Saturday, September 22, 2012

Society Saturday Bonita-Sunnyside Library Workshop

Society Saturday
Bonita-Sunnyside Library Workshop

This event was our Fall Seminar, it was free to all who came and enjoyed.

It started with an introduction by President Gary Brock.  He then introduced
Sam Seat to give an over view of what our hopes were to help the attendees.

Sam gave a great presentation on the use of a 5 Generation Chart, various online
resources for research, and explained a basic overview of some genealogical computer programs
 to add one's research to after basic information placed on paper and pencil chart form.

He reinforced that you can do much genealogy with out joining a paid site. He supplied urls for many sites to assist one in doing research and he did mention a few of the paid sites also.

Paper and Pencil is used to start, so that you can correct and change as you are learning. Once it is determined correct it can be put into a Genealogical Program, ( Roots Magic, Family Tree Maker, My Heritage or Reunion).  Those were the ones shown on the computers for people to see how they work and the ease of use for storage of your information.

Roots Magic, Family Tree Maker are for PC users, Reunion is for MacIntosh users. My Heritage is a cloud computing program that is free up to a certain amount and then fee based afterwards. It can be used on either computer styles, PC or MAC.  Yes, there are many more programs but those were the presented ones by members of the society to help others get started or to understand some of the mechanics of the program they are using.

Bernice Heiter was there to help with French Canadian research and her assistant was Bobbie Lane whom both are Daughters of the King.  It was noticed that there were people that took advantage of that source of knowledge.

Randy Seaver helped people with Roots Magic, Kevin Brown helped with My Heritage, Ken Robison shared data on Family Tree Maker, Shirley Becker showed the Reunion Program for the MAC users.

Susi Pentico used her I Pad to help a new member find his Grandmother on Ancestry in the census records for Puerto Rico.

A brief mention of the many tools in the ultra modern world that genealogist can now use: I-Phone, I-Pad, NoteBooks, LapTops, other Cell phones with Applications added.  Of course we have regular computers also.

Librarian Hielde Kraus, gave an over view of the County Library System and they do still have Ancestry available in their sites. She also mentioned we should use all our libraries for resources because there are many advantages to using libraries.  She talked about online Catalogs, and other  sources they have we do not have access to at home. JSTOR they do not have but our local universities should have it and we are eligible to use a universities libraries as tax payers.  I will mention World Cat here as another source for libraries.  Actually there are many, so drop by a library and ask.

JSTOR is a Journal Storage program encouraged and used by Universities and many colleges. It is
a very expensive program so lower level system many times can not afford it.  Since early genealogical data was stored in journals it is an ideal element to use for research.

 A Drawing was held for the door prize and other gifts donated to the society after both the morning and afternoon session.

We had at least one new member sign up whom I met and helped do research. We had many new faces in the morning session.

We had more attendees in the afternoon but no new faces. We were glad to see them come and learn about the programs and how to research and use the Electronic Storage Programs for their data.

Refreshments were provided for throughout the day.  Thanks Karen.

Thanks to all whom attended and shared and we hope you enjoyed it and would like to do it again.


1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed reading about the events of the day. There was a lot going on.

    You've reminded me that I should make an effort to attend the county genealogy club meeting. It's only a little over a mile from the house. It's close enough that I have walked to the nearby Ford dealer once in a while when the minivan is in the shop.

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