Timely Tips for Today

 

Tips for Today: 

(These come from Joe Grandinetti’s article in the Dec/Jan 2021 issue of InternetGENEAOGY.)

Of course, all your ancestors were law-abiding sorts. But what if they were not?  If you’ve not fully documented your roguish relatives, then you might want to look at Ancestry’s worldwide collection of court, governmental and criminal records.  Or click to Cyndi’s List and then the category of Prisons, Prisoners & Outlaws (501 links as of Oct 2020).

“We’re no longer on our own deserted islands of research; the internet has become a connective landmass for us. As I suspect many of your do, I use social media (Facebook) for genealogical purposes via liking/following groups dealing with my specific areas of interest. It’s a convenient platform for education and information exchange. Expand on this by viewing or joining roots-themed blogs.”

Then Joe posts these blogs as some of  his favorites:

·        Eastman’s Online Genealogical Newsletter,  https://eogn.com

·        FamilySearch blog, www.familysearch.orgblog/en

·        Megan Smolenyak’s blog,  www.megansmolenyak.com/blog

·        American Ancestors blog (New England Historic Genealogical Society), https://vitabrevis.amcericanancestors.org

·        Blaine Bettinger’s DNA-focused blog, https://thegeneticgenealogist.com

·        Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings blog,  www.geneamusings.com

Footnote's Tip of the Month Video: Using Wildcard Searches

Footnote.com is now offering Tip of the Month videos. March's video is Using Wildcard Searches. Please note: As with all online videos, you need a high-speed internet connection (not dial-up) and speakers or headphones to view and hear this properly.

Genea-Google-ology

Google has wonderful bells and whistles that are of immense value to us "geneahistorians." I like to call them Genea-Google-ology Tools! Have you tried Google Alerts? You can be alerted with a message sent to your e-mail inbox every time your surname of interest (or other keyword or phrase) shows up on the Internet!

For instance, every time any of the words midkiff, sweers, tuinstra, valk, or westaby show up online, I get a handy-dandy e-mail letting me know, along with a link to that site. The above surnames are some of the more unusual ones in my husband's and my ancestries. You can also choose a phrase (put your search terms within quotation marks) or a combination of words (use the plus [+] key). I have genealogy+michigan as another alert, which searches for both words (not necessarily together) on a website or blog. You can control where your results come from, too: news, blogs, web, groups, or comprehensive (all).

You can also tweak your alerts a bit, by narrowing your results using the minus ( - ) key. Using only tuinstra as a search term, I was getting links to dozens of articles written by well-known journalist Fons Tuinstra, stationed in China. I changed my alert to tuinstra -fons to get better hits. I was also getting a lot of hits for a Joost Valk that did not apply to my genealogy, so again, I made a change to valk -joost. I still get some unconnected hits, but they have decreased in volume considerably.

"So how do I set up Google Alerts for myself?" you may be asking. Go here to begin. As far as I can tell, you do not need a Google account or Gmail address to set up an alert. The process is fairly simple, and once you sign up, you should start receiving alerts soon. As a matter of fact, you can control how frequently you receive these alerts, too: once a day, as it happens, or once a week. And you can edit your alerts at any time!

(P.S. Thanks to Ruby for telling me about this, many months ago!)