Tuesday, March 25, 2014

March’s Two Worthwhile Presentations

This month we were lucky to have two presentations by Renée Petersen, TCGS Monthly Bulletin Editor and the Director of the Kennewick Stake Family History Center.

At our general meeting, Renée showed us how we can enjoy quality education right in our homes. She explained that webinars and podcasts are available all over the internet, most of them for free. These webinars and podcasts generally are created by professional genealogists who tackle a different topic each month in the case of podcasts. One of the best known places to enjoy webinars is at Legacy Family Tree.

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  The next opportunity we had to enjoy learning from Renée was the next Wednesday where she introduced us to the Family History Center Portals: subscription databases that are free to use at our local family history centers. Ancestry.com is amongst those databases and probably the most well-known; the others include 19th Century British Library Newspaper Digital Archive, Alexander Street Press--The American Civil War, Find My Past, Fold3, Godfrey Memorial Library, Historic Maps, Paper Trail and more.

It was obvious that Renée had spent a good amount of time reviewing the databases before her presentation because she was well-informed about the databases and excited by the amount of information she had found and that got us excited too.

Thanks to Renée for a great introduction to the Family History Center Portals and to the Richland Family History Center for allowing us to use the Computer Hall for our hands-on classes.