Celebrate 15 Years of Online Genealogy Education

[Update: The National Institute of Genealogical Studies merged into the International Institute of Genealogical Studies on 2 March 2022 and no longer uses the past name noted in this article.] Seventeen years ago, The National Institute for Genealogical Studies was founded. On October 4, 1999, Methodology-Part 1: Getting Started was the first online course offered to students. On December 1st, 15 years later, it started for the 185th time. We are celebrating! Now’s the time to sign-up for those courses you’ve always wanted to take. Give us a call toll free at 1-800-580-0165 ext 1 to learn more or for help with any registration. From the team, MERRY CHRISTMAS and  HAPPY CHANUKKAH, to you and your family…

Writing Reports

By Shannon Combs Bennett, Student These last two modules of the course Writing for Genealogy: Articles, Blogs, Research Reports and so much more is chock full of information. It was very hard to pick which subject I wanted to tell you about since there is not enough room to talk about them all here!  However, I picked the information on writing reports from Module 5 to focus on and I am sure some of you are groaning right now. Trust me, keep reading. I can hear some of you now “I am never going to be a professional” or how about “no one is ever going to see my research.” Well, how do you know?  Besides, don’t you think the work you do for yourself should be the best you can offer?  I do. Creating professional quality reports for your own research is a great way to let future generations, or even the current ones, know you take your work seriously. In the introduction for Module 5 the instructor takes her time walking you through why knowing how to write reports are a good idea. One thing that I had not really thought about before was creating a report for individuals who request help from my genealogy society. I would expect a professional type report from a library or archive but I can see how it would make my society stand out from other groups if we took our answer one step further. Thankfully our instructor takes the time to go…

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We Have a Winner!: APG PMC

We have a winner! You may recall that we had one registration to the Association of Professional Genealogist’s  Professional Management Conference to give away to one lucky student. That lucky student is Lynn Funk. Lynn was understandably excited, “The reason I wanted to attend was that I looked at the amazing line-up of speakers and topics being presented and knew there were things that I could learn from them that would make me a better genealogist.  For instance, Thomas Jones has several workshops including You’ve Got Options: Many Ways to Cite Right.  I know that citing sources is a weakness for me and I look forward to hearing what Dr. Jones has to say about this so that I can turn this weakness into a strength.” Lynn is also looking forward to hearing  Billie Stone Fogarty and National Institute course author James Beidler. ” This was a great opportunity for Lynn whose goal is to become a professional genealogist. She says, “I try to take every opportunity that is presented to me to learn more about genealogy and family history.” About herself, Lynn says, “I have been researching family history for over 35 years, off and on–more on now that my children are grown!  Right now I am involved in several projects: 1) Researching my Smith line with a cousin who “found” me through AncestryDNA.  We have never met in person or talked on the phone– in fact up until a few months ago, I didn’t even know she existed.  But we are…

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German: Church Records

Bu Michele Simmons Lewis, Student Well that’s embarrassing. I just took the final exam for the German: Church Records course. I am not going to tell you what my score but I will tell you that this has been the hardest course (and exam) so far. I definitely need to go back over the material again. The text that accompanies this course is excellent. As a matter of fact, not only do you get the regular course materials but you also get German Church Books: Beyond the Basics by Kenneth L. Smith. There are 239 pages of text for this course. When examining church registers you can’t just skim through them looking for familiar names. This is a mistake that I have made in the past. You have to analyze every baptism, every marriage, and every death entry for the period of time in question and build all of the family groups. This is the only way you will be able to separate everyone out correctly. Sometimes the entry will have a first name and sometimes it will have a middle name or even a second middle name. At first glance you might think you are dealing with several people when you are really only dealing with one. The reverse can happen as well. “Anna” might be three different people and not just one. For the final exam, you are given a parish register with baptisms, marriages, and deaths. You have to put everyone in their proper family group after…

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Writing as Volunteer Work

By Shannon Combs Bennett, Student Like many genealogists, I have a service heart. I like giving back to the community and helping others in any way that I can. Which is why I think that Module 4 of the course Writing for Genealogy: Articles, Blogs, Research Reports and so much more was a very important one.  This module covered how to write for societies and ways writing can give back to the genealogy community.  Let’s face it, sometimes it is easier to write if you are volunteering than if you are trying to actually work for yourself. Like me, you may be involved with a genealogy society.  If not now maybe you will be in the future. After a while of being a “regular” at meetings you might find that some of the members want you to take on responsibilities.  Trust me, it happens.  That is why I loved that the course author, Jennifer Holik  discussed  ways to write for societies. She covered president’s reports and secretary responsibilities, but I had hoped she would write even more about newsletters.  The secretary section covered a lot of the items a newsletter should have, but I think that working on a newsletter is one way people can really get their writing feet wet.  It is much less intimidating to write for a local newsletter than to try your hand at a large publication.  Trust me! Of course we couldn’t have a post about volunteer writing and not cover indexing projects.  They are…

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