For South Australians, or those that wish to visit our fine State, here is a genealogy and history event not to be missed.

Australian company Unlock the Past are organising the Adelaide’s first “History and Genealogy Expo“, together with the support of the South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society. This two day event will be held on 30 and 31 July 2010.

Held over two days, this event will consist of a wide range of exhibitors, as well as a comprehensive range of talks. Meals and refreshments will be available for purchase at the venue. Special offers and prizes will be offered from many exhibitors and sponsors.

Their website says that this event will be …

… a unique opportunity to see many societies, libraries and commercial product and service suppliers in one place and to learn from the many expert presenters. A significant focus will be on introducing newcomers to history and genealogy, but we expect to have something for researchers at all levels.

When:
Friday 30 July 9.30pm – 4.30pm (a Friday evening program is under consideration)
Saturday 31 July 9.30am – 4.30pm

Where:
West Adelaide Function Centre (Football Club), 57 Milner Road, Richmond (3km West of Adelaide CBD), South Australia

Cost (per person)
Pre-booked: $15 for one day, $20 for two days
On the day: $20 for one day, $25 for two days
Book your tickets online now

Need More Info
email: Alan (alan@unlockthepast.com.au)  or Aimee (aimee@unlockthepast.com.au)
phone: (08) 8395 7476

THE EXHIBITORS:
With a range of exhibitors from the following categories:
- family and local history societies – small and large
- libraries, archives and museums
- special interest groups and organisations – business, sporting, transport, motoring, church and school history
- ethnic history and culture
- professional researchers, speakers and course presenters
- printers, publishers and resellers of books, magazines, CDs, maps
- antiquarian booksellers
- online data services
- photo or video services
- scrapbooking, photographic, video and chart printing services
- tour operators – heritage themes, battlefield tours
- transcription agents, translation services
- anyone offering products or services in the history, genealogy, heritage and related fields

If you are interested in exhibiting please contact Alan or Aimée at (08) 8395 7476 or by email alan@unlockthepast.com.au or aimee@unlockthepast.com.au

Cost – $100 per table, although they are FREE for societies, libraries, archives and related organisations who are willing to publicise the Expo through newsletters and on their web sites

THE PRESENTATIONS:
The program will be varied and fairly fast moving with two streams of talks on the half hour. A number will be aimed at beginners or general audience, others will offer something different.

Some early commitments and topicss are:
- Ron Austin – several talks on military topics
- Barry Dolman  – Preserving our sporting history
- Aim̩e Engler РExperiences of SA German-Australians in the early 1900s
- Kerry Farmer – Which genealogy program (with Rosemary Kopittke)
- Shauna Hicks – What was the voyage really like, Genealogy on the cheap, Organising and caring for personal records
- Eric Kopittke – German & Danish research, German sources on the Internet
- Rosemary Kopittke – Which genealogy program (with Kerry Farmer), ScotlandsPeople, Introducing Family Photo Book
- Cassie Mercer – Stories of some early Irish Australians
- Suzanne Maiden – Wills: a fascinating and valuable resource
- Roslyn Paterson, OAM – Cornish influence in South Australia
- Andrew Peake – Occupations
- Alan Phillips – Getting to know findmypast.com.au, How you can benefit from Unlock the Past
- SA Genealogy & Heraldry Society – Beginning your family history

We expect a number of specialist and general archives, libraries and museums will also give presentations.

Other subjects we are interested in offering:
- maritime history, migration and life at sea on the voyage out
- industry, business & occupations
- guide to newspapers, FamilySearch and other free resources on the web
- guide to subscription or pay-per-view resources on the web ( Find My Past, Ancestry, ScotlandsPeople, Ancestors on Board, Genes Reunited, etc.)
- church and school history
- special interests – sport, recreation, culture
- getting back to your family’s country of origin
- early medicine, genetics & DNA
- convicts, criminals & crime, police
- names, writing & publishing
- photography video & multimedia, scrapbooking & preservation
- city, rural & outback life, culture & customs, transport, built heritage

“We have our own team of presenters, but are open to others with recognised expertise”. Contact Alan if you have someone you would recommend or you yourself feel you have something to offer.

So come along, enjoy the people, the exhibits and of course the talks, while finding out what history really does exist right on our doorstep.

Australia’s Unlock the Past, and England’s findmypast.co.uk are combining to offer Australians the chance to see and hear Elaine Collins from findmypast.co.uk talk about the findmypast website, and what it offers subscribers, such as:

• the only complete 1841-1911 census collection online
• the most complete online index of BMDs (1837-2006)
• parish records for baptisms, marriages and burials dating from 1538
• migration records including 24 million passenger list records
• military records covering the First and Second World Wars
• many more documents including specialist records

With a large portion of Australians having British ancestors, and most not having the ability to travel to the UK to research on-site, there is a need to find infomation online. findmypast.co.uk is a website that you should use.

Elaine from findmypast.co.uk will be giving talks in Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Nambour and Sydney from May 19-May 24.

Bookings will be required as space will be limited. More details can be found on the Unlock the Past.

Today is Christmas Eve, and it seems like as good a time as any to look back over the happenings of 2009. I’m not talking about the world events, TV does that well enough … I’m talking about the changes that have happened at Gould Genealogy & History, as well as Australian genealogy in general over the past 12 months.

Firstly, for us it has been a year of a number of exciting developments.

We are in the learning stages of social media, but we now have our blog (this one) and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. Hopefully we will get better at it over time.

Another change is that we have now combined our Archive Digital Books Australasia (formerly Archive CD Books Australia) into our Gould Genealogy & History company. There is really no difference for customers, except that you can now find all titles produced under the Archive Digital Books Australasia name on the Gould website, in its own category.

A small change, well, not so much a change, as an addition was that we have added an “Antiquarian Books” to our category list, for those books that we sell off. There is currently only one title in the list, but we do expect to add more throughout next year.

We have also seen a fairly significant increase over the year in the number of scrapbooking products (particularly papers) that we list. It is so good to see more heritage and family tree themed scrapbooking products coming from numerous publishers.

2009 saw the release of new versions of RootsMagic, Family Historian, Family Historian Aus/NZ, Family Tree Maker 2010 Aus/NZ … and I’m pretty sure a new The Master Genealogist is on it’s way soon.

One other big new thing was the printing and posting of our first printed catalogue in 7 years. It’s not an entire product list of what we sell, but it is a good selection. This was received well by customers, and it might be something we do more of in the future.

With the release of our catalogue we also announced that we now have a loyalty rewards scheme. A full blog post will be done on this later.

During the year we have had a few staff members leave, and we have had new staff come. We will put a page on our website with photos of each staff member soon.

Two other big changes are the new companies that have started. Unlock the Past, and Family Photo Book.

Unlock the Past started off as a collaboration between Shauna Hicks History Enterprises and Gould Genealogy & History in wanting to attend and talk at more genealogy/history events, as well as promoting genealogy and history to a wider audience. It has grown from there in its short existence already.

Family Photo Book is a collaboration between an Adelaide based printing company and Gould Genealogy & History. Photo books seem to be a popular way to present your photographs, as opposed to the traditional album method. While you can use them to create whatever you wish (pictorial memoirs of holidays, family, weddings etc.) they are also ideal for creating a memoir of someone’s life, or a pictorial history of several generations of your family. I’ve started my own, starting from my great grandfather who arrived in Australia in 1905, and aim to follow each line down to current generations.

As far as genealogy in Australia goes, GenealogyWise, a new genealogy social networking site was launched earlier this year, and there is an active Australian group on there. More Australian content was added to the Ancestry.com.au and WorldVitalRecords.com.au sites, and the National Library of Australia’s Australian Newspapers site, just keeps getting better.

There is a growing trend for societies, archives and other groups and individual genealogists and historians to be on Facebook, Twitter and blogs (see our list of Australian genealogy/history blogs) – so if you’re looking to keep up with the latest happenings from various people, places, groups etc. become a fan on Facebook, or a follower on Twitter.

Thank you for your support over the past year. I do believe that there will be even more changes in Australian genealogy and Gould Genealogy & History in 2010 … so stay tuned!

From all of us at Gould Genealogy & History, we wish you a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

Carol Baxter is one of a host of speakers for Unlock the Past. After conducting seminars on the theme of ‘Turning Dry Facts into Exciting Narrative’, Carol Baxter recognised the need for a book that covered and expanded upon the topics discussed in her talk.

In other ‘Writing Family History’ books, most of the interesting examples included material extracted from anecdotes, letters, diaries or photographs, sources that, in general, have only survived for those in recent times. Many family historians want to know how to turn sparse information into interesting stories as she has done in her ‘popular histories’.

‘Writing INTERESTING Family Histories‘ covers these areas and more. It explains how to structure and begin a family history. It challenges genealogists to rethink what facts truly are. It describes how to evoke drama and tension even when little information is known, and to draw ‘dialogue’ from original records. It proves that family histories don’t need to be fictionalised to be riveting.

Within 5 weeks of raising the possibility of turning her talks into booklets she has produced her first. Amazing! A 100 page book titled Writing INTERESTING Family Histories. You can read more about it on the Unlock the Past blog.