in the audience are all keen to win one. The other prize was a copy of my own Discover Your Sporting Ancestors - so many people assume that their ancestors didn't play sport. Everyone has sporting ancestors who fished, hunted, attended gun clubs, or played local cricket or football. School sports days are another place to find ancestors involved with sport.

It takes quite a while to draw all of the individual prizes and only one lady stayed to the end, apart from the librarians so I gave her one of my Finding Ancestors in Church Records for her assistance. Since then I have put the winners names up on the website, made announcements in social media, notified winners and sponsors by email and started to write up a final report on NFHM 2016 for AFFHO.

Week 4 of Alex Daw's NFHM 2016 blogging challenge was on places and landmarks. My contribution was Family Places and I think my own research is the richer for having travelled to see some of my own ancestral places in Australia.

John D Reid from Canada's Anglo Celtic Connections is again conducting his Genealogist Rockstar awards and voting is now open. It is exciting and humbling to see my own name amongst so many great Australasian speakers and bloggers. Not to mention all those US, Canada and UK people. Everyone is worthy of an award. If some names are new to you, check out their blogs/websites or maybe even listen to one of their webinars.

It has been a long month as voluntary coordinator of NFHM and I felt I deserved a reward (considering I can't go into the prizes giveaway). I ordered a copy of Nathan Dylan Goodwin's fourth volume on the fictional adventures of his forensic genealogist, Morton Farrier in The Spyglass File. It's quicker and cheaper to get the ecopy but I have all the others as paperbacks, plus I am still one of these people that like to curl up in bed with a good book.

By the end of the this weekend I hope to get back to doing some more of my own research. With the various events I attended during the month, I have quite a list of things to follow up. My desk also needs a good tidy up as I have piled lots of things collected during the month for a closer look or read.

Next weekend is the NSW & ACT Association of Family History Organisations annual conference Cowpastures and Beyond at Camden. It will be a great opportunity to catch up with old geneafriends and learn new and exciting things. I'm hoping to visit AIATSIS in Canberra before heading off to Camden. At Noosaville the other day two of the questions were about Indigenous genealogy and it's a while since I last visited AIATSIS.

Another busy week ahead and I might try and get another Diary done before I go, otherwise it will be late again. It is just too hard trying to keep up with blogs and social media while travelling and attending events. I hope everyone had a great NFHM 2016 and make sure August is in your calendars for next year. Until next time, happy searching.


3 comments:

  1. Thank you yet again for co ordinating all, Shauna...we do apprecaite it.

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  2. Thanks Chris it is the positive feedback that makes the effort all worth while.

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  3. I struggle with reading the blogs and need challenges to get me blogging. You do a wonderful job.

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