ThinkGenealogy

We are in class right now talking about blogs and podcasts.

The first line of this blog article was written during our weekly Family History class held during the Sunday School hour at church.  These last two Sundays I was asked to substitute teach the class.  Last week we had each class member bring some documents about their ancestors and we talked about them.  It was fun to see the different types of documents that others had and to learn a little about their ancestors.  That first week, we also talked about the difference between original and derivative sources and primary and secondary information.

This week using an older Dell Inspiron B120 notebook, Sony LCD projector, and a class member’s Blackberry 8330 with internet connectivity, we were able to browse the internet in class and talk about blogs and podcasts.  To illustrate how easy it is to create a blog entry, I started this post during class.  We didn’t have time to write more than the first line.  Our discussion of blogs and podcasts started with a post I wrote back in January highlighting some of the best genealogy blogs and podcasts.  We followed some of the links to give the 9 class members in attendence an idea of what blogging and podcasts are all about.  We first started with the blogs and in addition to those from my previous post, we looked at Stephen Danko’s blog and how he uses it as a research log.  We also talked about how easy it would be to use a site such as WordPress or Blogger to create your own personal or public blog.

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Earlier this week, Drew Smith and George G. Morgan (The Genealogy Guys) spent 9 minutes of their podcast discussing the Genealogy Research Process map.  Their discussion starts about 26 minutes into the podcast.  I am a long time listener of The Genealogy Guys and am pleased that they are spreading the word about the map.  Both George and Drew were very kind in their remarks about this visualization based on the work of The Board For Certification of Genealogists and Elizabeth Shown Mills.

There are a number of people from the genealogy community that I would like to meet in person.  So much can be learned from listening to the ideas and experiences of others.  As a genealogy community, we can imagine and then implement the software, services, and methodology that will continue to advance the field of genealogy/family history.

One of the people that I would really enjoy meeting is Paul Allen.  He is an internet entrepreneur, co-founder of Ancestry.com, and is currently CEO of WorldVitalRecords.com with its genealogy social networking site, FamilyLink.com.

I would also love to meet Elizabeth Shown Mills.  She has made great contributions to the genealogy community especially in the areas of source citation, evidence, and analysis.

These are just two of the people I would like to meet.  I am keeping a list of People to Meet and when I meet them I will put the date and location.

I appreciate the interviews that the Genealogy Guys do so that I can get to know more people in the genealogy community.  Drew and George are also on my list.

The LibraryThing site allows you to catalog your books online and connect with people who share your same interests.  I have been catching up on past issues of the GenealogyGuys podcast and George and Drew have been talking a lot about LibraryThing.  So today I decided to try it out.

The site is simple to understand and I was able to quickly register and add a few books by just typing in the ISBN.  Of the 8 books I entered, “Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian” had been added to LibraryThing by other users the most times.  It was added 339 times and has 5 reviews.

One question that I had before going to the site was whether it would allow me to “check out” books to my friends and keep track of it.  LibraryThing has the ability to connect to book swapping sites, but that is not what I was looking for.  Let’s say I have a book that a friend wants to borrow so I go ahead and loan it to them.  Weeks later I am looking on my bookshelf for that very book and cannot find it.  So I start looking in all my book stashing spots and cannot find it.  Maybe at that time I remember that I let someone borrow it and then I need to remember who that someone was.  Now if it was a single book, I could probably remember it as long as too much time hasn’t passed.

My idea is that in LibraryThing, I would be able to check out books to others and it would show up in my list as being checked out and by whom.  That way I could consult LibraryThing to jog my memory.  I could also set a checkout period so that my friend doesn’t borrow the book indefinately and take it with them when they move.  After the checkout period expires, LibraryThing would send an e-mail to both myself and the person who has the book reminding both of us to make the physical transfer of the book back to its owner, me.

Some might ask if this should be a feature of LibraryThing or not.  The site is called LibraryThing after all.  Doesn’t a library keep a catalog of books and allow people to check them out?  I can understand that LibraryThing didn’t want to include book swapping as that is not the function of a library, but checking out books is.

I look forward to my continued use of LibraryThing and one day blogging about its new ability to check out books.