ThinkGenealogy

Here is something new I am trying here at ThinkGenealogy.  It’s called Childhood Memory Monday.  This is where I share something memorable from my childhood.  Sometimes I will present lessons learned or ponder why a certain memory is still “living” when so many have been forgotten.

Now, lets get rolling.

Back in the time when Big Wheels ruled the street (Did you own a Big Wheel?), a new challenger appeared…

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As a genealogist or family historian one of the first things that you do after setting up an account is find people to follow.  Even when you have been using  Twitter for months, you will still want to spend some time finding additional people that share your interests and follow them.

How do you go about finding people to follow on Twitter?  What tools can I use?  How do I find others interested in genealogy?

In this 10 minute video we will explore ways to find and follow genealogists on twitter.

The video shows a list of 12 people and 12 companies/organizations on Twitter that genealogists might be interested in following. 

Here is that list:

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It is easy to sign up for Twitter. You can do it in two minutes or less.  In this video, I will show you how to sign up for Twitter and give you a quick tour around the site. I also share an idea specific to genealogists.

For best viewing, click on the video while it is playing to view a larger version on the YouTube site & click the HD button to see it in high definition:

Did you find this video helpful? Do you have any other tips for setting up an account for a genealogist? What do you find most confusing about Twitter? If you are not signed up for Twitter now, are you going to sign up after watching the video?

I would love to hear your comments.  If you would like to follow me on Twitter, my username is marktucker.

Almost 50 days ago, I posted a video titled “A Better Way to Cite Onilne Sources” with 2 corresponding surveys. Since then 358 people responded to the individual survey and 9 to the company/organization survey. It was my first time using SurveyMonkey for online surveys and overall I was pleased with the website. I did have grand hopes that at least 1,000 people would respond to the survey to get more accurate results. To date, the video has been viewed 2,483 times.  It seems like a good time to end the survey and analyze the results.  Plus, keeping the survey going costs $19.95 a month and I budgeted for only two months.

I plan to e-mail a copy of the results to all those who took the survey and provided an e-mail address.  If you took the survey, didn’t provide your e-mail, and still want a copy of the results, contact me via this contact link.

As time permits, I will write about the survey results and some of the feedback I received.

I am grateful to the many bloggers and podcasters that spread the word about this effort.  Thank you for all that watched the video and participated in the survey.  I am excited to see how this effort continues over the next months and years.

Sincerely,

Mark Tucker

I’ve been immersed in technology for so long, that sometimes I forget that not everyone has a high-speed internet connection. Thanks A A Bowen for reminding me of that.  Below you will find the text of the video, A Better Way to Cite Online Sources, in script form.  Before I recorded the video of the PowerPoint and demo using Camtasia Studio 6, I wrote a script to get my thoughts together and try to be more concise. The text is likely not 100% of what was said on the video, but it is close.  That is why I am calling it a script instead of a transcript.

Between the script and the detailed description of the demo, you should be in a good position to answer the survey questions without the need to see the video.

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I would like to give Dick Eastman a big “Thank you” for blogging about the online citation video. It appeared in today’s post titled “Video Teaches Correct Citations of Online Sources.” I very much appreciate his willingness to spread the word on this important issue.

There is one point of clarification that I would like to make: although the technology exists today to do this type of “one click” citation it has not been implemented. What I showed was a prototype proving that it was possible. What needs to happen next is for online organizations (like Ancestry, FamilySearch, World Vital Records, Footnote, GenSeek, etc.) and genealogy software companies (like the makers of RootsMagic, Legacy, and Family Tree Maker) to agree on a file format and implement it. The online organizations would need to start providing a file with a download link for each source on their site and the genealogy database applications would need to support importing of the files. One could view the video as a tutorial of how things could be. That is precisely why it is so important to get the word out.

This is a grassroots effort from the genealogy community to let genealogy software and service providers know what we want. Citing sources is important to us. There are inconsistencies and other problems that need to be solved. Let’s find a way to get together and solve them. I am just one voice trying to spotlight an issue and provide a way for others to get their voices heard. We have had 200 respondents to the individual survey with
83% classifying themselves as non-professional genealogists.

Here are a few more statistics:

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