Is it the end?

I wanted to post a few comments about the Library 2.0 lessons we just completed. I love learning online. I've done it for years and its great to be able to work on these interesting lessons as I have time. Some surprises-who would have thought YouTube and Flickr would have anything of interest for a genealogist? I plan to continue with LibaryThing, my blog, and the podcsts for sure. Some of the other things like Twitter I don't really think will help me much.

Anyway it was a very useful and fun program and I would love to continue with more.

Rayma

Podcasts

Just finished the podcast lesson and added one that I think is really fun to my rss feeds. "The Genealogy Guys" podcast has been around awhile and is very popular with researchers. Two prominent genealogists review news and discuss various topics. I'm listening right now and they are discussing a blogger conference. I think this is something I would keep up with.

Rayma

YouTube for Genealogists

I would never have thought YouTube would have anything to offer a genealogist, but I found several nice videos. One was about the 'joy' of genealogy research sponsored by World Vital Records which was very well done. Several were very helpful for first time genealogists in that they offer short lessons on specific types of records. One of the videos made me laugh out loud. It was from the Birmingham library and featured the little yellow marshmallow Peeps. They called it "Finding Your Peeps" and produced it like a silent movie, tinkly piano and all. I thought it was a clever way to advertise their services and materials for genealogists.

Rayma

Rayma

Applications * Web 2.0

I'm running a little behind so I'm going to combine comments on two lessons.

The applications we looked at included Google and Zoho. We've used Google for a year or two for our scheduling at the library and it works well. I did more experimenting with Zoho and found it to be similar and maybe a little easier to use. It would be a great tool to use to keep track of genealogy research. A reseach log could be made on Zoho sheet and the word program would be a way to keep notes on research.

What I really liked was the next lesson on 2.0 sites. I chose genealogy, of course, and experimented with My Heritage and Geni. I had looked into My Heritage before but never did much with it because I was using FamilyLink and the LDS church site. After playing with it a little more, I found it extremely easy to use. I love the celebrity morphing function-what a hoot! Geni is very similar but a tad less easy to use. I went ahead and set up accounts in both. I've had really good luck with social networking sites for sharing family info and I think I like to cast a wider net.

Rayma

Wikis

Just finished the Wiki lesson which was OK. We've used Wikis at our library to trace lost holds and share other information so I was pretty familiar with the concept. Genealogists are beginning to use Wikis to share information about surnames and localities. You see references popping up in all kinds of genealogy sites. I'm concerned about someone editing information that I havd already verified so I use with caution. That's my experience with wikis.

Rayma

Library 2.0

Just finished our excercise on Library 2.0. I find the new technology interesting and useful in many ways. My hope is that we can embrace the new without losing some of the 'old' things that our customers have come to love about our library system.

Rayma

I found a program on SlideShare called Colonnial and State Census Records which is a nice overview of these research materials.

State Census Presentation for U.S. Genealogy Records

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