What's Your Story?

BYUtv - What's Your Story?: We All Have A Story: The Process This is a great new program showing on BYUtv about storytelling, with master storyteller, Donald Davis.  The show takes you to one of Donald's workshops where everyday people discover their own stories, and how to tell them.

RootsTech

I'm having a great time working the Ancestry.com booth at RootsTech.  There are over 3000 attendees, they say, making this one of the largest genealogy conferences ever, if not the largest.  Meeting people and helping them find their ancestors is the greatest feeling.  The first man I assisted said, "If I get nothing else out of this conference other than what you have just helped me with, this whole thing will have been worth it."  I live for that!

Our booth is right across the aisle from FamilySearch, so I have had a chance to see many old friends and colleagues, which has been awesome.  So many great people!

Hulu - Who Do You Think You Are?: Vanessa Williams - Watch the full episode now.

Hulu - Who Do You Think You Are?: Vanessa Williams - Watch the full episode now. If you missed it last night, you can catch it on Hulu, as well as NBC.com.

GeneaBloggers - Over 1,500 genealogy blogs!

Geneabloggers is a listing of over 1,500 genealogy blogs. It amazes me that there are so many genealogists out there with so much to say. I am only a sometime blogger on family history, so I am not on the list. I'm afraid if I was, I might be expected to blog daily, and I don't have enough time or intelligent things to say to do that. Kudos to the many bloggers who do it, and who provide helpful and useful information to thousands of people every day. I have found many useful tips and interesting insights as I have browsed the family history blogs. Some are more helpful than others, of course, but I do think that genealogy bloggers, on the whole, are a cut above the blogosphere norm, because they are in it primarily to help others, rather than to merely tout themselves in what 0ften tends to be a medium for vanity publication.

Provo Tabernacle Inside

Heartbreaking to see it like this...

http://provomayor.blogspot.com/2010/12/provo-tabernacle-inside.html

Community Gathering to Remember the Provo Tabernacle

A community gathering to remember the Provo Tabernacle is being held today (Sunday) at 7 p.m. at the UCCU Events Center at Utah Valley University, 800 W. University Pkwy., Orem. Admission is free. The program will include a slide show of tabernacle photographs, remarks by Provo Mayor John Curtis and other community leaders. The Millenium Choral Society will perform Lex de Azevedo's Gloria: the Life of Christ, Part I, the Nativity. I wish I could go to this, but I will be performing at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square tonight with the Mapleton Chorale.

Historic Provo Tabernacle Lost

I am very emotional right now about the tragic burning of the historic Provo Tabernacle. I have performed there several times, my mother-in-law performed there for years in the Utah Valley Symphony. I have attended conferences and heard prophets speak there, as have my ancestors. It has been one of Provo's greatest landmarks, a beautiful edifice, a gathering place for the community, and a sacred place for more than 110 years. Losing it feels like a death in the family. Now I can only hope that we as a community can find a way to restore it.

Forensic Linguistics for Genealogy

Fascinating interview with Dr. Robert Leonard on Forensic Linguistics, a tool for fighting crime that may also serve to break through brick walls in genealogy. Genealogy Gems Podcast - Episode 89 - Forensic Linguistics for Genealogy.

Czech Archives to Digitize Vital Records

Nu? What's New?, an e-newsletter published biweekly by Avotaynu, Inc. reported the following in their November 28, 2010 edition:


Czech Archives to Digitize Vital Records
It was reported on JewishGen that the Czech National Archives is digitizing their collection of vital records. It is expected that the registers of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia—births, deaths and marriages—will be available online next year. 


This is an exciting development, both for persons with Jewish heritage that traces through the Czech Republic and for Czech family history research in general. For many years, the Czech archives were resistant to efforts to microfilm or digitize their records.  It is encouraging to see that they are working on their own digitization.  Hopefully, this effort will extend to the records of other religious denominations.

Smithsonian Collections Blog: What It's Like to Be a Cataloger

Smithsonian Collections Blog: What It's Like to Be a Cataloger. I came across this blog post today. It brought back fond memories of my years as a cataloger at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.