Saturday at ICAPGen

Another great day at the ICAPGen Conference. Other family members are at the BYU football game also going on right now. So far we've heard from Jake Gehring, the president of the Association of Professional Genealogists. It was interesting to hear what they hear most from unhappy clients. Basically it boiled down to communication and reliability. Good things to know.

Next we heard more about the FamilySearch Wiki. This tool has been mentioned in a number of sessions. It's a place I plan to use and add to.

A very valuable session that I attended was Scottish Internet Research. It covered the information available at Scotlands People. I have known about the website for awhile, but wasn't sure how to use it. Since it is a subscription site, I didn't really try it out on my own. Now I'm ready to look for some documents for my own research projects.

Now it's time for a class from one of my former instructors, Kory Meyerink, on marketing.

Footnote with Beau

Footnote has been one of my very favorite sites since it went live in 2007. It is a website where there are digitized original documents. Right now I'm listening to Beau Sharbough share Footnote with us. It's awesome! He even said that it is okay for me to use this site with my students for National History Day. They can use the index and a quick look. If they find a premium image, then I can download it for them. I'm excited to share it with them, now that I know even more about the content and how to find it.

I'm also looking forward to creating Footnote pages and adding annotations when I research.

TNG with Darrin

A few years ago I finally decided that it was time to have a genealogy website. I also had many photos and documents that I wanted to put together with my database. As I learned more about webcoding I determined that a dynamic site would be the best--one that could change as more information was found. That's when I heard about The Next Generation of Genealogy Site Building code for a dynamic website. Considering that I had done a little to begin learning how to code such a site, I was excited to know that someone else had created the code and was willing to share for a very small price. Although Darrin Lythgoe wrote the code, I did find that it was fairly heavy duty web building to get things up and going, and he was there on the other end of e-mail to answer my questions as I struggled through. I really love my genealogy website.

Today I got to meet Darrin at the ICAPGen Conference as he presented TNG. It's fun meeting someone that I've meet through business on the Internet. I updated my website a few weeks ago, so I'd know the latest. He's always creating great updates.

One of my favorite activities is to work to update my website. Next I need to promote it!

Legacy 7 with Geoff

Wow! Legacy 7 by Geoff Rasmussen. I have enjoyed using Legacy since January 2005. Today I have the opportunity to learn more about the program from the main man.

Chronology tab--how did I miss this one? I love timelines and find it so helpful to create them for research. Now they can be created from my database. Yahoo!

Source Writer--this is a winner. Templates to help write correct and consistent source documentations. Awesome!

To Do List--this could be used as a research log. I'll have to try it out to see how it works for me.

Research Guidance--here's a checklist to make sure all of the major research sources have been checked out. I've fiddled with this some. I need to see what more I can do with this.

Reports, Charting, Birthday Reminders...all good tools that I'm looking forward to customizing for my use.

Thanks, Geoff!

ICAPGen Conference 2008

I've been anticipating this conference since early September and so far it's been more than I expected. First, the drive to Provo went very well. It's a lovely day, despite our recent snowstorms. Although the close visitor parking lot was full, the next best thing had plenty of room, so there was plenty of time to register, pick up a syllabus (silly me for ever thinking I didn't want one of those!) and wind around the Wilkinson Building at BYU to find my first session.

I have sent for the packet to pursue becoming a Certified Genealogist, but hadn't thought about accreditation. After attending the first session about preparing for the accreditation process, I was excited to think that it's something that I would like to do. The next session I attended talked about many ways for genealogists to continue professional development. The presenter's introduction made me giggle. She said, "Teachers do professional development, so should we!"

I have a few family lines that might be German and are connected to Pennsylvania, so I attended a class about Palatine Immigrants. I'm not sure if I have any ancestors that were Palatine immigrants, they may have come too early, but I'm sure the resources will be useful.

Lunch in the Wilkerson Center was interesting. There were many display tables with various causes. I saw students studying, talking on cell phones, napping, talking together and lots of things. It's so different from when I was here. Many more places to get food, lots of large round tables, and lots of places to gather to study. Not sure what happened to the old ballroom though.

After lunch I went to the Eyring Science Center, but Brother Dibble wasn't in. Then back to the conference!

Connections

Last year my youngest son accompanied me to the Family History Library. On our way downtown I asked him if he had something to do while he waited for me to find documents to copy. He loves to be my assistant, but gets quite bored waiting for me to find information to copy. He didn't bring anything to do, so when stopped at a light, I handed him a notebook with his pedigree and recommended that he select a family to research. He choose Thomas Norton King who was married to Sarah Rebecca Copp. When we got to the FHL he began his research, while I worked on mine, starting with books in the county in which we knew the family had lived Tioga County, Pennsylvania.

He was quite disappointed that he didn't find anything about the Kings, but he found a notation about the Copp family. Later in the week I used the clue he had found to locate a great number of Copp family members in the census and extend the Copp pedigree one generation. I kept thinking I should pursue this line, but haven't.

Today, while checking e-mail, I was invited to join a discussion board and found that another researcher had found the connection to the New York Copp family. This means that this line likely extends six or seven generations, right back to England! All because one bored son decided to check out a little family history. He still wants to find more on the King family....