Saturday Serendipity (October 21, 2017)

After a two week absence due to family matters, Saturday Serendipity returns this week with a few recommendations for reading this weekend  .  .  .

1.  Heather Rojo of Nutfield Genealogy blog recently posted a very nice photo travelogue series about a trip along the Pilgrim Trail in Europe. You can see Part 6 here and get links for the previous postings.

     And as a reminder, Heather will once again be publishing contributions to her Honor Roll Project this Veterans Day.  If you are not familiar with this wonderful project, you can read more about it here. In a nutshell, Heather conceived the idea of having bloggers post photos of war memorials with transcriptions of all the names inscribed on them. Once included in the Honor Roll database, this creates a searchable database for researchers to locate ancestors and relatives that served in various wars and conflicts. I encourage you to visit the Honor Roll website to see if a memorial near you (or one you have visited and photographed) has been transcribed and contributed; if not I encourage you to consider participating next month.           

2.  As readers of this blog know, I am a user of Family Tree Maker (FTM) in conjunction with my trees on Ancestry. I am particularly drawn to the use of FTM because its sync feature allows me to keep all my work from Ancestry on my computer to function as a back-up and against the possibility (however remote) of some momentary or even more prolonged problem with my trees that otherwise exist in the Ancestry cloud.  I have periodically checked in at the blog of H.R. "Russ" Worthington, Family Tree Maker User. Russ is what might be called an FTM "power user" and if I recall correctly he was set up at last April's NERGC vendors hall frequently presenting about the new FTM 2017 by MacKiev Software and answering questions about the software.  If you are an FTM user -- or considering becoming one -- I recommend you bookmark Russ's blog and check in regularly. His most recent post (which is accessed directly at the link above until he adds a new post) is about sync times using FTM 2017.    

3.  Diane Boumenot of One Rhode Island Family blog has a post that involves the homes of some of her Ballou ancestors and relatives in Rhode Island, but it is really about the exhibit by Lori Melucci at the Blackstone Valley Historical Society that combines newly obtained historic photographs with published works containing drawings and etchings of Ballou properties, with historic maps to present a wonderful visual preservation project of times, places, and people long departed.  It is worth the read and a trip to the link to the exhibit show online even if you have no connection to Rhode Island or the Ballou family! You can access the post here and get the link to the exhibit.            
        
4.  Janine Adams of Organize Your Family History blog has an interesting piece about her methods of "going paperless" with her genealogy documents.  You can read her most recent post on the subject here and get a link to her previous discussion of her approach last March.    

5.  Ever heard of "dostadning?" Neither had I until NEHGS mentioned it this week in The Weekly Genealogist.  Long-time readers of this blog will recall that I am a self-confessed Pack Rat (see https://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2013/09/pack-rat-solutions-financial-advisors.html and especially see https://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-genealogical-artifact-review.html) and so I found this subject of particular interest due to my pack rat proclivities AND because I have a good, long-time friend who is Swedish (the latter reference being a clue to the word "dostadning"). I am not going to explain "dostadning," but I suggest you have a look here to learn about it and see what you think. 😀

6.  And finally, UpFront With NGS blog posted an interesting piece on copyright law allowing LIBRARIES to legally scan and make available materials published from 1923 - 1941. You can read the piece here and get links to further reading.     
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Copyright 2017, John D. Tew

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