You may have noticed that postings have not recently been made to the MyHeritage Genealogy Blog.

This is the last post we will publish on this blog, but the good news is that we are folding this blog into the MyHeritage Blog as we go forward.

This move will consolidate all English language posts in one blog, on one Facebook page and on one Twitter feed.

Chief genealogist Daniel Horowitz and I will continue writing for the MyHeritage Blog on various topics. We hope you will join us there, continue to offer your comments, and follow along on Facebook and Twitter.

Existing posts on the MyHeritage Genealogy Blog will be available via the MyHeritage Blog.

We look forward to greeting you online.

with best wishes

Schelly and Daniel

The Canadian Genealogy Survey is a new one that may be of interest to both newcomers and experienced genealogists.

Although we posted an abridged version of  the survey announcement in the latest edition of Links We Like on the MyHeritage blog, we felt an extended post with more information was warranted.

The title is a bit of a misnomer as respondents are not required to be a Canadian citizen or resident and may come from anywhere in the world. The researchers are Carleton University Professor Leighann Neilson (Sprott School of Business) and Emeritus Professor Del Muise (History Department).

Participate in the survey here.

Responses are welcome from those living everywhere.  The results will be announced publicly once data is collected.

What can you expect from the survey? Questions are related to research as well as demographics.

Topics include years interested in family history and years actively researching, main reason for beginning research and current reasons, if changed; information sources used, the most important and why; writing or digital recording of your memories and interviews of family members; what do you plan to do with your research; DNA genetic genealogy; taken or attended a genealogy/family history course or conference; what genealogy societies do you belong to.

Others ask about producing materials for other researchers, hours spent on related activities, number of trips per year for related activities, in country or internationally; how much spent on research.

Additional questions ask about Internet-based research and how you use it, as well as subscription sites, electronic lists and blogs, online databases and other websites.

There's an important hot-topic question:  Have you posted your family tree on the Internet?

Demographic questions include marital status, employment,  years lived in present community or vicinity, country born in, current residence, type of community, adopted, ancestral ethnic groups, education, year born, gender,  number of children and grandchildren, religion if any, active member of religion, total household income for 2010. For these questions, respondents may elect to check "prefer not to say."

One question with which I had a problem was "What term best describes you?" The choices are genealogist, family historian or professional genealogist, and the survey definitions are, to my thinking, slightly problematic. Many researchers can be at some point on the wider spectrum of all of these terms:

'Genealogist' is often used to describe people who are primarily interested in the collection of tombstone data (birth, marriage and death dates) in order to document their ancestral lineage.

'Family historian' is often used to refer to people who, in addition to collecting tombstone data, are interested in and/or collect family stories and research the social context in which their ancestors lived.

'Professional genealogist' is a term used to describe someone who earns at least a portion of their income from conducting research for others and may also have a professional designation (e.g., CG, CG(C)) or be a member of a professional association, e.g., Association of Professional Genealogists.

A comment box for more information would have been helpful.

There are questions on numerous other topics. Answers are generally yes, no, maybe or other (with  comment boxes).

Learn more about the results - and future surveys - at the Genealogy In Canada blog. And here's an article with more information on the project.

Did you complete the survey? How did you feel about the questions asked? Let us know through comments below. 

Help inform the genealogy community about the survey and ask others to participate.

Or, have you been researching your family for a long time and are now experiencing writer's block?

This post may help everyone interested in recording family history.

Many researchers want to do more than just record names and dates. What we'd like to do is "add meat to the bones," or flesh out our ancestors as we learn about them as individuals.

Amy Coffin of the WeTree genealogy blog has organized 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History, which offers a weekly prompt on a different topic.  Readers can also access this list at Geneabloggers.com.

We think that this list is as valuable for recording your own life for your future descendants as it is for those considering interviewing older relatives.

It doesn't matter if you start in the middle of this list, at the end or at the beginning. The essential thing is just to start.

How you record your answers doesn't matter:  Use "notes" on an iPad, a document on your computer,  write your ideas longhand in a leather-covered journal, an ordinary school notebook, or on plain white paper. Just begin. However, recording them in a nice journal that can be passed down through the generations seems a good idea to us.

As you start recording this information for yourself - and that notebook may become a prized possession for a great-grandchild in the future - you will find more information useful when you interview senior family members.

It is also a great suggestion for your family members at your site at MyHeritage.com. Ask your relatives to contribute their own memories of a topic each week.

I've included a bit about my favorite stuffed animal - in the toy category - but you'll need to read on to learn about Wolfie!

Some warm weather topics:

Week 27. Vacations. Where did your family go on vacation? Did you have a favorite place? Is it still there? If not, how has the area changed? July 2-8

Week 28. Summer. What was summer like where and when you grew up? Describe not only the climate, but how the season influenced your activities, food choices, etc. July 9-15

Week 29. Water. Do you have any memories of the sea or another body of water? Did you live there or just visit? July 16-22

Among other topics: New Year's memories, winter, cars, home, favorite food, radio and television, toys,  technology, sounds, disasters, illness and injury, movies, sweets, spring memories, sports, restaurants, pets, weather, bedroom, fame, commercials, books, clothes, neighbors, songs, employment, grandparents, dinner time, nicknames, smells, weddings, road trips, earliest memories, hobbies, least favorite foods and more. Click the link above to see hints for each topic.

Each week focuses on a topic that everyone can relate to in some way.  What was your favorite song? The least-favorite food (spinach?) that your parents forced you to eat? What do you remember about your neighbors at different stages of your life?

Did you have a favorite toy or stuffed animal?

Since, we are writing about this as suggestions, it may be time to share some of my own. In a blast from the past, there was my favorite stuffed toy and longtime companion, a wolf - named appropriately - Wolfie, with longish legs and arms (do stuffed wolves even have arms?) . I remember dragging him around by an arm. No wonder one of them fell off!

Now that I am thinking about him, I remember he was basically brown, wore a red vest and - I think - yellow short pants. He went everywhere, on a long train ride to Florida, car trips to Niagara Falls.

Eventually, an ear disappeared, that arm fell off and his stuffing began to come out in clumps. My mother made emergency repairs, but finally it was time to retire Wolfie. It is strange, but for a stuffed animal that went everywhere with me for a very long time, I cannot remember when or how old I was when he vanished from my life.

Whether we are talking about our favorite winter memories, a favorite toy or song, or even our childhood neighbors, each topic helps us think about certain aspects of our lives.

It isn't just for professional writers requiring ideas to keep going, but will help all those interested in family history organize their thoughts, ideas and information.

Do check the links above and begin recording these personal aspects of your life.

We'd really like it if you would share some of your memories with us as comments below.

Conference co-chairs Paula Hinkle and Leo Myers, in addition to their large team of volunteers, always make this an excellent experience.

Some highlights:

Some 70 genealogy bloggers – a record number at any gen conference - blogged, tweeted and Facebooked throughout the event, as well as participating in social events, including an ice cream party and a piñata smashing, among others.

There are many good sports among this friendly group whose conference get-togethers are like a family reunion. A blogger media island enabled the bloggers to continuously tweet and Facebook over the three-day event.

More seriously, there were outstanding sessions to attend, ranging from breakfasts to evening dinners and everything in between. Among those attended by Daniel and myself were:

• A free Kids' Camp attended by many young people, including Boy and Girl Scouts.
• World table discussion, where Daniel and I headed the Jewish table at two sessions, answered questions and directed visitors to many resources for their individual quests.
• An informative breakfast presentation on using social media for societies by Thomas MacEntee, and
• A full-day family history writers conference.

Read on for more details.

Genealogy expert and author John Philip Coletta

The separate full-day event for family history writers took place immediately before the official conference began. Instructors included many stars in this field. My choices were the four presentations by expert author John Philip Colletta:

• Assembling and writing a narrative family history 
• How to build historical context: turning biographical facts into real life events
• Principles of good writing and good storytelling
• Writing a narrative family history: The challenges, pitfalls and rewards

Perhaps the best part of this conference - and all the events in which MyHeritage participates - is meeting happy MyHeritage users who dropped by the booth to say hello and let us know how the site has helped advance their research. In addition to experienced users, we had many opportunites to meet and assist newcomers to MyHeritage.  

For one California man, Daniel quickly registered him, organized his family site and literally - within a few minutes - the man had 13 Smart Matches providing many additional family details on his ancestors. His cousin in Germany had a family site, but didn’t speak English (he didn’t speak German), so Daniel demonstrated how both of them could share information easily in a bilingual format. His wife’s family, from Poland, was also a prime candidate for locating more information via the integration of MyHeritage’s new acquisition of Bliscy in Poland.

Innovations are always part of these conferences and technology is aways in the forefront.

A convenient, practical conference app

In the old days, each conference attendee received a large, heavy printed syllabus. Later the printed version gave way to the much lighter CD version, and at Jamboree 2011 - for the first time at any genealogy conference - there was an SCGS smartphone (or tablet) app.

Jamboree 2011 app dashboard

At the click of a key, each attendee could see the schedule, the syllabus and much more. This obviated the need to drag around heavy printed books or wonder what to do with a CD while working on a netbook or iPad, which do not provide a way to load a CD.

We’re all wondering which conference will be next with an app. It was convenient, practical, fun and extremely useful!

We're already looking forward to Jamboree 2012!

For more on this event, and genealogy conferences in general, see the companion post at the MyHeritage Blog here.

I just finished a short visit home after a long trip covering the East Coast. Here are some highlights of that trip.

At the end of March, I ran the MyHeritage.com booth at the Ohio Genealogical Society regional conference in Columbus. I reunited with old friends and colleagues, met new friends and also gave some lectures for local genealogy groups in Dayton and Cleveland.

The New England Regional Conference - in Springfield, Massachusetts – was next.  I tried to find the Simpson family, but it seems it was the wrong Springfield. There were some very interesting lectures and the opportunity to work on my personal research with a lecture about genealogy repositories in Romania and Ukraine. A later conversation with the speakers discovered some previously unknown resources.

David Ferriero and MyHeritage Chief Genealogist Daniel Horowitz

New York and New Jersey were next on my itinerary, where I meet with my family who came to visit for two-weeks.  There were also a few lectures for the New York Jewish Genealogical Society, the New York chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogist (APG), the Bernards Township Library (New Jersey), the New York Genealogy PC Users' Group and other local genealogy groups.

While “on vacation,” I was invited to participate at the NARA Genealogy Fair in Washington DC. So I put my family into the car and drove three hours south. A two-day event at the biggest US repository: the Library of Congress and the National Archives; and included a meeting with head archivist David Ferriero.  In the meantime, my children had a great time walking around the mall, visiting the Smithsonian Institute’s Natural History and Air and Space wings with my wife.

There were a few more lectures - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Jersey and New York – and then I returned to Washington DC for an International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) board meeting in preparation for the 31^st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, set for August 14-19, and a meeting at the US Memorial Holocaust Museum, where I conducted some personal research and found interesting data. It is great to be able to mix work with pleasure.

From Washington, I went a bit further south to Charleston, South Carolina, where MyHeritage.com had a booth at the National Genealogical Society (NGS) conference.  There was enough time for a city tour by horse-drawn carriage.  It was very impressive for this non-American to experience a living town that seemed to come out from the famous movie, “Gone with the Wind.”

It was an excellent trip, providing opportunities to meet new and interesting friends and see old friends once again, while also speaking at various places.

After a quick trip home to kiss my wife and children for two weeks, I’m once again heading west to do what I enjoy the most – work!

MyHeritage will have a booth at the Southern California Genealogical Jamboree. Both US genealogy advisor Schelly Talalay Dardashti and I will be staffing the booth and also presenting several lectures at this event, so if you are attending the conference, please stop by and say hello.

We look forward to seeing you!

Years ago, as I sat struggling through Cyrillic to understand records from Mogilev, Belarus, I often wished my great-grandparents had passed down Russian and Yiddish. Russian seems to have disappeared the day the family hit the streets of New York, while Yiddish was transmitted to their children. Their grandchildren knew only phrases or could understand some but not speak it, and they only rarely could read it.

How much easier it would have been if I had learned both languages fluently from my parents and grandparents! However, I did learn Farsi fluently when we lived in Iran. Our daughter studied it, used to read and write it, understands it nearly fluently, but refuses to speak it.

Now, through one scientist's research, we learn that there are two major reasons that people should pass their heritage language on to their children.

One reason is obvious to family history researchers:

• It connects children to their ancestors.
• The research indicates that bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger, as it is brain exercise.

There is a definite advantage to being bilingual - and, we assume, trilingual or more - as indicated in this New York Times story, "The Bilingual Advantage."

Searching these resources for your unique names and places of interest may provide new clues or data and push your research forward.

Check out these new resources and let us know what you've found via comments below to this post.

• BoxOffice Magazine posts 91-year archive

Some 3,000 issues of this Hollywood trade magazine are now online for free. The publication on movie news began in 1920 and continues today. Most are online now, except for 1920-1924, 1927 and 1933-1934, which are still being digitized. See the collection at the site in The Vault section.

Each week, five issues from the archives are posted as PDFs, although the most recent issues are page images of the print copy.

The downside? This amazing archive is not searchable. However, fans, historians and writers should still enjoy this collection.

I did search for our relative, Rachel Talalay, whose film "Tank Girl" attracted a large following. Surprisingly, there were no results ... yet!

• US Library of Congress launches The National Jukebox

This is a great source for researchers with a connection to the music world (performer, composer, lyricist) or who would like to know what their parents and grandparents may have listened to way back when.

The National Jukebox includes more than 10,000 digitized sound recordings (music and spoken-word), from 1901-1925, in a searchable database. See it here.

The agreement for the National Jukebox grants the Library of Congress usage rights to Sony Music’s entire pre-1925 catalog—comprising thousands of recordings produced by Columbia Records, OKeh, and Victor Talking Machine Co. among others – and represents the largest collection of such historical recordings ever made publicly available for study and appreciation online.

Included are works by Al Jolson, George M. Cohan, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arturo Toscanini; opera stars Enrico Caruso, Nellie Melba; original recordings of the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (George Gershwin on piano), and Nora Bayes’ “Over There.” There are also voice recordings for many well-known individuals of the period.

Visitors can listen to  streaming recordings, view label images, record-catalog illustrations, artist and performer bios. There are interactive features, along with staff-created playlists, while visitors can create and share their own play-lists.

There are more than 1,500 recordings in the "ethnic" section - click here to listen - representing many languages and countries.

• BillionGraves.com: New website, iPhone app

Free through this Memorial Day Weekend (US), is a new mobile app to take along when you visit cemeteries. The new app can provide researchers around the world with the images and exact GPS locations of ancestors' graves. Users can also transcribe the gravestones

The iPhone app is available now, the Droid version is being worked on.

How does it work? Download the app, take your phone to the cemetery, take photos of the stones and upload them to BillionGraves.com. Photos are tagged using the iPhone’s location services so the GPS location is recorded.

 Let us know what you've found via comments below. We're looking forward to learning what you've discovered.

This week's edition spotlights information on an African-American magazine archive, Hawaii resources, a university digitization project, a resource for new genealogy blogs and a new search engine.

• Ebony Magazine Archive

The foremost magazine for the African-American community – Ebony – has placed its 65-year archive on line for free browsing.

Over the years, it has covered music and culture, entertainment, style, lifestyle, wellness, politics, history and much more. Each issue is just as it appeared at publication and offers a fascinating view of this community over the years.

• Yale University Digital Images

Yale University now offers free online access to digital images of millions of objects housed in the university's museums, archives and libraries.

More than 250,000 images are now available through a newly developed collective catalog.

A quick search revealed that a search for "family history" produced 14,400 results, and 543 for "genealogy." One could search for surnames and places of interest as well.

The goal of the new policy is to make high quality digital images of Yale's vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available.

• Papakilo Database for Hawaii

Does Hawaii figure in your research? If so, try the freely accessible new online library - Papakilo Database - intended to preserve significant cultural and historical Hawaiian information dating to the 1800s. Read more here and search the database.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs partnered with several other entities, including the Bishop Museum and Kumu Pono Associates to meld several databases containing land and government records, genealogy indexes and historic Hawaiian language newspapers into one resource called the Papakilo Database.

Records include probate, voters' register, archaelogical surveys, genealogy indexes, place names, land records, vital records, maps, names, newspapers, periodicals, World War I records and more.

• Newly-discovered genealogy blogs

Genealogy blogs are an excellent source of information. Some follow individual family histories, some are diary transcriptions, while others focus on photographs. Still more are written by those involved in the genealogy industry, education, events, societies and geographical locations around the world. More than 1,900 genealogy blogs are now at Geneabloggers.com, in more than 115 categories. 

Additionally,  site founder Thomas MacEntee posts a weekly list of newly-discovered genealogy blogs. It’s always worth checking his weekly lists to see what may be relevant to your own research.

Click here to see these weekly lists.

• Zanran - a new search engine

There's a new search engine out there, focusing on charts and tables. It calls itself Google for data. Results may be PDF format, Excel files, bar charts and other data. Read more about it in this article.

I did a quick search on some common genealogy terms. This is what I found.

-- nearly 47,000 entries alone for TALALAY (a surname of interest)
-- nearly 20,000 for “family history”
-- some 3,000 for “genealogy"
-- 18,000 for “Mogilev, Belarus” (an ancestral town)  

Results included events, scientific papers written by those with surnames of interest and more. Documents included Excel, PDF, tables and more. While the results are varied – and researchers must see what is relevant for them – a gem or two or three may be discovered. I even found a young cousin on a UK debate team list!

Check out these links and see what you can find. Let us know what you have discovered via comments below.

Each conference provided food for thought, learning opportunities and practical information. Additionally, each event offered networking opportunities, and chances to meet others with the same interests.

On May 7, the Society of Genealogists (London, UK) held their Centenary Conference, a major event for this group founded in 1911. The world of family history and how we research hadn't changed much over the decades until rather recently.

In the bad old days, the only type of research available was to either crawl through archives and libraries - dusty, dark and difficult to retrieve information from - or pay someone to do it for you.

Today, in 2011, I consistently hear longtime researchers say that they've done more productive research in the past 10 years than since they began 20, 30, 40 or more years ago. I know I have.

What has made the difference?

It's simple: Technology.

Technology has made it possible to research, collaborate, share and communicate via the Internet, resources online, specialty websites and much more. The world has become much smaller and seems to shrink more each day.

According to one SOG presenter, Sharon Hintze, who directs the Family History Center in London, the availability of online resources means that we spend less time searching, find much more information, have better family stories and deeper personal identities. Technology helps make this happen.

Technology has also helped in preservation of archives and access to those materials. Physical archives may be impacted by natural disasters, with the loss forever of material. Today, digitization projects at institutions, libraries, archives, as well as personal family history, mean that these priceless materials can be preserved. And, along with technological preservation, comes better access.

In the old days, a small number of people would travel to a remote archive or library to research in person. It wasn't easy and it could be expensive to undertake that work. Today, an increasing amount of data is available to anyone around the world with an Internet connection.

Another popular conference session was presented by Alec Tritton who spoke on social networking, including blogs, ezines and social networking for family history.

Today's social networking figures are staggering . Two billion visits each day to YouTube; 600 million each day for FaceBook; and 100 million each day for Twitter. Industry statistics he quoted show that Google covers 48% of the world, with FaceBook some 40%.

Since 2006, there have been some 10 billion Twitter tweets. In fact, these tweets are now considered an important part of our culture.

Such a major major part that the Library of Congress (Washington, DC) will archive them, so you and future generations can access them. Your great-great-grandson will be able to access your tweets and understand more about your life and what was important to you.

While this will be the modern tech equivalent of keeping a pen-and-paper diary, it means perhaps that we should be thinking of what we are tweeting when we realize that those tweets will be forever!

Alec discussed the revolution in smartphone technology, and aso indicated that the use of this technology in 2020 wil be more than 5 billion users, or 10 times the size of the PC desktop computer; many people will never use a PC.

And, while technological changes today were important, there was also a good session on phonetics as it impacts researching names and finding information on various websites.

Beverley Charles Rowe went over the process of how name spellings may have been corrupted over history.

A person says his or her name. The person recording the name writes down what he or she hears and spells it accordingly. That spelling is transferred to other documents. A text is set up for printing and modern vounteers do the transcribing of old handwriting. Finally, a researcher copies the data to his or her own files.

Think about information recorded from early immigrants, who may have had thick accents from their native languages, and that data was recorded by someone from an entirely different cultural and linguistic frame of reference.

How do we retrieve information from databases? We require one that provides a good chance of finding records under various spellings. The presenter compared the various Soundex systems available over some very interesting searches.

His conclusion was that no Soundex system was perfect. If you are working in a database that offers a search using different systems, try all of them as results may be very different for each.

My own presentation focused on setting up a DNA project for a family, a community, a geographical area or other groupings. The IberianAshkenaz DNA Project attempts to confirm family stories of some Ashkenazi Eastern European Jews that they have Sephardic (Spanish/Portuguese) origins. It covered setting up a project, the goals, the criteria, understanding results, finding participants and much more.

No matter what genealogy conferences you attend, there will be fascinating topics, opportunities for learning practical information and communicating with fellow researchers and experts.

Watch for additional posts on the other conferences.

What genealogy/family history conferences have you attended? Let us know - via comments below - the high points of the event(s) you have attended.

We'll be providing periodic round-ups of interesting links to family history-related resources. These may be books, articles, personalities, new online resources and much more across the spectrum of family history.

So much happens that it is difficult for most readers to read everything that is out there, so we hope to help you advance your research by collecting links with information that may help.

And now for our first edition of Links We Like:

-- Searching your Irish roots? Ireland is helping families to understand the lives of their immigrant ancestors with three tourist attractions. These include the Guinness Storehouse's archives (if any of your ancestors were ever employed there), a replica of an 1847 famine ship and the Cobh Heritage Center. Read about them in an Okahoman article.

If you're trying to trace your Irish ancestry, these new interactive exhibits make getting to the root of your family tree both easy and fun.

-- Researchers often have trouble locating the maiden names of female ancestors. One Tennessee woman has discovered 11 generations of maiden names in her family tree. 

-- Readers in Charleston, South Carolina and environs will have a chance to visit the largest genealogy conference in the US, May 11-15, run by the National Genealogical Society. A Kids' Kamp is set for Friday morning as well as special Saturday sessions to help local residents improve their research skills. Click here for more information.

-- Roots travel is featured in the Wall Street Journal. While many of us use the Internet to trace our families, more and more family history researchers want to walk in their ancestors' footsteps by visiting ancestral towns.  Here are some tips on how to get started:

According to those in the field, a growing number of travel companies and genealogical experts are offering "ancestral" or "heritage" trips. Former emigration hot spots, including Ireland and Nova Scotia, have recently begun promoting genealogical records on government-sponsored tourism websites. And hotels and resorts, including the Lodge at Doonbeg in County Clare, Ireland, and the Sheraton Grand Hotel; Spa in Edinburgh, Scotland, have hired genealogists.

"Genealogy is almost trendy," says Elaine Bostwick, tour coordinator at Ancestral Attic of Carp Lake, Mich., which arranged for 42 genealogical tours last year, almost double the number five years ago.

-- Learn something about the Roma - known also as Gypsies - and their origins and migrations in this Times of India article.

The Romani gypsies in Europe trace their ancestry to the nomadic communities in India. During the medieval period, gypsies in India began migrating westwards because of incessant foreign invasions. From India to West Asia and gradually to Africa and Europe - that is, from Rome and Barcelona, they spread to France, Germany and England. They were initially called Egyptians; apparently Europeans believed that they came from Egypt and were travelling under papal patronage. Later, Egyptians was shortened to gyptians and finally the word 'gypsy' became the moniker for these nomads.

-- Do you live in Scotland and would like to learn more about family history? On May 14, there's the Tayroots Genealogy Fair in Edzell.  Some nine local and other history and genealogy groups will assist attendees. In addition to a lecture on the Guild of One Name Studies, an archivist will speak on old photos. Attendees are invited to bring their family photos along for identification. Admission is free.

“In the past people moved across the country following their trades or searching for work – so we often find that visitors in the East need information on the West!”

Let us know if these links have provided clues or suggestions for your own research. We look forward to reading your comments.