Courses

Planning a Research Trip: Salt Lake City

Planning a Research Trip: Salt Lake City

By Shannon Combs-Bennett, Student The Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah is one of those dream research locations for genealogists. Many people plan for years to take just one trip to this world famous library. Others are lucky enough to go on a regular pilgrimage to this repository. I thought having a section on researching in Salt Lake City was a wonderful addition to the Planning A Research Trip Including Preparing for Salt Lake City course. Once again, there are tips and tricks in there that I wish I had known about before I made my first, or even, last trip! I have gone to the Family History Library (FHL)  twice, and I am getting ready to go for my third trip in February 2017.  In my past trips  I had only 1 day at the FHL, but this time I am excited to put what I learned in this course to good use and spend multiple days there. When I  go also corresponds with the  RootsTech conference, so it is a crazy time in the area. Other times of the year are less packed, but at other times of the year you cannot run into so many people from the genealogy  community all doing what we love…research.  While my experiences may not match yours (from the past or in the future) I hope you can see why I think the last two modules of this  course are so valuable. Not only do the course instructors walk the students…

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Starting Planning a Research Trip

By Shannon Combs-Bennett, Student When I started out on this genealogy path I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what it took to visit a research facility. Boy, was I wrong!  True, I knew how to use most search features on the computer, plus a card catalog, but there was so much more to a trip than I realized. I wish I knew about the course Planning a Research Trip Including Preparing for Salt Lake City  before I took my first major research trip. That is not to say that if you think you are an old hat at research  this course won’t be useful. Far from it. I am sure this blog post will prove to you that there is something for everyone in this course. My  first big research trip (away from home) was to the Allen County Library in Ft. Wayne, which was also at the same time as the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference that year. I was making it a comprehensive trip, since I am from Indiana, which meant that not only did I visit large and small repositories, family members, and dozens of cemeteries.  It was a great time, but it could have gone so much better. How do I know?  Well, I am still working on processing the data from that trip since I saved information in so many different ways and places. The first two modules of this course were fantastic in walking you through what to expect, how to…

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The Importance of Analysis and Skills Mentoring

By Shannon Combs-Bennett, Student If you are working towards a certificate at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies,  the Analysis and Skills Mentoring 1, 2, and 3 courses are required subjects. However, as you will read below, they are also great ways to test if your genealogy methodology and research skills are up to par. I wrote previously about Analysis and Skills Mentoring 1 in this blog post so you can get an idea about that course. This blog post takes a look at both Analysis and Skills Mentoring 2 and 3 because they have the same elements and each one builds upon the other. The main difference between Analysis and Skills Mentoring 1 and the other two courses is that Analysis and Skills Mentoring 2 and 3 require you to transcribe and abstract a document. This can be one of the more difficult assignments for students.  Many feel it is because everyone has a different style of how they transcribe or abstract.  And, while this may be aesthetically true for abstracts, a transcription is a true-to-life copy of the original.  That fact by itself means that if you adhere to the guidelines taught in the course you will be fine.  Abstractions are the ones that I feel can be more difficult.  To me, beyond deleting the boiler point information, it feels almost subjective as to what you should leave in or take out. Beyond the transcription and abstraction, your assignments  include a series of research questions that test the skills you…

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Do you use Panoramio?

If you’ve taken the Google for the Wise Genealogist course you are probably familiar with the mapping/image website Panoramio. Panoramio was a great mapping website for finding images of places and events. Unfortunately, like many great Google products it is closing. Recently, Google sent out an email to those using Panoramio. It reads in part: Back in 2014, we announced our intention to retire Panoramio in order to invest our efforts into improving photo-sharing experiences directly inside Google Maps. In response to your feedback, we postponed these plans and worked to add features to Maps that better support the level of engagement that you have enjoyed with Panoramio. Today, with photo upload tools in Google Maps and our Local Guides program, we are providing easy options for you to share your photos with an active and growing community. As such, we’ve decided to now close down Panoramio. To make this transition easier, we’ll provide several options to continue sharing photos through other services. If you choose, you can also export all your data and take it somewhere else. So, what does this mean if you have an account on Panoramio? Panoramio will be closed in November so you can choose to close your account or if you do nothing and have a Google Account, all photos will be migrated to a Google Photo Archive. Make sure that if you have added photos to Panoramio you download them. Also, go to Panoramio to learn more about this closure. You should have…

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New Course: Australian Health Records

What’s new at The National Institute? The course Australian: Health Records! Written by Australian genealogist and author Shauna Hicks, this course looks at how health records can help with family history research. Records for general hospitals, maternity hospitals, asylums, sanatoriums and other health institutions will be looked at together with staff records. In addition, we will explore specific epidemics and medical treatments that our ancestors might have been familiar with. The first offering of this course starts September 5th. To register for this course, please see out website.