Meeting 14 Nov 2009

Today the Honolulu County Genealogical Society meeting focused on using Ancestry.com and search strategies.  Bobby Stevens led the discussion using wireless internet connection to illustrate to website.

Interestingly the San Diego Genealogical Society http://sandiegogenealogy.blogspot.com/ hosted their Ancestry.com Family History Seminar at a local San Diego hotel, with three Ancestry.com staff people speaking.  Randy Seaver, a noted and prolific blogger has done a terrific job summerizing their seminar and publishing it in his blog "Genea-Musings" today at http://www.geneamusings.com/  Please go to his blog to read all the details and it will serve to amplify and remind everyone of some of the things we also talked about here in Hawaii.  Areas of interest in learning about Ancestry.com and it's changes which Randy covered were:

1.  The Best Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com

2.  Tapping into the Ancestry and Rootsweb Community

3.  The Ancestry World Archives Project

4.  Publishing and Printing Using "My Canvas" 

We had quite a discussion about Ancestry  Member Trees and I'll quote one paragraph from Randy Seaver's blog that describe what he noted:  "Ancestry Member Trees were described and demonstrated in some detail, noting that any registered person can have a Member Tree (either Public or Private) on Ancestry.com. These trees can be input one person at a time or a GEDCOM file, created by a software program, can be uploaded to Ancestry. One of the questions was about how long the Member Tree would be on the site, and the answer was "forever," even if the submitter ends their subscription or dies, unless the user deletes the tree. A non-subscriber cannot attach records from Ancestry.com databases to their tree, but they can upload images to their own tree, and can search Public Member Trees. The ability of a user to upload a tree directly from Family Tree Maker 2010, or download a tree directly to Family Tree Maker 2010, or to upload a GEDCOM file from another software program, and to download a GEDCOM file from Ancestry.com for any software program, was described. Where should a user keep their "master" file? Suzanne keeps hers on her computer, not online on Ancestry.com." 

The place to find where free archieved "Webinars" that Ancestry.com offers is on their "Learning Center" tab, under "Online Classes"  The last two online classes, or web-seminars were:  "Best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com" from Oct 14th, and  "Getting Started on Ancestry.com" from Oct 7th, 2009.  There are plenty of other very interesting hour-long "webinars" available to view anytime from the convenience of sitting in front of your home computer.  Check it out.

We welcomed two new members today, Jeannie and Ben Sills (see photo).  They have an Ancestry Member Tree and bring a wealth of experience on maintaining a family tree online.  In addition they are MacIntosh  computer users.

Thanks to Lenore Hansen and Donna Wendt for the refreshments.

Our meeting for December will be the Holiday Party Buffet at the Hickam Air Force Base Officer's Club on December 6th, starting at 10 am. Cost is $20.  Be sure to bring a $10 gift to exchange to be in on all the fun.  At times we have been able to see submarines go in or out of Pearl Harbor while at the party. Contact Jim Deutch if you plan to attend.