The Turning of Generations

Sunday, January 29, 2012

21COFH - Take Inventory - Week 6

Note: This is really week 5. Sorry about the mix up!

We will be working with our photographs for several weeks. Before beginning that adventure, we need to get our arms around what we have by conducting an inventory. Unless your photo collection is very small, this will be a broad based inventory not an item by item inventory.

The level of detail for this activity should depend upon the time you have available this week and the extent of your physical collection of pictures. If this week is busy, it’s better to have a very general, short inventory than none at all! You will be referring to your inventory as you work with your collection each week.

Suggested steps to follow:

1. Move in an organized, methodical fashion. One suggestion is to go room by room, moving clockwise around the room.

2. Note each box, album (or groups of), pile or other unit of storage. You could describe the box (red shoe box) or you could number your boxes.

3. When looking at the contents, make note of:

a. General provenance – who’s photos were they, how did they come to be in your possession? If there is any additional background, this is a good time to note it.

b. Surname(s) included in the box or album.

c. General time frame and subject matter.

d. Format, size ranges and quantity. This will be helpful if you need to order archival storage supplies.

e. Note concerns and items needing attention, rescue, or other triage. Here you could note those “magnetic” albums, particularly old or brittle items, an old album with pictures that are loose or falling out, etc.

f. Other non-photographic items such as letters, address books, heirloom items, etc. Often when someone’s home gets packed up, different types of objects get tossed together in the same box.

g. Anything else you consider important.

4. If you have many photographs, you might want to move boxes to your work area as you inventory and then return them to their original location.

5. Please remember, if you remove items from boxes, it’s important to keep things in their original order.

After completing the inventory, you will be more familiar with your collection. Write a paragraph generally describing your photograph collection and keep it with the inventory. Consider including:

· When and who you received the photos from (or if you were the photographer say so).

· If there were previous owners or other history, mention it.

· Where the collection is located now.

· Size of the collection.

· Mini collections within your overall collection.

Tell us about your inventory experience, the format you used and, if you want, share your paragraph. You can do so either in the comments or a post of your own (be sure to leave the url in the comments).

Good luck and remember to keep this project to what you can complete this week. Rome wasn't built in a day and your photo archive won't be either.

The Inventory is my summary of this project.

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

SLIG 2012 Experience

When you were a kid, did you ever play the game where you throw an object into the deep end of a swimming pool and dive down to retrieve it? At first it’s pretty difficult to swim all the way to the bottom while holding your breath and then you can’t get back to the surface fast enough to get some air. Do you remember the elation when, with the prize in your hands, your head broke the surface of the water and you were able to breathe air into your bursting lungs? Completing Tom Jones’s "Advanced Genealogical Methods" course at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy was a similar experience.

After a full week of immersion into Dr. Jones’ course, I was elated, yet exhausted. My head was bursting with the wonderful information learned from him, Claire Bettag, Rick Sayre, and my wonderful classmates. I was constantly humbled by the realization of how much I didn’t know. We had homework assignments nearly every evening which were completed with varying degrees of success but something was learned from each. In fact, one I will be reworking from home because I believe I can learn more from it.

Dr. Jones's class was very interactive with practice problems, discussion and plenty of opportunities to ask questions. Not at all like attending one of his lectures at a national conference. The homework assignments were optional but I believe every one of his students attempted the problems and showed up early the next morning for the "debriefings." The assignments were yet another opportunity to see how genealogical problems are solved by one of the best in the business.

Part of the SLIG experience was the opportunity to meet and get to know other genealogists. It’s not like a conference. It’s a much more intimate environment because you are with the same group of people all day for an entire week. Classmates included several bloggers including Kathryn Doyle of California Genealogical Society & Library, Kim von Aspern-Parker of Le Maison Duchamp and Susan Bankhead of Susan's Genealogy Blog. Susan kept up a wonderful running commentary about our daily sessions and I encourage you to read them:

I’m sure the others will have comments as well.

If you are considering attending SLIG in 2013, I encourage you to do so. It was a fabulous learning and networking experience. The course list for next year is out and already I am trying to decide which one to take.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Happy Second Blogiversary to The Turning of Generations

Artwork from clker.com

That's right two years ago today The Turning of Generations was born. Little did I know how much it would take over my life or how many wonderful people I would meet both virtually and in person.

Since we are entering our third year at The Turning of Generations, I would like to give a special thank you to the Wonderful Readers of this blog. Next week I will randomly select (using random.org) 3 people from the comments and highlight their blog. If you are not a blogger, don't worry I will be thanking you too!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Monday, January 23, 2012

Family History Expo - Saturday

Here are the Saturday classes I attended. I will have one final post in the next few days.

Inspiring Ways to Captivate the Non-Genealogists in Your Life with Lisa Louise Cooke
I am starting to feel like a Lisa Louise Cooke groupie. Well actually I am! I've said before, Lisa has changed my genealogy life.

In this presentation, Lisa discussed some fun projects to suck your family members in to genealogy and much more. Many of them I remembered from her early podcasts but now they have visuals, listener input, and audience participation to go with them.

I walked out of this presentation with a list of projects to potentially do (especially for the holidays) but the ideas weren't just from Lisa. Members of the audience piped in with suggestions too, proving that if you are trying to do family history at home, in isolation, on the internet only, you are missing out on many wonderful opportunities.

Let's YAP About Your Ancestors in Pictures - Colleen McHugh
Colleen covered a great deal of ground in this introductory presentation beginning with the history and progression of photography. She also covered proper storage of your photographic treasures and scanning.

Did you know that after the Joplin tornado in 2011, people found family photos lying around among the rubble and posted them on Facebook in order to reunite them with their proper owners?

How Did My Ancestors Get Into & Out of Pennsylvania, and How Can I Document Them? - Arlene Eakle

Arlene is such a wealth of information! I don't know how she does it. If you haven't heard her speak, I encourage you to do so. Not only did Arlene give us information directly related to the title of her talk but she also presented some tools to help us in our searches in any locality.

For instance, have you prepared a Summary of Contact People for the subject of your search listing the name connection to your person, place and date. Doing this will allow you to spot cross overs from one locality to another.

Colleen McHugh had a lightbulb moment when Arlene mentioned if your are working with a German surname and it starts with J, substitute the J for Tsch and look inthe indexes under T. Colleen, I hope you find your person! This is what I mean when I say you need to listen to Arlene speak. You never know when something Arlene says might apply to you!

I have a couple of loose ends to cover before ending my coverage of this year's Arizona Family History Expo. Watch for that post here in the next couple of days.

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Sunday, January 22, 2012

21COFH - Week 4 - Set up a Work Area

Much of what we will be doing from here forward will involve handling photos of all types, slides, documents, and heirlooms so we will need an area where we can work and return to.

This week's project is to set up or designate such an area.

For those of you who don't have a space to dedicate for these projects, due to small living area or living the mobile lifestyle, you will have to get a bit more creative. Perhaps designating a space where you will work and then having a box or tote for supplies that you can take out each time you work on your projects.

Tell us about your work space or how you plan to utilize one either in the comments or a post of your own (be sure to leave the url in the comments).

Since I will be at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy this week, I will not be leaving a separate post. I have designated our dining room table as my work area, since we probably won't be using it to dine again until Thanksgiving. It's almost ready to go.

Good luck!

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Friday Classes at the Mesa Family History Expo

The afternoon began with Arlene Eakle's keynote address. As always she is a wealth of information and I was reminded to check the National Uncion Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) at the Library of Congress for ancestral clues.

The classes I attended through out the afternoon and evening are as follows:

How the Genealogist Can Remember Everything with Evernote! presented by Lisa Louise Cooke
This was Lisa's first time presenting this outstanding session. It was oriented to the beginner but as always Lisa had ideas for the beginner to advanced user. Many audience members piped up with excellent questions and suggestions as well.

Did you know Lisa practically wrote her new book on newspapers in Evernote? Wow!

Common Surname Google Search Strategies - Lisa Louise Cooke
This presentation can apply to many things besides common surnames. After going through many excellent strategies for conducting searches, Lisa reminded us that once we have constructed a great search to save it as a Google Alert.

U.S. Migration - Migration Routes of Our Ancestors - Leland K. Meitzler
I listed to an audio recording of the talk from 2011 Genealogy Jamboree and was enthralled with it. The only problem was I felt like the visuals would be extremely helpful. That's how I landed in this presentation and once again was drawn in not only by the words but the maps and other visuals Leland had for us. Looking at those maps of old highways, river routes, railroads, etc. caused more than a couple of lightbulbs to go off in my head regarding how my ancestors probably travelled from point A to point B. Leland gives this talk often and I highly recommend it.

© 2012, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Friday, January 20, 2012

S-C-O-R-E at the Family History Expo Today!

It's been a long day and I am very tired but not too tired to share some exciting news. Lisa Louise Cooke, of Genealogy Gems Podcast fame has written a new book titled, Everything You Need to Know About...How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers. She made it available for the first time today and since I headed straight for her booth upon my arrival, I was able to purchase a copy!

Here are today's pictures. I'll have more tomorrow about the sessions. Oh, and to see some of the other goodies I found at the Family Roots Publishing booth, see my Day 20 post over at my photo blog, Shutterbug Generations.