Not sure where time is going lately. Tuesday was a bit of a loss as we spent most of the day going to various medical appointments - nothing like waiting around and finding the same magazines everywhere. Must remember to take some family history journals next time but I always like to think they will be on time!
Wednesday was spent changing some of the slides in my three talks at the Unlock the Past history and genealogy Geelong expo on 2-3 September. Mostly updating website pages but Google has changed its home page quite a bit since I first did my Google tips talk, so I have reworked that. I also made the discovery that my website counter on a couple of my pages (including the Resources page that I refer everyone to) have not been working for some time. It's now all fixed but I have lost the statistics for those pages although I still have the overall stats via Google Analytics.
In the afternoon I had an exploratory look at the Find My Past Ireland website - I keep hoping that I will progress my Irish lines. I found looking at the Forums and the various questions people ask interesting. When I posted my Norwegian interests to a forum a few years ago I received amazing help so I will post my Irish interests next week when I have more time (she says).
Today I have worked on my guest blog for MyHeritage and realised I didn't include last week's in this Diary. Sometimes I do more than I think I have - probably should make notes as I go! Anyway it comes out every Friday. One of the things I mentioned in it was the annual conference of the ACT & NSW Family History Societies Association in Inverell on 16-18 September. I usually try to go but as we have been away so much this year and it is a long drive, I'm going to miss catching up with all my old friends.
The next two days will be in Geelong and I will be blogging the expo as I usually do but that won't be out until Sunday. The Expo looks like it will be a big event with over 70 exhibitors so I may not mention them all. It will probably depend on how many are relevant to my own areas of research. I also hope to catch a few speakers that I haven't heard before so that will be good, and on topics I'm interested in. People are coming from all over Victoria so I will also catch up with friends as well. It will be genealogy heaven!
Thursday 1 September 2011
Sunday 28 August 2011
Genealogy notes 27-29 August 2011 Victorian Seminars & Fairs
It's been a hectic few days. As I indicated last time, on Saturday I attended the VAFHO AGM and Seminar at PROV and it was a great afternoon, but it was a shame that not more people attended as the talks were really good. The AGM was no surprise with the existing committee being voted back in for another year.
Charlie Farrugia's talk on Victorian Wards was really interesting and it is surprising just how much is available on these children who were 'convicted and neglected' to use Charlie's words. There is even an index (1864-1893) on microfiche published by the Australian Institute for Genealogical Studies which makes access easier, if you have access to the microfiche (amazing how we start to want to see everything online). There is also PROVguide 60 Adoption, Wardship and Related Records which gives a lot of information on the topic.
Ada Ackerly's talk highlighted all the fantastic information that might be held on individuals in departmental correspondence files, equity files, non probate files and so on. However most of these types of records have no overall index and you need to look at individual year indexes which is why the records are not used as much as they should be. Ada has done quite a lot of indexing on various series and these are available at PROV in the reading room.
Sunday we left home early to get to the Maryborough Family History Group Fair and we took the heritage route through old mining towns such as Creswick, Clunes and Talbot and all the wattle along the roadside looked fantastic. Although it might explain why I feel like I have a touch of hay fever today.
The Fair was good and there were numerous historical societies and other groups with their records all on hand to assist people with their family history queries. Three speakers, John Tully on Researching the Goldfields, myself on Archives You Probably Don't Know but Should and Anne Howlett from Creative Memories on Heritage Scrapbooking also provided attendees with lots of information and answered lots of questions. It was good to catch up with my many friends and colleagues in central Victoria.
Today has been spent catching up on emails, tweets and blogs and some of the enewsletters I have read today include Eneclann with the latest Irish history and genealogy news; several days worth of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter; and I have been catching up on profiles on GeniMates, a blog series on 'genealogists from all over the place'.
The other major task for today was to finally finish my two Congress papers for the 13th Australasian genealogy and heraldry congress next March. I have made more changes again today and I am starting to seriously think I am procrastinating! Tomorrow is the deadline so it will definitely all be over then. The issue, I think, is that the paper is due now, six months before the Congress and as we all know, things change quite rapidly in the genealogy environment. There is scope to have a handout with any changes but the handout won't appear in the Congress proceedings. I'll have a final read tonight then hit the Send button!
Checking my diary reminds me that the Unlock the Past Victorian history and genealogy expo at Geelong is this coming Friday and Saturday so there goes another weekend devoted to genealogy, not that I mind! As usual I will try and tweet from the venue and do an overall blog of the event.
Now domestic duties call - I have to go and cook dinner!
Charlie Farrugia's talk on Victorian Wards was really interesting and it is surprising just how much is available on these children who were 'convicted and neglected' to use Charlie's words. There is even an index (1864-1893) on microfiche published by the Australian Institute for Genealogical Studies which makes access easier, if you have access to the microfiche (amazing how we start to want to see everything online). There is also PROVguide 60 Adoption, Wardship and Related Records which gives a lot of information on the topic.
Ada Ackerly's talk highlighted all the fantastic information that might be held on individuals in departmental correspondence files, equity files, non probate files and so on. However most of these types of records have no overall index and you need to look at individual year indexes which is why the records are not used as much as they should be. Ada has done quite a lot of indexing on various series and these are available at PROV in the reading room.
Sunday we left home early to get to the Maryborough Family History Group Fair and we took the heritage route through old mining towns such as Creswick, Clunes and Talbot and all the wattle along the roadside looked fantastic. Although it might explain why I feel like I have a touch of hay fever today.
The Fair was good and there were numerous historical societies and other groups with their records all on hand to assist people with their family history queries. Three speakers, John Tully on Researching the Goldfields, myself on Archives You Probably Don't Know but Should and Anne Howlett from Creative Memories on Heritage Scrapbooking also provided attendees with lots of information and answered lots of questions. It was good to catch up with my many friends and colleagues in central Victoria.
Today has been spent catching up on emails, tweets and blogs and some of the enewsletters I have read today include Eneclann with the latest Irish history and genealogy news; several days worth of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter; and I have been catching up on profiles on GeniMates, a blog series on 'genealogists from all over the place'.
The other major task for today was to finally finish my two Congress papers for the 13th Australasian genealogy and heraldry congress next March. I have made more changes again today and I am starting to seriously think I am procrastinating! Tomorrow is the deadline so it will definitely all be over then. The issue, I think, is that the paper is due now, six months before the Congress and as we all know, things change quite rapidly in the genealogy environment. There is scope to have a handout with any changes but the handout won't appear in the Congress proceedings. I'll have a final read tonight then hit the Send button!
Checking my diary reminds me that the Unlock the Past Victorian history and genealogy expo at Geelong is this coming Friday and Saturday so there goes another weekend devoted to genealogy, not that I mind! As usual I will try and tweet from the venue and do an overall blog of the event.
Now domestic duties call - I have to go and cook dinner!
Thursday 25 August 2011
Genealogy notes 24-26 August 2011 Non Stop Genealogy
Well I finally got to cross off a few things off my 'to do' list. I wrote my blog on Writing Family History and although it is a bit longer than I originally intended, it covers most of the points I made in my presentation on writing resource guides.
I also made substantial progress on catching up with my emails but there are still a lot of blogs in my Google Reader that I need to at least take a peek at. So many good genealogy bloggers out there! If your new to this take a look at the Unlock the Past list of genealogy blogs for Australia and New Zealand and if you want overseas try Geneabloggers for a mind blowing list of blogs from just about everywhere.
While on the subject of blogs, My Heritage have asked me to do a guest blog on Australian news so that took a bit of time yesterday and should appear on Friday 26 August. I should point out that there is no payment involved, just the opportunity to reach a different audience and to share my knowledge with others.
I have found family relatives through My Heritage as well as Genes Reunited and Ancestry. Advertising family lines online can be a good way to pick up near relatives as well as more distant lines so I have a few generations of my families on each of the three sites. It does cost to be on so many sites but I would have missed linking up with some families if I hadn't. I have opted for the free or least expensive options which still let me link up with others.
I have also been catching up with some of the enewsletters I receive. I always like the Professional Historians Association (PHA) (Qld Branch) enews as I catch up with news of my Queensland friends. When I arrived home earlier this week, in my snail mail there was a copy of Circa, which is the professional journal published by the PHA's (Vic Branch). There are some great articles in that so I am looking forward to curling up and reading it once I have some of the other things out of the way. For information on Professional Historians Associations in other States see the Australian Council of Professional Historians Associations.
qsa-bulletin is enews from the Queensland State Archives and it is great for finding out what new records are available, what has been digitised or indexed, what seminars are on and so on. State Records NSW and Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) also have enewsletters which I receive as my families tended to move around quite a bit.
Today I will be spending time preparing for the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) AGM and seminar tomorrow at PROV - I am a committee member and have been asked to stand again for the coming year. The two speakers following the AGM are Charlie Farrugia from PROV and Ada Ackerley who is well known for her many indexes of PROV records so both talks should be really good.
I also have to get ready for the Maryborough Family History Group Fair on Sunday as I am giving a talk on Archives You Should Know But Don't and I will also have a display table for the various Unlock the Past publications. It's only a couple of hours drive from our place and is a really historic part of Victoria's mining past so I am looking forward to the trip.
Well my coming weekend is almost non stop genealogy so I hope your weekend is equally blessed with genealogy time and if you are at either PROV or Maryborough Fair do come up and say hello!
I also made substantial progress on catching up with my emails but there are still a lot of blogs in my Google Reader that I need to at least take a peek at. So many good genealogy bloggers out there! If your new to this take a look at the Unlock the Past list of genealogy blogs for Australia and New Zealand and if you want overseas try Geneabloggers for a mind blowing list of blogs from just about everywhere.
While on the subject of blogs, My Heritage have asked me to do a guest blog on Australian news so that took a bit of time yesterday and should appear on Friday 26 August. I should point out that there is no payment involved, just the opportunity to reach a different audience and to share my knowledge with others.
I have found family relatives through My Heritage as well as Genes Reunited and Ancestry. Advertising family lines online can be a good way to pick up near relatives as well as more distant lines so I have a few generations of my families on each of the three sites. It does cost to be on so many sites but I would have missed linking up with some families if I hadn't. I have opted for the free or least expensive options which still let me link up with others.
I have also been catching up with some of the enewsletters I receive. I always like the Professional Historians Association (PHA) (Qld Branch) enews as I catch up with news of my Queensland friends. When I arrived home earlier this week, in my snail mail there was a copy of Circa, which is the professional journal published by the PHA's (Vic Branch). There are some great articles in that so I am looking forward to curling up and reading it once I have some of the other things out of the way. For information on Professional Historians Associations in other States see the Australian Council of Professional Historians Associations.
qsa-bulletin is enews from the Queensland State Archives and it is great for finding out what new records are available, what has been digitised or indexed, what seminars are on and so on. State Records NSW and Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) also have enewsletters which I receive as my families tended to move around quite a bit.
Today I will be spending time preparing for the Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) AGM and seminar tomorrow at PROV - I am a committee member and have been asked to stand again for the coming year. The two speakers following the AGM are Charlie Farrugia from PROV and Ada Ackerley who is well known for her many indexes of PROV records so both talks should be really good.
I also have to get ready for the Maryborough Family History Group Fair on Sunday as I am giving a talk on Archives You Should Know But Don't and I will also have a display table for the various Unlock the Past publications. It's only a couple of hours drive from our place and is a really historic part of Victoria's mining past so I am looking forward to the trip.
Well my coming weekend is almost non stop genealogy so I hope your weekend is equally blessed with genealogy time and if you are at either PROV or Maryborough Fair do come up and say hello!
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