21COFH - The Inventory - Week 5

Well, I am running a wee bit behind with last week's project due to SLIG and RootsTech. The inventory I conducted is really an update since there have been at least two done previously. Here's what I did.

1.  I decided to consolidate everything by using OneNote and setting up a notebook called Goodrum Family Archive.

2,  Next I set up a tab called Inventories. Here is where the updated inventory went (along with the old inventories)

           and the new inventory form that will be slowly but continuously updated as the project progresses.

3. I also set up some tabs for item level descriptions that have been done on a few boxes previously.

4. Finally, I set up an Overview tab with a brief description of our entire photo collection:

Now onto this week's project!

Link for this post: http://turning-of-generations.blogspot.com/2012/02/21cofh-inventory-week-5.html

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

RootsTech 2

Continuing with my RootsTech experience from the other day, the remaining sessions I attended were:

The "Galaxy Girls" - Three Genealogists and Their Android Tablets - Jill Ball. Jill, who is from Australia, reported on a project she participated in with two other Aussies. They each purchased Samsung Galaxy Android Tabs and explored apps that could be used by genealogists. Since I'm trying to decide whether I want to purchase a similar device, I decided to attend. While I still haven't made any decisions, I did learn about the enormous number of apps out there, some of which I am guessing could be used on my Android phone. The syllabus for this talk is well worth looking at.

The remaining sessions I attended were workshops you had to sign up for in advance. I understand many people were disappointed to find the workshops had filled by the time they attempted to sign up. However, I got lucky as I was sitting at my computer when the announcement came out that sign ups were open!

Snagit for Genealogists - Barbara Rennick
Snagit is an image capture program that I've had for a while now but knew I wasn't using it very well. It was a hands on session in the computer lab. WOW! Barbara, who is an excellent presenter, walked us through a number of features of Snagit and showed us how to use Snagit to create a research log for our online searches. I left this session feeling much more comfortable using the program.

Bonus: I ran into Barbara in the exhibit hall the following morning and was asked to assist in the impromptu lunchtime session. So not only did I get to listen and pick up on some things I missed the first time around, but I had the opportunity to run around the classroom and assist attendees who were having difficulties. It reminded me of helping in the kids school computer lab several years ago.

The 19 page syllabus is online if you are interested. Did I mention it's 19 pages?

Word Processing Tricks for Genealogical Publishing - Jeri Steele
Jeri covered working with images, table of contents and indexes in Word 2010. It was an extremely helpful session, although now I want to upgrade from Word 2007. Sigh. There's a nice syllabus online for this session too.

How to Do a Webinar - Geoff Rasmussen
In this session, we went behind the scenes to see just how Geoff puts on his awesome Legacy webinars. Will I be doing one anytime soon? Mmmm. Probably not but I left feeling like I certainly could!

There you have it. My classroom experiences at RootsTech. It was a great 3 days and definitely a different experience from the genealogy conferences we are used to attending.


© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

RootsTech

Well, I'm still recovering from a busy couple of weeks at SLIG and RootsTech but I do want to share what I learned. There is such a wide variety of sessions to attend, I decided to focus on those that could help progress family history here and now.

One-step Webpages by Stephen P. Morse: A Hodgepodge of Lesser Known Unrelated Problems

Part of the reason I chose this talk was because of the presenter. Stephen Morse made a significant impact on the lives of millions of people with the 8086 processor and now with his One-step Webpages he continues to have an impact. I was curious. What is he like? Well, he is brilliant and funny. I left feeling more comfortable using his website which I admit I have used very little up to now.

E-learning Software and Authoring Tools for Genealogical Education– Mark Lowe
Initially I wasn't sure whether to attend this session or not. Boy am I glad I did. Mark alluded to this session in his 2 hour presentation, at the APG conference on Wednesday, titled “Developing Advanced Research Plans While Staying on Track in a Modern World,” so I decided to go. One of the tools I learned about is Screencast-O-Matic, an online screen recorder. I see a future YouTube channel or even including video in this blog, if I can figure out how...

The Powers of Evernote: Photos, URL’s, Censuses, Geo-location, and Stories - Tevya Washburn and Kurt Francom

Being a huge Evernote fan, I was definitely looking forward to this presentation. While it was oriented toward beginners, I came away with a better understanding of several aps that work with Evernote such as:

• Skitch - a drawing tool.
• If This Then That (ifttt.com) - a rule setting ap that can be plugged into Evernote, Facebook, gmail and other. It's used to create rules so for example, you could set up a rule if you post to your blog, then ifttt saves into Evernote.
• Shoeboxed.com allows you to send shoeboxes of photos and documents. They scan and push to your Evernote acct. Then you can tag, etc. if you want.

By the way, did you know the syllabi are available at the RootsTech website for anyone to download, whether you attended or not?

I'll have more in the next day or two. Right now it's time for some rest and NCIS.


© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

RootsTech - The Pictoral Version

Since I'm still recovering from two weeks of intensive and exhausting genealogy learning, here's the photo version of RootsTech. The wordy version is still to come.

The first person I ran into in the exhibit hall was none other than Becky Wiseman of Kinnexions. We had lunch together and ran into each other in one of the sessions. I felt fortunate to be able to spend time with Becky and get to know her better. She's one of my genealogy, travelling, photography heros!

Next along came the author of Stardust 'n' Roots, aka GeneaPopPop. We also ran into each other in a session and had some time to visit.

Tim Firkowski, The Genealogy Assistant, was regularly seen out and about in his costumes.

Thomas MacEntee, Mr. GeneaBlogger himself, was wearing his mardi gras beads on Saturday. Those things are truly world travellers by now!

It was a joy to meet Down Under blogger, Jill Ball, of the Geniaus blog. It was her contest that I won which gave me free RootsTech registration. She is a doll and I loved her presentation. More on that later.

Then there was the media hub. If you wanted to meet up with a blogger, it was definitely the place to be.

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

21COFH - To the Rescue! - Week 6

Now that you've had an opportunity to take inventory of your photos, you may have identified some things needing to be rescued from less than desirable circumstances. Your mission this week is to do just that.

1. Use your inventory from last week to select an album or group of photos (more if you have the time).

Some projects you might consider:

• Rescue photos from a "magnetic" album. You know the ones with the sticky pages covered by plastic - aka- the "chemical sandwich of doom." You can scan pictures or not depending on your desire and available time. Just getting those pictures into another album, box or other storage will help lengthen their life. If you decide to put them into a box, please interleave the photos with acid free paper. You don't want any residual glue on the back of one photo to transfer to the face of another.
• If you have some older albums with photos pasted or otherwise attached to black construction paper, you might consider a project similar to what I did with my mother's old album.
• Also, it's perfectly OK to decide to leave an old album, like Mom's, alone and simply interleave the pages with acid free tissue paper to slow down any degredation that is occurring.
• Don't forget about loose, brittle pictures that are wandering around in old boxes.

2. Decide what your approach is.

• Do you want to simply put the pictures in a safer storage environment?
• Do you want to scan them?
• If you do be sure and use the organizational  and file naming schemes you developed in Week 2.

3. Obtain the necessary (permanent or temporary) storage supplies.

4.  Execute your plan (remember to use your work area).

5. Update your inventory.

6. Tell us about your project either in the comments or a post of your own. Be sure to leave the url in the comments section.

Remember to keep your project(s) to what you can complete this week. Have fun and good luck!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

RootsTech Keynote

Just some quick thoughts regarding Jay Verkler's engaging keynote this morning.

• Bringing users and developers together to develop exchange mechanisms for genealogical information
• Demonstrated ways of linking information together and embedding media in an engaging, user friendly way.
• Updating GEDCOM to transfer all of your information.
• Developing in a way to be able to add changes in the future
• Google Software Engineers demonstrated changes they have made in searches friendlier to those searching for historical information. Apparently we can do this now.
• Including the souce authority to allow users to judge the reliability of information. Jay even quoted Elizabeth Shown Mills.
• Then they did some fun demonstrations that us, our children and grandchildren might use information in the future.

Just quick thoughts. This is a need to view presentation if you have the opportunity to watch a recording. Gotta see it to appreciate it.

On to the vendor hall.

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

The Eve of RootsTech

Tomorrow is the big day! RootsTech.
Salt Lake City is crawling with genealogists. Today after attending the Association of Professional Genealogists Professional Management Conference, I headed down to the lobby of the Radisson where it was held and lo and behold, it was full of GeneaBloggers I actually "knew." At least virtually. Now I know them personally. Linda McCauley, Elise Doerflinger, Footnote Maven, Russ Worthington, Denise Levenick, Tim Firkowski had lots of laughs trying to "Bump" our smart phones with varying degrees of success.

It seems like everywhere I turn there's someone I know and everyone is extremely friendly. Can't wait for tomorrow!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum