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Whatever your political views, the recent hacking of Sarah Palin's email is a timely reminder to genealogists to be wary of publishing potentially damaging family information online
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Technical Glitches
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My computer has been going through a bit of a torrid time over the last couple of weeks. This concluded with a complete reformat of the hard drive, so I have been busy recovering files and reloading software rather than keeping the blog up to date. Now that everything is back to normal I'm hoping to get caught up on my family history detective work.
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My computer has been going through a bit of a torrid time over the last couple of weeks. This concluded with a complete reformat of the hard drive, so I have been busy recovering files and reloading software rather than keeping the blog up to date. Now that everything is back to normal I'm hoping to get caught up on my family history detective work.
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Monday, September 1, 2008
Online maps eroding usefulness of medium for genealogy
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Genealogical research requires a degree of peripheral vision when reviewing sources and evidence. If specific, focused searches fail you need the ability to take in a wider view. This is rarely more true than when using maps to find important locations and evidence.
This recent article from the BBC describes how the trend for using internet based maps to find specific locations is actually harming the general usefulness of the medium. These tools are great if you are simply looking for an address but by missing out other local landmarks a genealogist may miss important clues in their research.
For example, you might find the location of house a relative lived in using Google Maps but you would not see that there is a church in the same street where there may be some additional information such as marriage, baptism or death records.
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Genealogical research requires a degree of peripheral vision when reviewing sources and evidence. If specific, focused searches fail you need the ability to take in a wider view. This is rarely more true than when using maps to find important locations and evidence.
This recent article from the BBC describes how the trend for using internet based maps to find specific locations is actually harming the general usefulness of the medium. These tools are great if you are simply looking for an address but by missing out other local landmarks a genealogist may miss important clues in their research.
For example, you might find the location of house a relative lived in using Google Maps but you would not see that there is a church in the same street where there may be some additional information such as marriage, baptism or death records.
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Friday, August 29, 2008
Starting Points
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You have to start somewhere ... so today I began adding some basic family data into a copy of the Legacy family tree software. I had previously used Family Tree Maker but I always found this clumsy and idiosyncratic so I tried out the free version of the Legacy software and found it much easier to use. I'll give a fuller review when I have been using it for a while.
Other than this I have been continuing to catalog the large collection of documents that my wife inherited from her grandmother. This is a huge task that I have been working on bit by bit over the last few years, given that much of my spare time is taken up with my son and house repairs!!
To date my research and cataloging have been very ad-hoc so I need to pull everything together in a coherent strategy but for now I am happy just to get things off the ground.
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You have to start somewhere ... so today I began adding some basic family data into a copy of the Legacy family tree software. I had previously used Family Tree Maker but I always found this clumsy and idiosyncratic so I tried out the free version of the Legacy software and found it much easier to use. I'll give a fuller review when I have been using it for a while.
Other than this I have been continuing to catalog the large collection of documents that my wife inherited from her grandmother. This is a huge task that I have been working on bit by bit over the last few years, given that much of my spare time is taken up with my son and house repairs!!
To date my research and cataloging have been very ad-hoc so I need to pull everything together in a coherent strategy but for now I am happy just to get things off the ground.
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
First Post
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The title for this blog comes from the song 'Roots' by the English folk band Show of Hands. The song is an anthem to being English, but more than that it describes the wider need for people to discover where they come from. It talks about the importance of story telling and passing on myths and legends that illuminate our history.
In starting this blog I am hoping to describe my journey through this processes of discovery as well as tell some of my families unique stories. I hope to connect up with some of the many other people out there who have started the same journey, all be it with other characters and in different places.
Who knows ... just maybe our paths have crossed somewhere back in history.
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The title for this blog comes from the song 'Roots' by the English folk band Show of Hands. The song is an anthem to being English, but more than that it describes the wider need for people to discover where they come from. It talks about the importance of story telling and passing on myths and legends that illuminate our history.
In starting this blog I am hoping to describe my journey through this processes of discovery as well as tell some of my families unique stories. I hope to connect up with some of the many other people out there who have started the same journey, all be it with other characters and in different places.
Who knows ... just maybe our paths have crossed somewhere back in history.
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