Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Do You Have a Digital Genealogy Library?

 From Randy Seaver's series Saturday Night Genealogy Fun comes these two prompts:

1)  Do you have a digital genealogy library? If so, what titles are in it. If not, why not?

2) Tell us about your digital genealogy library in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

 

As a former librarian, I am ashamed to say that I had not thought in terms of "digital genealogy library."  I have this and that and the other thing scattered throughout the subdirectories of my Genealogy directory on my computer.  Some old books that had been digitized, mainly having to do with early New England settlers, of which my paternal eighth great-grandfather was one.  Lots of tipsheets and "Quick Sheets."  Some articles and other miscellania.  I haven't organized it into a separate "library" of any sort.

I suppose that could be a project, but I have at least three rather large projects in the works for 2025.  

As to specific titles, I have a transcription of A History of North Bridgewater, being a history of the area in which my eighth great-grandfather lived in Massachusetts in the 1600s, published in 1866.  I have a digitized copy of Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, published in 1891.  This work has several pages of enlistees and officers with the surname Packard, my paternal surname, including my fourth great-grandfather Richards Packard (who is listed as Richard).  I have some parts of other publications, such as the Massachusetts Tax Valuation from the 1790s, mentioning some of my paternal kin, including one whose landlord was Elbridge Gerry, to whom we give credit (or condemnation) for the invention of the gerrymander.

I have parts of other works, such as some pages from a work called By the Mark 20, which is a "mug book" of my father's class at the U.S. Naval Academy, that of 1934.  The book was published in 1954, hence the title, and is a compendium of the lives of the class members since graduation.  Later on, I was able finally -- after 60+ years of searching -- to acquire an actual copy of the book.

I don't think much in terms of digital publications.  I have a Kindle which I hardly use.  My preference, even when doing research, is to curl up on the couch with our cat and a cup of coffee and read or research in a real book, with a legal pad and pen for note-taking.  I suppose I could update my thinking.  But that will have to wait as I work on my projects that are staring me in the face in 2025.

Accenting the Positive

In an old song, we're urged to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don't mess with Mr. In-Between."

 As we approach the year-end period when we traditionally take stock, Jill Ball, blogging as GENIAUS, has posted an annual meme urging us to review the past twelve months of genealogy and "Accent the Positive".  Tip o' the hat to Jennifer Jones, who responded to Jill's challenge in her blog "Tracking Down the Family".  It was through Jennifer's post that I became aware of Jill's meme.

So here are my positives for the year.  One note: I've been experiencing increasing levels of stress over the past several years, from events outside and inside the family.  I'm in therapy.  One part of my therapy I have come up with and applied, as a means of inserting more positive perspectives, is to finally get back to investigating the family histories of myself and my husband, and to revive this poor neglected blog.  In this entry, I have left out many of the items Jill suggests we answer because they don't apply to me.  I've renumbered the remaining ones.

1. On revisiting some old research I found some wonderful information about my grandmother's third husband, and I finally identified her second husband.  Her first husband was my grandfather.

2. I was the recipient of genearosity from my cousin John, who lives near our ancestral stomping ground in Indiana, and who has offered to do research lookups for me.  I plan to take him up on that offer.

3.  I am pleased that I am a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, in which I was voted membership last year, along with our older daughter.

4. I made a new DNA discovery, that my aunt (my mother's biological sister) had not been accurate when she maintained that their mother was adopted.  DNA shows that my connection to grandmother's family is intact, and that she was not adopted at all.  

 

5.  AI was a mystery to me but I learnt that I can do just about anything better than AI can at this stage of its development.  I am a thoroughgoing skeptic when it comes to AI;  I've read Karel Capek's R.U.R.  With two books under my belt, with glowing reviews for each, I know I am a better writer than any AI or computer genealogy program.  Believe it or not, you are, too.  We humans write our family histories from the heart.  AI has no heart.     

6. The best value I got for my genealogy dollars was the recent sale by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.  They gave good discounts on books about New England genealogy, where my paternal roots lie. 

7. I wouldn't be without this technology: The computer, what else?  And the internet.  I have done genealogy the old-fashioned way, and still do from time to time.  But as I have gotten older, and my options for travel and just getting out and about have become limited, I do appreciate having so much wonderful information available from reliable websites and databases. 

 
9.  Another positive I would like to share is that genealogy is good therapy!  It makes you aware that you are not the only one who has suffered tragedies and hard times.  It assures us that we, too, can survive these times.  Seeing the thread of life down through the decades, and for some of us, the centuries, puts it all in perspective.

 

The Tech-Savvy Genealogist Meme

The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
Feel free to add extra comments in brackets after each item.

Which of these apply to you?

1. Own an Android or Windows tablet or an iPad [not likely to, either]
2. Use a tablet or iPad for genealogy related purposes [same]
3. Have used Skype to for genealogy purposes
4. Have used a camera to capture images in a library/archives/ancestor's home
5. Use a genealogy software program on your computer to manage your family tree
6. Have a Twitter account
7. Tweet daily [not daily, but frequently]
8. Have a genealogy blog [Um, obviously . . .]
9. Have more then one genealogy blog [Does being the official blogger for the Southern Genealogists Exchange Society count?]
10. Have lectured/presented to a genealogy group on a technology topic [One of my stock of lectures is on Facebook, Twitter, and blogging for genealogists]
11. Currently an active member of Genealogy Wise
12. Have a Facebook Account
13. Have connected with genealogists via Facebook
14. Maintain a genealogy related Facebook Page
15. Maintain a blog or website for a genealogy society [I do the blog]
16. Have submitted text corrections online to Ancestry, Trove or a similar site
17. Have registered a domain name
18. Post regularly to Google+ [using the term "regularly" loosely]
19. Have a blog listed on Geneabloggers
20. Have transcribed/indexed records for FamilySearch or a similar project
21. Own a Flip-Pal or hand-held scanner
22. Can code a webpage in .html [I'm rusty as a tin can in a swamp, but I can do it]
23. Own a smartphone [someday I will have to, but I prefer my phones stupid]
24. Have a personal subscription to one or more paid genealogy databases
25. Use a digital voice recorder to record genealogy lectures
26. Have contributed to a genealogy blog carnival
27. Use Chrome as a Browser [I do, but Firefox is my preferred]
28. Have participated in a genealogy webinar
29. Have taken a DNA test for genealogy purposes
30. Have a personal genealogy website [I'm very picky about this]
31. Have found mention of an ancestor in an online newspaper archive
32. Have tweeted during a genealogy lecture
33. Have scanned your hardcopy genealogy files
34. Use an RSS Reader to follow genealogy news and blogs
35. Have uploaded a gedcom file to a site like Geni, MyHeritage or Ancestry [probably won't, either]
36. Own a netbook [One of my FOUR computers!]
37. Use a computer/tablet/smartphone to take genealogy lecture notes
38. Have a profile on LinkedIn that mentions your genealogy habit
39. Have developed a genealogy software program, app or widget
40. Have listened to a genealogy podcast online
41. Have downloaded genealogy podcasts for later listening
42. Backup your files to a portable hard drive
43. Have a copy of your genealogy files stored offsite
44. Know about Rootstech
45. Have listened to a Blogtalk radio session about genealogy
46. Use Dropbox, SugarSync or other service to save documents in the cloud [I am NOT putting my business in the cloud!]
47. Schedule regular email backups
48. Have contriibuted to the Familysearch Wiki
49. Have scanned and tagged your genealogy photographs
50. Have published a genealogy book in an online/digital format [I prefer my books to be published in hard copy book format by a "traditional" publisher]

28 out of 50 is not bad for someone my age!
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Answering a Comment: More on SmartDraw

Today in my comments to be moderated, I found this from Ben Sayer:

Hi, Karen. Thanks for sharing news of this tool's application to genealogy.

What would you say are the reasons one might use SmartDraw instead of the capabilities of their existing genealogy software to create diagrams?

Why are computer fillable forms the "holy grail" for you?

I find the forms in genealogy programs to be rigid; they cannot be edited, or if they can, it isn't easy for me.  SmartDraw forms can be edited, modified, changed around.  And easily, too!  Besides, which -- heresy of heresies -- for my St. Augustine project, I'm not using a program, I'm using paper forms.  I am an old-school scholar who responds best to paper.  

My St. Augustine project has specialized needs: for instance, I needed a form which would show a godparent and all the children he or she had been godparent to, with their parents.  I didn't find anything I thought suitable in a genealogy program, but was able to create one in SmartDraw in a very short time with very little effort.  

As for why computer-fillable forms have been my holy grail:  my handwriting is horrible!  That is one of the chief reasons.  For another, I have arthritis, and it is impossible for me to write small enough for some forms -- that's another complaint I have about forms in general, that often they do not have enough room for what I need to enter into a particular blank.  With SmartDraw, if I feel that a blank or an area in a form is not large enough, I can change that.  And with some of these Spanish names, I need LARGE blanks on the forms! 

Thanks for your comments, Ben; gave me fodder enough for another blog post!  And thank you for reading my blog.

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Software for Genealogists: SmartDraw

Someone on a forum I participate in recommended the program SmartDraw when we were talking about creating genograms, which are used particularly by health professionals in plotting family health histories.  Genograms can have other applications, and I thought they might be useful in my research project.

I downloaded the trial version of SmartDraw and discovered that in addition to genograms, there are family group sheets, pedigree sheets, individual record sheets, and various forms for genealogists to track their research progress, such as correspondence record sheets.  The beauty of these forms is that they are all computer-fillable!  This has been a holy grail of mine for a long time.

With SmartDraw you can modify each of their pre-stored forms to fit your own situation.  You can also create your own templates, as I did in creating the form I am using for tracking compadrazgo -- the godparent relationship -- in the population of St. Augustine, FL, during the Second Spanish Period.  What I am finding there is leading me to investigate the importance of the patrón in St. Augustine society.

SmartDraw also has maps.  Lots and lots of maps.  And again, you can modify the maps to fit your needs.  I may try my hand at creating some meaningful maps, especially if I can import formats from scanned images. 

I was disappointed to discover that SmartDraw's timelines are completely business-oriented, and I am having a difficult time modifying that particular template.  I will have to try more experiments when I have a little more time.  But overall, I am very pleased with the usefulness of SmartDraw, its flexibility and its ease of use in connection with my project.  I anticipate further uses later on, as well, when I am finally able to get back to doing my own family's genealogy once again!

Required disclaimer:  I was not given the copy of SmartDraw; I paid for it with my own money.  I was not asked by anyone connected with SmartDraw or with any other entity to write this review.  Views expressed herein are mine and mine alone.  Neither I nor any member of my family is employed by the company which created and sells SmartDraw, nor do we have any other connection with them.
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Tom MacEntee's "What Do I Do" Meme

Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers, found at http://www.geneabloggers.com, has come up with a "meme" which can be found at http://www.geneabloggers.com/meme, asking what technology we use to do our genealogy and other stuff.  Here's mine . . .

But first, you may ask why I didn't use HTML to just put live links in the last paragraph.  I am not doing that because Blogger's HTML editor is very bad, and is driving me to dangerously high blood pressure.  I know enough to be able to troubleshoot my own HTML, and I am doing it right.  Blogger's HTML editor is just bad.

Done with the rant (and that is a very short version); now to the "meme."

* Hardware:

1.  Desktop computer put together by my husband, running Windows XP Professional.
2.  HP Dv6000t laptop running same.
3.  Asus Eee PC running Linux.

* External storage:
1.  Several 1-2 gigabyte USB drives.
2.  1 130 gigabyte portable hard drive (made to Department of Defense specifications for durability -- I could run over it with my car and it would be unharmed).

* Online storage:
No.  I do not do this.  I will not put my work, the product of my effort and time and knowledge, into "the cloud."  I don't trust it.  So . . . I'm a dinosaur.

* Backup:
1.  HandyBackup

* Firewall:
1.  hardware firewall installed at the cable
2.  ZoneAlarm

* Virus protection:
1.  Symantec

* Spyware:
1.  AdAware
2.  MalwareBytes

* File cleaner:
None yet, but shopping

* Printer:
HP Deskjet F4280, which I am very unhappy with because of unnecessary things it does!  My next printer is likely to be a Kodak!

* Phone:
1.  Landline
2.  Nokia Communicator 9300 (I think)

* Mobile media:
1.  I just do not want to mess with this!  I really don't care.  I have enough patience to wait until I get home.

* Music player:
1.  Cowon iAudio 7

* Car audio:
1.  The radio and CD player that came with it

* eBook Reader:
I don't.  I don't want to.  I like my eyes too much, and I like the feel of real books, thank you.  The readers are too expensive, and they can break or fail.  Books don't break.

* Browser:
Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.  I avoid IE whenever possible.

* Blog:
Here it is, right here.

* RSS:
Google Reader, or Feed Demon.

* FTP:
Not very much.  My husband gave me something-or-other, I don't know what it's called.

* Text editor:
Programmer's File Editor, which you cannot find any more.

* Graphics:
Only in the games I play.  Oh, well, I do use Paint Shop Pro 7.

* Screen capture:
I use Paint Shop Pro 7

* Social media:
Facebook
Twitter

* Social bookmarking:
Huh?

* Social profile:
I'm not very.  I try to release as little personal information into the wild as possible.

* URL shortener:
bit.ly

* Office suite:
Microsoft Office (grudgingly); OpenOffice.org (they could make some components better)

* E-mail:
Mozilla Thunderbird, though I find something wrong with all of them.

* Calendar:
No.  Just can't make 'em work for me.  (Well, we have a paper calendar that we use)

* Accounting:
TurboTax when the time comes every year.  Other than that, paper files in the file cabinet. (Hey, at least we're not using a shoebox!)

* PDF generator:
OpenOffice.org does it just fine for me, and in fact Microsoft Office 2007 will, too.

* Genealogy database:
The Master Genealogist.  I tried Family Tree Maker 2010, but it just wasn't there for me.

* Genealogy tools:
Pen, paper, forms, reference books. 

* Other tech stuff:
I do a lot of transcription of Spanish documents from past centuries, and I find a little program called Transcript (about which I've blogged before) to be super for the task!  I love it!
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The Value of a UPS

Sorry, United Parcel Service, I'm not talking about you today, though I have had good service from you over the years.  I'm talking about that OTHER UPS -- the uninterrupted power source, a peripheral for your computer which is essentially a battery backup.  It comes on immediately when it senses that the elecrtic power is going off, and gives you time, if not to keep working, then to save your work quickly and shut down.

I live in a rural area in northeast Florida served by an electric cooperative.  We get good service, on the whole, from Clay Electruc Co-op, but occasionally, and for some reason more often during the summer, we are subject to very short blackouts.  The electricity will pop off suddenly and unexpectedly, and then quickly come back on. 

It is brief, but it is enough to trip a computer off.  And just a few minutes ago, I had just finished a particularly difficult transcription from a probate file for a resident of St. Augustine who died in about 1809, which constituted a half hour or more of work for one page.  I was just finishing adding the source citation and was just about to save the file, and the electricity tripped off.  It rapidly came back on, but it was enough that my work was gone.

Not only do we have these little blackouts, we are in Florida, the lightning capital of the world, where we also have frequent afternoon thunderstorms in the summer.

For one thing, I suppose I should save every 10 minutes or so.  For another, I asked my husband to buy me a UPS.  He sees the value in it, for he has one for himself.  I just hadn't asked for my own before, but just a few minutes ago, my need for one was made quite clear!

All of us who use computers in our genealogical investigations and who live in areas where the electricity is subject to frequent interruption should have a UPS.

Geneabloggers Winter Games: Workout!

I feel like I've done a real physical Olympic competition!

First of all, yesterday, an opportunity to perform a genealogical act of kindness dropped into my lap. An individual who had seen my post about Asking the Right Question sent me an e-mail in which he said he was looking for a photo of the historian I discussed, who turns out to have boarded in his great-grandma's house in 1920! What a small world! I said I did not have a photo, but I gave him the contact information for a special library collection which holds many of his manuscripts, and may just have such a photo.

Today I organized 20 hard documents into their proper binders, in archival document sleeves. These ranged from my father-in-law's original World War II draft registration and draft classification (he was 4-F), and a 1945 Florida state census sheet to notes, official letters, funeral documents, and tombstone transcriptions. I keep binders by individual or by married couple. I also keep binders by family surname for those dribs and drabs I accumulate on a variety of people, but which are not of such volume that they need their own binder yet. But someday I know I will have to have another bookcase.

I also created at least 10 source citations, and decided that I am not going to migrate from The Master Genealogist to Family Tree Maker 2010 after all. Yes, FTM 2010 is using Elizabeth Shown Mills's sourcing templates, but it is using them too rigidly, and does not take into account original documents privately held in my own collection -- such as the aforementioned draft registration and classification cards. The template for "National Government documents," I think it was called, demanded to have me select from among National Archives or Library of Congress or other government agencies as repositories, with no way to put in that I am the repository for these documents! The Master Genealogist is still much more flexible and forgiving on that score, and was very happy to have me say that these documents are part of the "Rhodes Private Papers." No problem.

So the tally so far: 20 hard-copy documents organized, 10 source citations created, and one act of genealogical kindness performed.

Tomorrow is a class day, and I will be on campus all day, but I hope tomorrow night at the very least to backup my data to my portable hard drive with HandyBackup.
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Disappointment and Frustration

This evening has been an experience in disappointment and frustration, albeit mild ones, in the Great Cosmic Scheme of Things.

Waiting for my daughter to get off work after I finished my Spanish Literature class this afternoon, I sat in her office (the waiting room of the Mathematics and Statistics Department at the university), got my computer out, and did my e-mail and Twitter. I saw tweets about World Vital Records offering a free 6 months. So I thought, this sounds good, I'll sign up. I called and got signed up. Nowhere in any of the information, and at no time when I was talking to the very nice young lady on the telephone, was I told that this free 6 months consisted in anything less than full usage.

Well, it does consist in something less than full usage. I signed on tonight and searched on my great-grandfather Oscar Packard. Some links were returned. When I clicked on the links, I either got an external link (to Footnote.com for a census image citation, for example) telling me that I could sign up for a Footnote subscription or buy a single image for about 2 and a half bucks; or I was redirected to a screen within World Vital Records urging me to sign up for a paid subscription. I did not get access to images on World Vital Records with this free trial. So I know that there was an article about an Oscar Packard in the Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Reporter, but I can not yet determine whether this was "my" Oscar Packard or not. Could I at least get some sort of abstract of the article in my search, so that I could make at least a good guess whether this was my guy or not?

That's a disappointment. And since I have not been able to fully test drive the complete functionality of World Vital Records, so that I really do not know whether what they have would be in any way useful to me, I'm not sure I'd sign up for a paid version. For one thing, if I got the paid version, would I be able to access the census image from Footnote as part of the World Vital Records subscription, or would I still have to buy a subscription to Footnote, or at least pay the two and a half bucks for the single image? I like full disclosure when someone wants to induce me to sign up for something, and I do not feel like I have been given full disclosure here.

I'll poke around it some more -- maybe there is a workaround. A citation would be helpful, so I'll look for citations. There is not a full citation to the newspaper article, but there was a citation to the census information. If the World Vital Records result comes from a free database, such as one I uncovered for an Oscar Packard (not mine) from Find A Grave, you are given access to the complete information and the images, through a redirect to that website. The convenience of having the links to a variety of free databases concentrated in one place might be worth money to some, but not to me. I am familiar with many of the free databases, have most of them bookmarked, and can do that sort of search for myself. I really don't feel a need to pay a third party to be a gateway.

And if anyone can demonstrate to me that I have a misimpression, do say so. I'd be happy to learn what I may not know about how to benefit from this free trial.

The frustration came from Ancestry.com, for which I do have a paid subscription. I went to access an image, and since I use Mozilla Firefox, I got an error message saying that I would have to use Internet Explorer to view the image. That has not happened previously. The last time I searched on Ancestry and found images, just a couple weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox worked just fine. Is this somehow related to Amazon.com having gone public (that is an IPO I would like to have got in on . . . if I could have afforded it . . .)? At any rate, it is just a bit irritating. When they have something that works just fine for the greatest number of people (who use a variety of browsers), why all of a sudden should that change to a more restrictive stance, requiring the use of one specific browser? I like choice as much as I like full disclosure, and I don't like my choices limited, especially when they were previously unlimited.

I will grouse loudly and mightily, but I will grudgingly use IE on Ancestry from now on.

But can anyone please tell me how to turn off that d----d annoying popup that comes up on every page, sometimes multiple times, asking me if I want ActiveX to operate?
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Progress

Some may believe, along with Daddy Warbucks in "Annie" that "Progress is the Root of All Evil," but not me. Progress towards one's goals is good, and progress in just being is also good.

Progress Note #1: I have just been notified that my post for yesterday, Data Backup Day -- My Story, was selected one of three winners of the GeneaBloggers DBD Blog Contest. I won a free copy of Handy Backup, which will be nice for future backups to that rugged external hard drive I wrote about.

Progress Note #2: Last week, in the midst of having a cold and an unrelated gastric distress, I finished proofreading my book and finished creating the index, getting all of that back to the publisher, thanks to my husband, who schlepped the manuscript to the post office. The book, Non-Federal Censuses of Florida, 1784-1945: A Guide to Sources, will come out later this month or early next month, should all go as planned.

Progress Note #3: Tomorrow my grant application gets handed in, for the grant I'm seeking to help me do research as an undergraduate at the University of North Florida, and which will lead to my next book, a genealogical-historical investigation of St. Augustine, Florida, during the Second Spanish Period (1783-1820).

Getting that -- and the last of my Medieval History papers done -- does make me feel like I've done something, and does get some weight off my shoulders as the end of the term approaches. Now I have papers and quizzes in Spanish Literature, and a presentation to the Sons of the American Revolution to get through. Then -- the holiday break!
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Data Backup Day - My Story

Several years ago, I had a catastrophic computer crash. It happened during the summer, in July. I lost a lot of data, most importantly the records I kept in my genealogy database software. I was able to reconstruct most of it from documents and printouts I had made and stored in the family binders on my bookshelf. as I tend to hang on to paper far beyond those documents which I will part with only when my will is probated and the documents are either passed on in the family or donated to the Southern Genealogists Exchange Society. The next summer, again in July, my computer crashed again. I took two actions: (1) I bought a new computer, and (2) the next June 30, I tunred my computer off, and didn't turn it on again until 1 August! Yeah, as the daughter of a naval aviator -- they being a superstitious lot -- I have my own quotient of superstition!

These days, I have generally been backing up my data, my photographs, genealogy database information, and other files onto CDs. My husband, a former civilian computer programmer for the Navy, supplied me another forum for backing up. He bought each of us an external hard drive which is constructed to Department of Defense specifications for ruggedness and durability. These are the kinds they are using in combat zones. You can run over it with a Hum-V and it will keep on ticking. You can jump out of a helicopter with one strapped to your back, land on it, and it will keep on ticking. Not sure it would stand up to an IED, but it will generally stand up to whatever I might do to it, up to and including running over it with my Chevy Tracker. That's where I keep my data.

One problem that we need to address concerning backing up to CDs is: when is the technology going to change again -- and it is going to change again -- and what are we going to do about it? One consideration in migrating to new technology for backing up data will be cost -- will we have to buy some sort of equipment? Inevitably we will -- some sort of writer/reader to create and use the data backup format, whatever it may be. I don't see an immediate prospect for that happening, as CDs seem to be a rather stable and dependable means ot storage.

What I think may change sooner than the physical format is the virtual format -- the programs we use for putting the data on the CDs and for reading it off the CDs. Will these be able to read older CDs which were created using older programs? And how about the operating systems? Will Windows 7 be able to read the CDs I created using Windows 98? Or even my current OS, Widows XP Professional? This is the nexus at which we need to be aware of changes, and keep "migrating" our stored data to the newer virtual formats. Microsoft has not been noted lately for its conscientiousness in providing "backward compatibility" through the various iterations of Windows.

So it's time for me to do some more CD backups . . .
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Tools of the Trade

I have just installed an add-on to my Firefox browser, called ScribeFire.  It is a tool to allow me to compose my blog entries offline and on the go.  I have tried composing my posts in Microsoft Word 2007, my word processor, and it is a lot of trouble!  I have never seen so much "gunk" in a document in my life as comes over to a Blogger post from Word!  All sorts of formatting stuff that I had to either take out manually or destroy my post and start all over.  So here I am with ScribeFire.  This is a test, because this is the first post I'm making with this tool.

We live in an age when not only do we have to know the tools of the genealogy trade -- vital records, newspaper records, church records, and all the rest -- we also have to know the tools of modern communications.  We have to know cell phones and web browsers and blogging software and our genealogy program software and . . .  My head is hurting! 

And we have to know how to operate a computer, a difficult task for some of the members of our genealogy society.  I got my husband involved in the society I have belonged to for the past several years.  He is a retired federal civil service computer programmer and whatever-else-needed-to-be-done (like installing LANs and monitoring security), and he is a certified computer security professional.  So he became the society's computer security officer and has now had his duties broadened to include overseeing the installation and running of our society headquarters wi-fi.  And part of his duties also include conducting training for members in how to hook up to the wi-fi and use their computers in their research.  This is an area which is definitely terra incognita to many members -- and we have some members who stoutly refuse to even use a computer!

Last month, I gave a presentation to our society about even more tools: blogs, podcasts, and Twitter.  The face of genealogy, as with just about every other aspect of our lives, is changing at an ever-increasing pace.  Not every one interested in tracing their family histories is going to be interested in using these 21st century tools to do it.  But for those of us who are comfortable with the new technologies, they're wonderful tools indeed to help us accomplish our research goals.

We have one more tool to use, probably the most basic one of all:  our curiosity.