Inspiring Blogs 300Welcome to November. During October there was a whole heap of genealogy blog reading happening, so I have an interesting bunch of posts for you in this lot.

In no particular order, we start off with the Young and Savvy Genealogists who’ve hit the scene in a big way, then move on to cover topics such as things our grandparents did, cousins with the same name, new evidence that might rewrite America’s history, archivists role, archaic abbreviations, preserving your home movies, and how we can help societies. These are just a few of the fabulous reads that I’ve come across in the past month.

I know that I’ve mentioned before (each month) that I find that reading blog posts helps me keep up with the latest news, products as well as what’s happening in general in the world of genealogy. And if you happen to already follow me on Twitter, and to some extent Google+, you already know that I like to share with you the interesting things I read.

Anyway I hope you find the following Genealogy Blogs … useful, and well, inspiring.

Welcome! From the Young and Savvy Genealogists
Heather Collins from the US and Caitin Gow in Australia have teamed up to create “Young and Savvy Genealogists” which in their words is “a new community” aimed at young genealogists. So “if you’re under 30 and love genealogy, we want you to be a part of it. If you have stories you want to tell, we want to hear them!” Read the full story …

17 Things Our Grandparents Did When Green Was Just a Color
This one I discovered thanks to one of my social media buddies forwarding it, and I simply love it, so wanted to share it with you. Things were different ‘back in the day’, and this highlights the fact of changing lifestyles. How many of these do you remember? Read the full story …

A Chronology Cluster
Not a new post, but a ‘new to me’ post as I saw it on Twitter recently. The “Jones Genealogist’ who wrote this post shares with us their method for breaking down or simply going around a brickwall. Read the full story …

Cousins With the Same Name
The Lineagekeeper writes a great post here on “cousins with the same name” which I’m sure is something that we’ve all come across. He starts off by saying … How many times have you encountered records from the right area, in the right time frame with names in the family that match names you know are ‘yours’ yet the record isn’t about your ancestor but are of their cousin who had the same name. Read the full story …

Is America’s History About to be Rewritten
For centuries it has been believed that Christopher Columbus was the first to discover the US. But that could all be wrong, according to historian Gavin Menzies, thanks to a new document that has been found. Read the full story …

Think Before You Edit That Old Photograph
James Tanner advises us to “Think and think hard before you edit that old photograph”, and goes on to explain why. Is there some historical reason for making “improvements” to the photo or is it merely a fuss-budget response to untidiness? Read the full story …

Expanding Our Audience
D. Joshua Taylor tells of his experience of watching ‘Genealogy Roadshow’ which he was a part of, with some friends. And now the friends are interested in genealogy, and want to know more. As a result he goes on to say that “… genealogy is not exclusive to one group or type of individual – it is something for everyone. Many believe there are some right and wrong ways to “do genealogy,” but I firmly believe there is no right or wrong way to find an interest or get started in genealogy. Each time family history is on television our audience expands. Those of us who call ourselves genealogists have a heavy task ahead! My conclusion? We need to give audiences more credit and be prepared to teach and to lead them into genealogy.” Read the full story …

What to do About Archaic Abbreviations?
James Tanner always comes up with interesting topics to discuss, and here is another one. Here he discusses trying to read old handwritten documents that have used abbreviations. And while a few of these have survived to the present day, many have dropped out of use and are difficult to decipher. Fortunately, there are extensive lists of different abbreviations available on the Web. Read the full story …

How to Handle Conflicting Evidence?: A Six-Step Program
Ahh conflicting evidence. We’ve all come across it. But what do you do about it? Well, here’s what Archives.com suggests. Read the full story …

Turning a Roomful of Straw into Gold, or What Archivists Do
Do you really know what an Archivist does? I mean really? Let’s say that you do. But do we all appreciate what they do? Think about it. We walk into an archives office (or logon to their website online) and expect to be able to search and find something quickly. That doesn’t simply happen. Someone has to organise it. Read the full story …

Preserving Home Movies
In this post Sassy Jane introduces readers International Home Movie Day which was on 19 October 2013. And she suggests having a family movie event to celebrate. But then raises the questions what is your old films are too fragile, or your don’t have a projector to watch them on? Read the full story …

Society Spotlight: how can we help history societies focus on the future?
Andrew Martin, of the History Repeating blog writes about historical societies and what a vital resource they are for researchers, and these treasure troves of information face a very real danger. Read the full story …

8 Ways to Overcome OCR Errors When Searching Newspapers
I am a fan of Kenneth Marks’ The Ancestor Hunt blog, and once again he provides readers with an easy to read, useful list of tips. This time it’s tips for searching newspapers – and we all LOVE to do that! I’m sure that everyone you know who has searched newspapers has said at some stage that they couldn’t find anything on a person or subject. Well have a read, and take note of his tips when you’re next on newspaper sites, and you’re bound to increase your chances of results. Read the full story …

Subscription vs Free Website for Genealogy
James Tanner always discusses interesting topics on his blog, and without a doubt this one fits the bill. After being asked the following: “Where is the benefit of subscribing to a site if the document I need is on a free site? Won’t I find it on the free site? Won’t I have access to it? Won’t the free site search engine find it?” James decided to respond to these queries as a blog post. Read the full article …

Happy reading 😉