Entries tagged as ‘genealogy’
In this Monday’s Link Roundup, STORY in Photography is a fascinating look into the challenges of telling a story in a single photograph. And if you’re a nut about fonts, don’t miss Graphic Content | A Fount of Fonts.
- 101 Best Genealogy Websites of 2010. “From state vital records and censuses to historical books and immigration data, this year’s 101 Best Websites list features tools that can bust your brick walls — but not your budget.”
- STORY in Photography. “An understanding of the elements of story and how they can be incorporated into your images will make stronger images…Four aspects of storytelling come to mind as I consider the unique challenges of storytelling within the confines of a single photographic frame; themes that tie the image to our deeper, more universal human experience; conflict; mystery; and the relationships between the characters.”
- Graphic Content | A Fount of Fonts. “Tipoteca Italiana is a private foundation that was founded in 1995 to advance printing knowledge and preserve venerable printing technologies. Its founder, Silvio Antiga, a 65-year-old printer who owns a printing firm in the Veneto region, has collected more than 20 vintage presses and typesetting machines, along with hundreds of wood and metal type “fonts.” The smartly designed, modern museum includes a working print shop, which employs master craftsmen who hand-set type and pull proofs. It is open to the public — more than 8,000 people visit each year — and has become a mecca for designers and students from all over the world.” [Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]
- U.S. public libraries: We lose them at our peril. “The U.S. is beginning an interesting experiment in democracy: We’re cutting public library funds, shrinking our public and school libraries, and in some places, shutting them altogether…The school libraries and public libraries in which we’ve invested decades and even centuries of resources will disappear unless we fight for them. Those in cities that haven’t preserved their libraries, those less fortunate and baffled by technology, and our children will be the first to suffer. But sooner or later, we’ll all feel the loss as one of the most effective levelers of privilege and avenues of reinvention — one of the great engines of democracy — begins to disappear.” [Thanks to cj madigan of Shoebox Stories for alerting me to this item.]
- Step-by-Step Guide to Oral History. “Your stories and the stories of the people around you are unique, valuable treasures for your family and your community. You and your family members can preserve unwritten family history using oral history techniques…As a door into the world of oral history, these pages give basic suggestions for collecting and preserving the valuable oral treasures around you, to enrich you and future generations.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: best genealogy websites, book publishing, Fonts, genealogy, George Carlin, Graphics, life story, link roundup, oral history guide, Photos, U.S. Public Libraries
Another Monday and a roundup of some of my favorite links. If you love design as much as I do, don’t miss An industry in re-covery. It looks at how good design may yet save the printed book from the onslaught of e-books. Still uncertain what you should be charging for your work? For some helpful tips, take a look at How Should Freelance Writers Determine What Price to Charge?
- Listening to History. “Developed organically in a series of improvisatory workshops, based on real people in a real place over a 90-year period, and conceived without a conventional script, The Tosca Project presented a particularly complex challenge. What kind of information would be most helpful to the process? Where could we find it? How could we make it accessible to the cast and creators?”
- How Should Freelance Writers Determine What Price to Charge? “If you’re a freelance writer (or if you hire freelance writers), then you may have a difficult time determining what the market price for writing is. Of course, your lowballing client would have you believe that nearly all writers work for practically nothing at all–but, don’t you believe them.”
- An industry in re-covery. “To give new life to old titles, publishers are turning to what e-books can’t offer yet: great design.”
- And Now, the Tricky Part: Naming Your Business. “As many entrepreneurs can attest, deciding on a name for a new business is no easy task. One with pizzazz can set a new company apart; one that misses the mark can make a burgeoning start-up fall flat.The problem, marketing and branding experts agree, is that there is no magic bullet to picking the best name.” [Thanks to Diane Dassow of Binding Legacies for alerting me to this item.]
- Exploring My America. “We’re asking engaging, adventurous people to hit the road for a week and tell their story and the stories of the people they meet. Does that sound like you? The program will run from July 11 through August 28, 2010. Over the course of the program, we’ll launch three road trip teams on different routes each week. Each team’s mission is to interact with people along their assigned route, capture interesting stories of unique personalities and places throughout their journey, and upload their stories to the program website.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Life stories, How to, link roundup, genealogy, freelance writers, naming your business, determining price, exploring America
This Monday’s Link Roundup will warm the hearts of “nappers”. If you’re like me, a nap is quite delicious. In fact, I consider myself an expert napper. Be sure to check out A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. Apparently, I’m getting smarter by the minute!
- The Importance of Storytelling in Marketing. “A story can be a really powerful way of illustrating the value of you product and in my experience is often the way that your prospects and customers will explain what you do to others.”
- A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. “New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.”
- YourNextRead Tells You What Book You Should Read Next. “Tell YourNextRead what book you just finished—and enjoyed!—and it will generate a web of eight related books. You can click on any of the books to learn more about it which will, in turn, generate a new web that’s based on that book. Alternatively you can use the thumbs up/down buttons to agree or disagree with the suggestions that YourNextRead gives you.”
- Thomas Edison – In His Own Words. “On October 21, 1929, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover shared a stage in Schenectady, New York. Earlier in the evening, Albert Einstein had joined them via a recording made in Berlin, Germany and then sent to Schenectady for the occasion. The evening’s words were recorded on a device called a pallophotophone. Edison died two years later. The recordings were one of the few occasions in which Edison’s voice was ever recorded and possibly the last such recording every made of his voice.”
- Top Ten Most Popular Online Genealogy Magazines. “This list was prepared by Alexa. Alexa is the world’s leading company for measuring internet traffic. The company monitors the web traffic of millions of Internet sources, including thousands of genealogy sites. Web traffic is objectively categorized based on the actual number of visitors to each web site. From these Internet traffic statistics, Alexa maintains a list of the most popular online genealogy magazines.”
- Resources for Writing Memoir.“Last week I tweeted this advice on writing memoir: “Please don’t submit your memoir until you’ve read 20 good memoirs and 5 books on writing memoir – and learned from them…After my tweet, many people asked me for recommendations, so here they are.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: genealogy, link roundup, Marketing, memoir, midday nap, Resources, storytelling, Thomas Edison
**Don’t forget to vote on my poll: How long have you been a personal historian? Click here to vote.**
Monday’s Link Roundup this week has items to appeal to both your heart and your head. For your heart be sure to check-out Pittsburgher has been searching for the woman who helped raise him. And for your head you’ll want to read Two Rules for a Successful Presentation.
- Terkel Coming Online. “If someone was an important figure in American culture in the 20th century, chances are he or she was interviewed by Studs Terkel…Under a deal signed Monday between the Chicago History Museum and the Library of Congress, tapes of those interviews will be digitally preserved and given new life online.”
- Historical Canadian Census, 1851 -1916 Fully Indexed and Searchable. “The Canadian Census Collection represents the first time ever that the 1851/2, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1906, 1911 and 1916 censuses will be fully searchable online and fully indexed in one place. Now people across Canada and around the world can research their Canadian roots faster and easier than ever before.”
- Two Rules for a Successful Presentation. “Most presentations go bad because the presenter didn’t prepare well enough in two ways. In fact, so important are these two classic errors that I’m going to elevate them to The Two Rules for Preparing a Successful Presentation.”
- How to Get a Decorative Family Tree Poster. “So you’ve gathered a few generations’ worth of names and dates, and now you want to display your family tree on your wall. Nowadays you have more options than ever—from free to pricey and do-it-yourself to full-service—for creating a decorative family tree poster. Here are some that we’ve come across:”
- Who Owns Your Family History Story? “I am not talking about copyrights but rather, how much of your family story belongs to you? How much should you tell? What stories should remain unwritten?”
- Encounters with the past. “The past is not as long ago as we think, says Stuart Lutz. Such major events as Amelia Earhart’s flying career or the disastrous General Slocum fire of 1904 seem impossibly remote to us moderns…Lutz has met those people. He’s the author of “The Last Leaf: Voices of History’s Last-Known Survivors,” an oral history of 39 people who were the last survivor or eyewitness of historical events.”
- For 13 years, Pittsburgher has been searching for the woman who helped raise him. “Joe was only 5 when Helen left her employment with the family, but she’s alive in his memory. Like Miss Skeeter, the young white woman in The New York Times best-seller “The Help” who yearned to reconnect with the black maid who had raised her, Joe longed to find Helen. “I have this enormous emotional feeling about how important she was to me. She was the font of everything wonderful in my life,” he said. So, 13 years ago, from his home in Olympia, Wash., Joe began searching for her.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family tree, genealogy, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, searchable historical Canadian census, Studs Terkel, successful presentations
Another Monday and I have more great links for you. One of my favorites is Castaway. Here are five incredible stories, each centering on a message in a bottle. Don’t miss it! For the frugal, be sure to check out Changing Font To Save Ink.
- Legal Issues Affecting Writers. [Live Webinar $49; April 15th at 1:00 pm Eastern; duration: 75 minutes.] “Learn about the legal basics of concern to both fiction and nonfiction writers, and how to safely prepare and protect your work while not treading on the copyright or privacy rights of others. This session will also discuss how to get the most out of your publishing contract, for both articles and books.” [Thanks to Nancy Heifferon, APH Marketing Director for alerting me to this item.]
- Changing Font To Save Ink. “A Wisconsin university has found a new way to cut costs with e-mail — by changing the font. The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay has switched the default font on its e-mail system from Arial to Century Gothic. The university says the change sounds minor, but it will save money on printer ink when students print out e-mails in the new font.”
- bringing order to digital photo collections. “As more of our photographic images reside in the virtual world, we have not yet developed new systems for keeping track of them. I worry that a generation or more of photographic images will be lost. Here are two books that offer a new system for the digital era.”
- Making Web Video That Sells: eBook Review. “With the ever expanding growth of high speed internet connections, video is cropping up on most major websites more and more. Whether you are informing potential purchasers with a screencast or hoping to direct the next viral experience, video is something that most designers and developers should have at least a basic understanding of.”
- Memoir rooted in cherished, storied objects. “We look to moor our identities in things of the past,” says Seth C. Bruggeman, who teaches public history at Temple University. “We define who we are by the objects we choose to value,” Bruggeman says. “We have an almost religious belief in the power of objects to convey meaning.”
- Cast Away: 5 Amazing Stories of Messages in Bottles. “Whenever a message in a bottle is discovered on a beach or floating in the ocean, it feels like something out of a fairy tale. The idea that two people have made a connection that mathematics would say is virtually impossible gives us hope that life is more than a series of random events. Here are five stories of the almost unbelievable connections these messages have brought about.” [Thanks to Larry Lehmer of Passing It On for alerting me to this item.]
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family stories, genealogy, How to, legal issues, life story, link roundup, memoir, web video, writers
In this Monday’s Link Roundup I highly recommend Eulogy for Robert B. Parker. Written by his son, it is a wonderful illustration of the ability to capture the essence of a person in a few well crafted words. And if you’re like me and need solitude from time to time, be sure to read the lost art of solitude.
- Genealogical Tourism Redefining Leisure Travel Market. “For the work-weary, the word “vacation” may conjure images of leisurely, carefree days at the beach sipping umbrella drinks. But according to published research by a University of Illinois expert in tourism and recreation, genealogical tourism is one of the fastest growing markets in vacation travel because it represents a conscious shift away from relaxation and into the realm of personal enrichment and fulfillment.” [ Thanks to Dear Myrtle for alerting me to this item. ]
- Eulogy for Robert B. Parker by his son, David. This was read aloud at Robert B. Parker’s memorial service. “I met my father in 1959 though I don’t remember our first moments together. Over the years, I thought I’d come to know him quite well, but I never really understood–until these last weeks–that he was really three different men.”
- Our First Legacy: Names…Our Way Home. “Names function as a compass connecting us to our families and communities from generation to generation. Stories about how and why we were given our names give substance and significance to our names.”
- Procrastination: Feeling overwhelmed, helpless and ready to run away. “For the size of the wave, it’s surprising how it catches us by surprise. You’d think we’d see it coming. Yet, each time we sit down to begin a difficult task that we’d rather avoid, here it comes – a huge tidal wave of negative emotions that overwhelms us. We feel incompetent. We feel like an impostor. We want to run away.”
- Five Best Offline Backup Tools. “Online backup has many benefits—safety from local catastrophe, storage on professionally maintained servers, etc.—but economy, control, and 100% guaranteed privacy aren’t among them. Check out these five popular tools for making safe and sound local backups.”
- the lost art of solitude. “Solitude is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness, and while I don’t bemoan the beauty of this global community, I do think there’s a need to step back from it on a regular basis.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Life stories, legacy, link roundup, genealogy, Robert B. Parker, solitude, offline backup tools
This Monday’s Link Roundup is a marvelous mix. Make sure to check out the teleclass, workflow: key to a profitable personal history business by cj Madigan. For those of you looking for another personal history product to offer, take a look at Storyteller illustrates the arc of people’s lives who are no longer able to speak. There are some great business tips to be found in What a flight attendant taught me about business. Enjoy!
- workflow: key to a profitable personal history business. A teleclass. April 28, 2010. “How, exactly, do you get from a completed manuscript in Word to a printed and bound book? There’s more to it than just “giving your Word file to the printer”. This teleclass addresses that question for writers, editors, graphic designers, personal historians and others involved in producing privately published books, whether they do the work themselves or subcontract the various services involved.”
- Storyteller illustrates the arc of people’s lives who are no longer able to speak. “Blanchard, 57, creates what she calls “I Am Stories” for the elderly who have lost their ability to speak and express themselves … About four years ago, Blanchard wrote out a simple, one-page story about her mother, Lois Eades, who lives at St. Peter Villa, and taped it to the wall in her mom’s room. She hoped that people coming in to care for her mother would read it and learn something they hadn’t known before…Blanchard eventually typed up her mother’s story, framed and matted it, along with a photograph, and hung it in her mother’s room. Now she offers the same service to others for $150.”
- When Was the Last Time You Told Your Story? “As I write in the epigraph to The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, writing is “truly a tool of wizards, witches and sorcerers.” It’s through the alchemy of our stories, lived authentically and shared truthfully, that all worlds change, beginning with our own.”
- What a flight attendant taught me about business. “Over the past few years I have been traveling on airplanes a lot. So much that I started to pay attention to the flight attendants because although they are taken for granted, they are actually pretty smart. Here is what you can learn about business from them:”
- The Rainbow Tree Genealogy Becoming Important for Gays. “Should there ever be some gay, lesbian or transgender descendant from one of my many cousins in the future, I want them to look at our family tree and see that they are not alone. I want them to take pride in our shared history and feel that they are loved, included and valid. Gays and Lesbians have been systematically deleted from history for far too long and it’s time we started owning our rightful place in the records of our families.”
- Play gives survivors a chance to say ‘Hear Us!’ “Every playwright strives for verisimilitude, but that’s something Toby Armour didn’t have to worry about with “Hear Us!” The plain truths, the biting reactions and the raw emotions the East Haven writer captures are the verbatim words from survivors who have suffered the loss of a relative or friend through murder — people from in and around the Greater New Haven area whose stories we may have seen in headlines.”
- Blogging Fears and How to Overcome Them for Good – Part 1. “I asked you guys to spill your guts about what your blogging fears were, and you totally came through. Not everyone would be willing to say what they’re afraid of about blogging. But enough of you were brave enough to give me eleven different blogging fears, which gives me a lot of great material to work with to create a super-helpful post for you.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: business tips, family stories, Gays, genealogy, Lesbians, Life stories, link roundup, storytelling
My vote for the most unusual item in this Monday’s Link Roundup is the “wireless tombstone”. But if you’re looking for more substance, don’t miss Pat McNees’s comprehensive article on the beneficial effects of legacy work. I’ll admit to a bias, I was one of the people Pat interviewed for the piece.
- Kill Busywork: The One Skill to Focus On What Matters. “Imagine everything you do could fall into one of three buckets: 1. Bad Work. 2. Good Work. 3. Great Work. I’m not talking about the quality of the work you deliver – I’ve no doubt that’s fine. I’m talking about the meaning the work has for you and the impact it makes. Let me explain.”
- New App Integrates Storytelling with Social Media. “Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you type or paste in a whole story and then with a click of a button snip up the story either by line or by punctuation — periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Then you choose a frequency for snips of the story to appear as status updates — daily or every two days.”
- Die-Fi: Wireless Tombstones. “[An]Arizona company Objecs announced today that it has developed “enhanced memorial products” that add Near Field Communications tags to cemetery markers, which allow text and photos to be “embedded” in a headstone and retrieved whenever a cell phone is touched against its surface.”
- How to Write Your Healing Story: Interview with Linda Joy Myers. “In the latest Heart and Craft of Life Writing podcast, Linda Joy explains how writing literary memoir and integrating the story arc of our lives can lead to much deeper levels of insight than we can ever get from a pile of disconnected stories. In this wide ranging conversation she also talks about using our words, our stories, to create art.”
- Fab Forty. “Votes are in for the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs. Come with us into a wonderful online world of family history news, research tips, encouragement and more.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: benefits, busywork, genealogy, healing, Life stories, link roundup, oral history
In honor of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, this Monday’s Link Roundup has some Canadian content. The Memory Project aims to collect the stories of WWII veterans and make them available online. John Babcock, the last of the Canadian WWI veterans, died this past week. The CBC article, John Babcock and the legacy of the ordinary soldier, is about Babcock being a link in the long history of soldiering.
- The Memory Project: Stories of the Second World War. “This nationwide bilingual project will create a record of Canada’s participation in the Second World War as seen through the eyes of thousands of veterans. The Memory Project will provide every living Second World War veteran with the opportunity to share their memories through oral interviews and digitized artefacts and memorabilia. These stories and artefacts will be available on this site for teachers, students and the general public.”
- 2010 National Genealogical Society Family History Conference. “The 2010 NGS Family History Conference will be held at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mark your calendars for 28 April–1 May 2010. Whether your family helped settle the nation, migrated across the country, stayed in the same place, or recently arrived in America, this conference has much to offer. The family history resources in Salt Lake City, Utah, will provide a depth and breadth to your research. The Family History Library has an extensive collection of international records. A major focus of the conference will be increasing research skills in foreign countries.”
- Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing in 2010. “Here is a list of 100 blogs that will help you improve your writing by providing inspiration, motivation, creativity and new techniques from experts, freelancers, and editors from every genre.”
- 5 Cool Books for Creative People. “It’s time once more for 5 Cool Things. This week, it’s all about books, cool books, of course. Each one is a cool book for creative people. So, if it’s cool with you, I’ll begin.”
- John Babcock and the legacy of the ordinary soldier. “There is a long chain of links to wars of the past, a chain that can go back centuries — the legionary, the bowman, the Tommy, the grunt — and links ordinary soldiers to the beginning of history. John Babcock, who died Feb. 18, 2010, the last Canadian veteran of the First World War, was just such a link.”
- What Is Forensic Genealogy? “Forensic scientists and genealogists share the same goal–to find out who was who, and who did what and when. In explaining how to analyze photographs, to mine databases, and to use DNA analysis to reveal family history, Forensic Genealogy emphasizes the creative parts of an investigation over the mechanics.”
- Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted. “An Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling appears to have an impact on all sorts of things, including genealogy information.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: forensic genealogy, genealogy, John Babcock, Life stories, link roundup, oral history, Tips, Writing, WWII
In a previous article, How to Make Your Life Story Workshop Memorable, I showed the photo below from my personal collection.
from Dan Curtis photo collection
I suggested that an interesting workshop exercise would be to make copies of this photo, hand them out to the participants, and then have them write what they thought was the story behind the photo. After people shared stories, I’d reveal the actual story. I haven’t yet used this exercise but for those of you who read last week’s post and are curious to know the real story, here it is.
The man second from the right in the group is my father. It was 1941 and he was sailing from England back to Canada on a merchant ship, the Port Freemantle. He was a radio operator and navigator with the Ferry Command. The men surrounding him were fellow airmen who had recently flown bombers to England from Canada as part of the war effort. What I find interesting is how formally the men are dressed with their ties and jackets. You wouldn’t see that today!
All of this is a way of introducing you to the wonderful world of photo identification. This is fascinating and highly skilled work and no one does it better than Maureen Taylor, also known as The Photo Detective. The Wall Street Journal has called her “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective”. If you attended last year’s Association of Personal Historians conference, you would have had the privilege of hearing and meeting Maureen in person. If you’re not familiar with her work, check out her blog and her articles in Family Tree Magazine. If you have an old photo whose history is long lost, you can send your mystery photo to Maureen and for a fee she’ll work on identifying it.
For those of you who want to do it yourself, here are some resources to get you started.
***Be sure not to miss Cyndi’s List: Photographs and Memories. It’s an amazing collection of sites that will keep you busy for a long, long time!***
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Categories: Ancestors · How to · Personal historian · Photos · Resources · Tips
Tagged: Ancestors, genealogy, How to, Maureen Taylor, photo identification, Resources, Tips
