Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Local Genealogical Society Workshop

I've been pretty sick over the past couple of weeks so I haven't been able to get as much done as I had hoped. Fortunately, I started feeling a little better over this past weekend and was able to attend my local genealogical society's annual workshop (put on by the Lake County, IL Genealogical Society). The keynote speaker was Elissa Scalise Powell, CG. Most of us who read the APG and TGF email lists know of her work primarily with PA research. Her lectures on Saturday were "Hiding Behind Their Skirts: Finding Women in Records", "Thinking Outside the Index: Online Search Techniques", "Sailing into the Sunset: Tips for Finding Your Ancestors on Passenger Lists" and "Rubik's Cube Genealogy: A New Twist on Your Old Data". I think the Rubik's Cube and the Passenger List lectures were probably my favorites of the day, although the "...Women in Records" lecture was also helpful to help get things in perspective for my own searches. All of the lectures included both general information and a bibliography to enable future research. Several of the sources listed in the various lecture bibliographies were new to me so I'll be getting some of those up on the link list soon. This was the first time I've seen Elissa speak and I hope to be able to attend other lectures in the future.