Places Visited

One of the latest things going around on Facebook has been about putting symbols beside where you have visited or lived. My symbols look a bit different, as I had to find ones on the keyboard as the Facebook ones wouldn’t copy over.

 

I loved these bears at a rest stop in Maine

How do you count if you’ve visited a state? I agree that sitting in an airport shouldn’t count. However, I’ve counted states where I mostly sat in the car. Some states, such as Maryland, and West Virginia, I have done little more than looked out the window as we went down the highway. We might have stopped to eat somewhere along the way, but they were mostly pushing through to get to someplace else. I have counted them as I’ve always tried to make the best of those travels and see what the landscape looked like beyond the interstate and watch to see what attractions might be around. I’ve gathered the brochures at the rest areas (remember when there were all kinds of brochures to gather?) and read through them as we went by.

Catoctin State Park that we passed in Maryland meant looking to see if I could see signs for Camp David or maybe even a presidential helicopter going over! In Kentucky this year, I realized that the hotel we made an overnight in was only a few miles from Fort Knox and we saw the Corvette Museum just off the highway as we went through Bowling Green. Tennessee meant seeing as much of Nashville as we could from I-65 as we drove through-- one trip getting some good views as traffic jams meant we took an hour to inch through there. So, even though some of the states are drive-through ones, I feel as though I did catch a glimpse of some of their features.

Other states I’ve been privileged to stay longer and see more things in. Some, like Alabama, have been for institutes or conferences. Others, such as Florida, I was able to spend about 3 weeks traveling around and exploring with my parents when I was a child. In fact, we did that 3 different times while I was growing up and for a couple weeks again while I was in college. The states in the northeast, of course, have been multiple trips. Virginia and Washington, DC, I got to visit several times as my oldest brother lived in Fairfax county with his family for many years.

In Washington with my niece, Heather

 

Albany, Of course from the state library window!

Put a  by the states you have visited. Sitting in an airport doesn't count. The average is 8. How do you match up? Put a ∆ where you have lived.

* Alabama 
* Alaska
* Arizona
* Arkansas
* California
* Colorado
* Connecticut 
* Delaware
* District of Columbia 
* Florida 
* Georgia 
* Hawaii
* Idaho
* Illinois 
* Indiana 
* Iowa
* Kansas
* Kentucky
* Louisiana
* Maine 
* Maryland 
* Massachusetts 
* Michigan 
* Minnesota
* Mississippi
* Missouri 
* Montana
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Hampshire 
* New Jersey 
* New Mexico
* New York ∆
* North Carolina 
* North Dakota
* Ohio 
* Oklahoma
* Oregon
* Pennsylvania 
* Rhode Island 
* South Carolina 
* South Dakota
* Tennessee 
* Texas
* Utah 
* Vermont
* Virginia 
* Washington
* West Virginia 
* Wisconsin
* Wyoming
Canada 
Mexico

Institutes vs. Conferences

Samford University

I’m still working on recovering from last week and the IGHR institute. A long trip down and back- it takes almost 2 full days of driving each way, but is well worth it. Then there are all the little things at home that were neglected for a little over a week. But things are starting to slide back into place and return to normal around here.

In talking with a couple different people in the last week, I’ve realized that many don’t know what the difference is between an institute and a conference. There may be differences in other disciplines, but I suspect that for most endeavors there are two different types of gatherings that are very similar. They might go by different names and they might have a little different slant on education, but there are more similarities than differences. These are institutes and conferences.

A quick and easy way to explain the difference is to think of food, or more specifically two types of meals. One is a multi-course meal where everything is planned out and goes together, the other is a huge buffet with all different types of food from various cuisines that you can pick whatever you want in whatever combination fits your whim. The first is an institute and the second is a conference.

Thus when you attend an institute you choose one class or track of study. During the institute, which usually lasts about a week, you attend classes in this one area of study with the same group of people. There are usually either one or two coordinators that oversee the entire week. However, many different people are likely to present to you on topics surrounding that one area that you’ve chosen to learn about. All of these presentations are planned out to give you a good background in this area. It is much like a course you might take in college in this aspect, although there are usually no papers due or big final at the end.

Legal Research Class @ IGHR

At a conference on the other hand, you can pick and choose from a wide variety of topics. Although there are usually tracks available on one area that you could attend, many people will attend only one or two in a given area and others in various other areas. A conference also tends to last for anywhere between two and four days. You will see some of the same people in the audience at various presentations, but many will change from one presentation to another. Everybody goes their own way and hears a wide variety of speakers on a wide variety of topics.

Which one is better? Well, it depends. I enjoy attending both, but for different reasons. A conference is a good chance to learn a little about many things. Mostly, however, I enjoy going to the vendor hall and networking with like-minded people. At an institute, I feel I learn a lot more. There is more emphasis on learning and many of the courses are designed to build upon skills as the week goes by. Although there is often a book vendor there, you won’t find a vendor hall at an institute. Networking is also different in that you’re with the same people throughout the week and so get to know them better than the chance meetings for a few moments at a conference. One is in-depth within a narrow area while the other is shallow and wide with the information.

I guess to return to our food comparisons, it is like chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Both are delicious, but for different reasons!

Wordless Wednesday- Cumberland Law School Library @ Samford University

Goodbye Samford! Hello Athens!

Today is the last day at IGHR and the last day that it is held at Samford University outside of Birmingham, Alabama. It has been a whirlwind week of learning and having fun with fellow genealogists. As I overheard someone say, “It is great being amongst our tribe.” Imagine a university campus filled with various people, but most importantly, a large group of fellow genealogists! A group or tribe, that their eyes don’t glaze over when you start talking about family history and what you have found! It is indeed a summer camp for genealogists.

Elizabeth Crabtree Wells

Elizabeth Crabtree Wells did a wonderful presentation at the banquet last night about the history of IGHR and the people involved over the years. Many important names of the past and present were mentioned. By the time the speakers were finished there wasn’t a dry eye in the house as people said goodbye to a long tradition and hello to a new location that will be IGHR next year in Athens, Georgia.

My class is given an additional treat this morning as Liz is giving us a presentation about state, county and local archives. She has been a librarian here at Samford University in the Special Collections department for 38 years before her recent retirement, so you can just imagine what a wealth of information she is!

Wordless Wednesday- IGHR last year @ Samford

Samford- Scholarship Winners

My husband and I are here at IGHR (Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research) for it’s last year at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama before it moves next year to the Georgia Center for Continuing Education in Athens, Georgia. We are having a great time despite it being super hot and humid.. I am taking Course 9- Advanced Library Research: Law Libraries and Government documents. Rich is taking Course 3- Advanced Methodology & Evidence Analysis.

IGHR Announced the 2016 scholarship winners in this morning’s daily bulletin.

Jo Ellen McKillop Dickie won the Jean Thomason Scholarship.

Jo Ellen is a Reference Librarian at the The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. She started doing genealogy about twenty years ago when she started working at the Newberry Library working with the Pullman Company Archives.

The scholarship is named for and in honor of Jean Thomason, who directed the Institute from 1997 to 2007. The scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition, is awarded annually and is open to anyone currently employed at a library.

There is also the Birdie Monk Holsclaw Scholarship.

The winner is a former librarian with Syracuse University Law Library. She has been doing genealogy since a high school assignment got her started a little over thirty years ago.

The scholarship is named for and in honor of Birdie Monk Holsclaw who for many years attended IGHR and was also a frequent IGHR lecturer. It also covers the cost of tuition. For more on Birdie and the scholarship, visit http://www.cocouncil.org/awards.html

Congratulations to the winners!

Oh, wait who won that second scholarship? I haven’t been able to officially say anything about it since December-- but yes that awardee is the one behind this keyboard. Congratulations to my fellow winner, it’s an honor to be with you!

Numbers- Saturday Challenge

Your mission this week from Randy Seaver, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database (hint:  the Help button is your friend!)

2)  Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blog post, or in a Facebook status or Google+ stream comment.

There are over 100,000 people in my database. Well over. I use the database program to store research in progress. I also collect any and all collateral that I come across that I can easily throw in there for future reference or research.

The database shows 1809 places listed. Some of them aren’t actually places, but rather phrases that have been plopped into that space. A frequent one is “young” for a person that we don’t know when they died, but that it was as a youngster. Occasionally a marriage has a designation of what number of marriage is for that couple- whether second wife or third husband or such.

Sources total 1674 of which three quarters is probably decent sources. Others are temporary sources that either haven’t been properly wrote up yet or they are rather generic, such as “found on an Ancestry database, needs verification.” These latter ones are definitely a work in progress.

Glad this is short! My morning class is about to start! 

I'm in the library next door learning about legal resources!

Alabama's On My Mind

The state of Alabama is once again on my mind. Those that have been reading this blog since the beginning may remember my earlier post "Of Magnolias and Education". My concluding sentences from that post were: "Was that drive south in June worth it? Well, let’s just say I’m hoping that come next June, my car will once again be pointing towards Alabama"

 

By The original uploader was Lissoy at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Spyder_Monkey using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5075456

The car was at the dealer's this week and had an oil change and a quick once over. The maps are printed- we're old-fashioned and don't own a GPS. I registered this morning for the ProGen get together on Sunday evening. The neighbors have been told we'll be gone. The bags just need to be packed and then a week from tomorrow the car once again points south!

This year I will be taking Advanced Library Research: Law Libraries and Government Documents and Rich will be taking Advanced Methodology and Evidence Analysis. Despite my years working in a law library, I have had little chance to do actual research in legal records. So, this coming week I will be trying to make sure I know what I'm doing with legal records and that I have the proper terminology down pat. Wish me luck!

This will be the last year that IGHR is at Samford University, but if you haven't registered don't fear you've missed your chance. Next year it will move to The Georgia Center’s UGA Hotel & Conference Center July 23-28, 2017.

So, stay tuned. Posts may be a bit short and distracted over the next couple weeks, but they will appear and there will be at least one update during IGHR itself!

 

Cheat Sheets

Today I received 3 legal “cheat sheets” in the mail from Amazon. They’re laminated sheets with information printed on them in a convenient 8 ½” by 11” size and hole punched ready to slip into a loose-leaf notebook. Many companies put them out on various subjects. Legacy Family Trees and New England Historical Genealogical Society among other places sell ones on various genealogy topics. Some are called “Quick Sheets”, these I see are entitled “America’s #1 Legal Reference Chart.” Whatever they’re officially called, I refer to them as cheat sheets.

They are much like those pages that you made in high school or college before a test that listed key points on them for you to reference and study. Perhaps an index card that you were allowed to take into a test with you. I still create these from time to time for myself. I have one with models of common citations that I keep handy for doing research. The chart that somebody (The New York State Library?) put out many years ago with the New York State censuses and which counties were included is floating around somewhere as is the one that shows the year each county was formed and from which other counties. All of these various types of cheat sheets are helpful to reference.

The ones I got today are not intended for genealogy, but rather to help law students or paralegals in their studies. One is on terminology, another on research and the third on legal writing. I will be referencing all of these; I’m sure, while taking the Legal Research course at IGHR at Samford University next month. Reading over the research one this afternoon, I was glad to see they have a listing of primary and secondary authority publications. Something that having not worked with them, I often confuse. It is the difference between which are the laws and which are more like interpretations of what the laws mean. The titles are all familiar to me and I smiled to see that some of them are listed by the color of their covers. Having worked in Technical Services in a Law Library for a little over a decade, I immediately recognize those colors along with the titles and can picture exactly where they were on the shelves. After all, not only did I check them in upon arrival, but I often had occasion to shelve or retrieve them as well!

I am sure I will have reason to refer to these cheat sheets often during that week of class. I learned just enough while working in the library to have a beginner’s background in the subject, but will be delving far deeper into the research end now. These are where such forms shine. No matter the subject, if you have a basic grounding in it, but need help on the details either because you haven’t learned them yet or don’t use them often enough, a little help goes a long way. I have found over the years that such cheat sheets are great for quick reference. This is why I either make my own or search them out already created for me by others.

Create a binder of such pieces of information for the location and time period that you are researching. With this, you don’t need to remember all the seemingly trivial facts or where to find that one piece of information. Also, you can remind yourself of sources to look at that might lead to the clue to solve a problem.

I actually have two different types of “notebooks” for these. One set I keep in a binder that can set on my desk or the bookshelf where it is handy. If you’re leaving home, just take out the one or two you need if there is too big a collection. These are very easy to rearrange. The other isn’t a notebook, but rather a digital collection. In a folder on the computer amongst my genealogy is one entitled “Cheat Sheets.” This contains ones that I either haven’t printed out, or that I want to keep a digital version even if it has been printed. If I’m using it often, it is good to be able to print a fresh page when that one begins to get tattered or if it is lost. Also, ones like the citation cheat sheet is handy to have that way as I can copy and paste a sample citation directly into a document or my family tree database and then insert the specific information in place of the generic place holders.

So, even though I fondly refer to these as cheat sheets like we did back in high school, they are actually useful documents for serious research. I use these to quickly reference information that I need to be able to move forward without a lot of diving into books or other records to find that information that I know I read and can’t quite remember.

Other Hobbies- Saturday Challenge.

From Randy Seaver: For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:

1)  Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.  Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!

2) Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post or a Google+ Stream post.

Hmmm, what if I don’t have a life beyond genealogy? Some days it doesn’t seem like it the way things intertwine around each other. Here’s the conversation I had with myself after reading this challenge:

 

View from NYS Library

-Travel. However, most of our trips center around genealogy or some aspect of historical encounters. My latest trip was to a genealogy meeting and the New York State Library and Archives. The next trip will be seeing some of the countryside though. Yeah, some of the countryside as you can see from the interstate, as we don’t have much time before we need to be in Alabama to, you guessed it IGHR, a genealogy institute.

-Crafts. I enjoy working on crafts, especially sewing. I’m working on a cross-stitch project right now. The subject? Oh, well, it’s historic buildings from Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts that we visited a couple years ago. That’s not research, so the historical doesn’t count right? I have a couple sewing projects that I need to get to soon! What are they? Well, one’s an organizer for the car that will help us on our trip to Alabama… and well, the other, is um a cover for a medal for the Sons of the American Revolution so they can do an unveiling.

Drayton Hall, a previous cross-stitch project

-Reading. But aren’t most of the books you read either about genealogy, history or some aspect of technology that helps you with this blog?

-Cooking. I enjoy cooking and collecting recipes. Of course, most of my cooking is reminiscent of what my ancestors cooked or regional cooking from areas that we’ve traveled to on genealogy.

So there you have it. I have hobbies besides genealogy and historical research. However, I am such a nerd about those two areas that everything else manages to revolve around it in some way. Is this good or bad? I don’t know, but I’m enjoying myself!

Education Opportunities

For those that are looking for more educational opportunities, here are three onsite institutes to look into:

1-the Genealogical Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIPitt) registration opens today:
There are two different weeks of instruction on various courses in July.

2-A scholarship is available for GenFed. This is the week long institute in Washington D.C. on federal records.


3-Registration is still open for IGHR at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama in June.
Three courses have wait lists, but the other courses are still available for registration. Also, this is the last year at Samford before moving to Athens, Georgia, so if you always wanted to visit this campus, now is the time!

IGHR 2016 Registered!

It’s that time of year again. Registration for IGHR opened at 11:00 am today. It is the last time it will be on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Next year it will be at the University of Georgia in Athens.

Samford University

My husband and I will be going again this year. I’m registered for Course 9. Advanced Library Research: Law Libraries & Government Documents course and Rich is registered for Course 3. Advanced Methodology & Evidence Analysis. We are certainly looking forward to our trip in June! It will be a great week of fun and learning. I've heard that Course 3 was full about half an hour after it's registration opened!

I’ve got our trip mapped out already. Although it’s a day and half of hard driving both to and from, we’d rather do that than spend a day flying there. I have a hatred of flying and trying to negotiate large, crowded airports and Rich isn’t far behind in his dislike. First all the hassles of packing to get everything on a plane and then there is no direct flight to anywhere we’d want to go from Syracuse. It’s either a run from one end of the airport to another to barely catch the connecting flight or hours upon hours in sitting in uncomfortable seats. Yes, we are definitely driving. I take after my father in that miles on the highway are perfectly fine.

I’m glad that I’ve got everything mapped out and ready to go already. Over the weekend I called the hotels to make reservations. We’re not staying in the one on the way home that I had originally planned; they were already booked up when I called! I was very surprised as it is a few miles off the interstate in an area with not much around it. There must be a festival or something going on in that town- we found a different one at the next exit.

All the planning and logistics that go into a trip... I learned some of this from my parents when we traveled when I was a kid. However, it was very different for us back in the 70s and early 80s. Then, we planned our route, but didn’t ever worry, or really need to about overnight accommodations. A long day on the road like these would start coming to an end when my Dad would say from behind the wheel, “Kiddo, I’m getting tired, find me a campground.” I’d grab the camping book and start looking to see what campgrounds were available for a reasonable price at the next exit or two and then read out the information to my parents. We’d pull in and there would be no problem getting a site for the night. Soon Mom was preparing a supper in the camper and later we climbed into our own beds for the night. Now, from what I’ve heard, you’ve got to book a campsite weeks or even months in advance and they’re a lot more expensive accordingly. As we don’t own a camper or have one available to borrow, I have not looked into what this would involve today.

A Florida campsite February 1975

Instead, I have our maps ready-- we do it the old-fashioned way, no GPS. Make a reservation for a hotel along the way; pile everything into the car and go. A cooler for some snacks and stop to eat along the way. So, we’re ready and in June our car will be once again Alabama bound.