This last weekend I attended NeSGS (Nebraska State Genealogical Society) annual conference with featured speaker Beth Foulk. Beth is from the Kansas City area and volunteers at the Midwest Genealogy Center, which I visited in March.
I enjoyed Beth's presentations; she is fun, provides great outlines and informative. All great to have in a speaker. Plus we share the same first name. I'm not sure if she is an Elizabeth though, as I am not, so we may not share the same given name (which was a small part of her talk).
Beth talked about timelines, beginner mistakes, genealogy book web sites, sourcing and Nebraska settlers. I enjoyed ALL of her topics, but my favorite was probably the genealogy book sites. I also learned a lot about the NEW NESGS.org web site presented by Floyd Smith III.
Check out the all new nesgs.org web site. New features include a calendar where anyone can add events. Beware though, if you try to add a quilting event, Floyd will delete it. Only genealogy events should be added. This should help us have a place where all Nebraska genealogy events can be located online.
Members have special benefits on nesgs.org. Why should I be a member you ask? Well for a mere $20, you can see applications of first family, pioneer family and others. Some of these include much genealogy for a family, as much as 12 pages for one family! Plus you get the Nebraska Ancestree mailed to you. Also you get access to ALL past issues of the Ancestree on nesgs.org so you can search them. Past issues of the New Brass Key will also be online for members. Members can rent microfilm and library books.
What I learned from the genealogy book web sites topic: Well I'm sure you knew (as I did) that there are online books on books.google.com and also Heritage Quest (available through your library). Also Family Search has about 80,000 books on books.familysearch.org and these are all genealogy and history.
BUT the new and big one for me was www.hathitrust.org. They have 16,000 genealogy releated books drawing from about 40 universities. Hathi Trust has over 10 MILLION books online. No need for a Kindle now, just pull up this web site, do a search and pull up the PDF file of what you want to read. Plus on Hathi Trust you can make a list of books, so if you want to save your genealogy books to find later, you can. Note that this list is public so John Doe can see what genealogy books you have saved.
Well I'm sure I have gone on long enough. I always enjoy genealogy conferences, getting to know others who enjoy what I do, learn new web sites and techniques, and having fun. No losing weight though, as there is a lot of eating and sitting. Good food at the Midtown Holiday Inn in Grand Island, highly recommend their mashed potatoes. Yum yum!
