Genealogy Notes 26-31 Dec 2014 New Year Thoughts

I hope everyone had a great Christmas with family and friends and now we have a new year on the horizon. Somewhere between Christmas and New Year our local supermarket started selling hot cross buns (traditionally associated with Easter) and other stores will have them on sale from the New Year. No wonder we think our years are speeding up, but obviously the buns are a good seller!

The end of a year always has me thinking about what I have done and what I am looking forward to in the coming year. I like to set some basic goals because as a procrastinator, I like to remind myself from time to time of things I really want to do. So here are my Genealogy Aspirations for 2015. Nothing too ambitious and lots of room to do other things as they come up over the year.

Each year geneafriend GeniAus organises a genealogy blog challenge Accentuate the Positive 2014 Genememe and I like to take part in this as well. The questions always prompt me to think about genealogy finds that I may have forgotten over the course of a year or they give me a chance to tell others, someone else might benefit from my experiences. I am still pondering my answers so look out for that response soon. Anyone is welcome to do it and if you do, let Jill know as she collates all the responses.

I have completed another AFFHO Congress 2015 speaker interview, this time with David Berry from the State Library of New South Wales. And fast forwarding, in three months time Congress will be winding up for another three years. So if you don't want to wait that long, make sure you get to Canberra at the end of March!

With so much happening in the second half of 2014, I totally missed my 5th anniversary of blogging. SHHE Genie Rambles started in Sep 2009 and records a lot of my genealogy adventures as well as blogs telling my family stories and other bits and pieces. Through it I have made contact with long lost cousins, tracked missing branches of families and made some great friends. I really can't imagine family history now without blogging.

Back in September, the Lovely Blog award was doing the rounds and I was fortunate to receive two awards (one for Diary and one for SHHE Genie Rambles) and my responses are here and here. Just recently I received another one from Chris Wright and rather than do another response, I will simply direct you to her blog post The Ancestor Digger One Lovely Blog Award where she nominated me. In her list of nominated blogs she has some of my favourite bloggers so check them out, especially if you have not come across them before.

One of my projects over the last week has been to continue to catalogue my library into Library Thing and this has been a useful exercise but does seem never ending at the moment. Surprisingly I have turned up duplicates (where I have two of something), outdated editions and I kept the earlier edition, books that are truly out of date but still with some useful knowledge, and some books that are now in a pile on the floor. Some I no longer want but still have relevance so will be offered to a society, some I will offer to others and some will go into the bin.

But what has truly surprised me is what I have forgotten I had and by handling each book, pamphlet, journal or whatever again, I have been struck by how useful some of them are, even in today's Google world. I bought a family history back in the 70s with distant connections to my White family and I probably haven't looked at it since.Surprise surprise, all the work I have done since then now makes this book extremely relevant to my own White family. Going back to basics and looking at research with new eyes can be rewarding, not simply a waste of time.

I now have another pile of books that I want to go back through again - at least with Library Thing I can find them all now, or will be able to, when I finish the last four bookcases!

There have been some fantastic Christmas/New Year specials from all the big companies, Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage, Eneclann and so on. I have seen most of them via Facebook when friends share posts on bargains and Geneabloggers has written a blog Genealogy Bargains which sums up a lot of the deals on offer.

It is super hot here and humidity is way up so time to escape the geneacave for a swim! If you are wondering about any of my genea words then check out the GeneaDictionary. Wishing everyone a fantastic geneayear in 2015 and I hope to meet some of you at the AFFHO Congress in Canberra, the NSW & ACT conference in Port Macquarie or the History Queensland conference in Brisbane. Or the really lucky ones on the Unlock the Past Baltic cruise! Until next year, happy researching.

Lovely Blog Award

Diary is usually my blog for my genealogy news and adventures and my other blog SHHE Genie Rambles is where I place all my personal stories and write about my families. However I have to make an exception as my long time geneafriend Alex Daw of Family Tree Frog has nominated Diary for a Lovely Blog Award which is really exciting. Alex's enthusiasm for genealogy is as keen as mine and it is always terrific to visit her library and give talks to all her genealogy library members. Thanks Alex.

Here are the Rules for the "One Lovely Blog Award":

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link to that blog
2. Share Seven things about yourself - refer below
3. Nominate 15 bloggers you admire (or as many as you can think of!) - also listed below
4. Contact your bloggers to let them know that you've tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award

Seven things about me:

1. Throughout my adult life, I have moved around a lot (at least 9 homes and 3 cities) and recently settled into our 'retirement' house on Bribie Island. Will it be the last? 

2. Our family always had a thing about visiting animal sanctuaries and it is something that I still do. And yes that is my one and only baby brother.

3. I always wanted to be a librarian but after leaving school I applied to the Brisbane City Council for a library position but was told that I was not the kind of person who worked in libraries. Disappointed I joined the Queensland Public Service, got married and a few years later discovered genealogy, which totally changed my life and a few years further on again, I found myself working at the State Library of Queensland with the person who told me that I was not the kind of person who worked in libraries. Small world!

4. Fishing is another one of those long term passions I seem to have inherited and my father was a keen fisherman all his life. He would have really loved the boat we recently purchased to fish around Bribie Island which is where Dad first taught me to fish.

5. Another lifelong passion is reading and I can read anything but losing myself in a good book is a fantastic way to spend a few hours. Over the years I have bought thousands and every time I move, lots go to the local charities. I have always been a member of a library and regularly borrow books but somehow having to give them back seems wrong. Which is probably why I keep buying books! 

6. My son seems to be following in my footsteps and I do not expect to see grandchildren any time soon. My parents used to despair that they were never going to be grandparents as both my brother and I were tardy but then we did not know that cancer would come along and take those years from our father. One of my favourite shots of Dad taking photos of my son dancing with Mum at my brother's wedding.

7. Travel is also something that I have done all my life and I am currently writing this in a unit at Surfers Paradise where I used to go with my family in the early to mid 1960s. It does not seem like 50 something years ago but then I look outside the window and yep, a lot of years have changed this place. Amazingly the Pink Poodle is still here!

6 Bloggers I admire

This is tricky as the genealogy blogging world is a very supporting community and many of the people I regularly read have already been nominated . I tend not to read other blogs as I simply do not have the time but one area that I do dip into is Australian history. So although I am allowed to nominate up to 15 bloggers, I am going to do 3 history and 3 genealogy. But check out everyone who has been nominated for a Lovely Blog Award as there are hundreds and hundreds of interesting blogs out there.

1. Stumbling Through the Past by Yvonne Perkins - Yvonne has just moved to Singapore and fortunately we met at the Australian Historical Association conference in Brisbane in July 2014 just before she left. Yvonne's posts often alert me to new Australian history books that I want to read and exhibitions that I might want to go to as well as all kinds of other Australian history news. 

2. History and Philosophy in Queensland by Neville Buch - This is a brand new blog with only the Welcome blog and a piece on why it has been set up. However it is one that I intend to follow as I recently met Neville through the Professional Historians Association of Queensland and again at the AHA conference in July. We have been discussing the value of blogging and social media and the lack of it within the professional history arena in Queensland so I hope that his fellow Queensland historians take note. 

3. Historians Are Past Caring by Marion Diamond - Marion was one of my Australian History lecturers at the University of Queensland and I managed to meet up with her at the AHA conference in July and personally tell her how much I like reading her posts. She did not remember me, not surprisingly amongst all those students she must have had, but her lectures were always interesting and I am happy to say her blog posts are equally interesting.

4. Geneabloggers by Thomas MacEntee - this has probably been nominated by many others but it is almost the bible for anyone wanting to find a blog, look for blogging prompts or simply to find out what is happening in the blogging world. 

5. Inside History Magazine Blog by Cassie Mercer - one of my favourite history and genealogy magazines all rolled into one and often they feature past stories as guest blogs. This allows the stories a much wider audience as Google can search them and I have had some amazing feedback on stories I wrote that were published a couple of years ago but are now more accessible online.

6. The British GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS) by Chris Paton - I have had the pleasure of meeting Chris a number of times on his trips down under and find his blog an excellent way to keep up with all the news in the UK. 

One final word from me, if you have not tried blogging your family stories, why not think about it. The new family contacts and new friends both in person and online have all made blogging a fantastic experience for me. Thanks again Alex for nominating me for the Lovely Blog Award.