====================================================================== LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR APRIL April 3, 2001 ====================================================================== Meeting Reminder The Family Tree Maker group will meet this week. See details below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- New CD-ROMs at the Pleasanton Library We have purchased our first set of CDs with data from Mexico. There are four disks in the set, "Middle America - Mexico Vital Records Index," published by the LDS Church. Our call number for these CDs is LD14. As the following description from the publisher emphasizes, the coverage is rather limited. For the time being, these CDs can be used only on the older computer, the one toward the back of the library, because of a software conflict on the newer computer. We hope to resolve that problem soon. - - - - - Middle America - Mexico Vital Records Index This current release of the Vital Records Index contains information from birth, christening, and marriage events from selected localities in Mexico only. These records cover the years 1659 to 1905 and include both church records and civil registrations. Approximately 1.9 million births or christenings and 300,000 marriages are represented in this collection of records. The source information is included to allow you to view the original record on microfilm. The Vital Records Index is not a complete collection of events from Mexico. Not all localities are represented, and coverage for any given area may not be complete. Because of this, your ancestor may not be found, even though the location where he or she came from may be represented. In addition, approximately 30 percent of the individuals represented in this collection have no last names. Consequently, because of the use of common first given names (Juan, José, Maria, and so on) you probably need to know other search information such as the parents' names, a locality, a specific date, or a combination of all these. ====================================================================== A P R I L M E E T I N G S Visitors are welcome at all of our meetings. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Dick Finn, Leader Date: Thursday, April 5, 2001 at 7:30 PM Place: Livermore Adult Education Facility (formerly the Sonoma Avenue School), 543 Sonoma Ave., Livermore For a map to the school, surf to: http://www.L-AGS.org/sonoma.html We will be talking about how to make FTM more useful in our genealogy efforts. If you have questions you want to bring up at the meeting, or topics you would like to have discussed, tell the group about it in advance at: ftm.group@L-AGS.org As always, we will devote some of the meeting to trying to help each other in the use of FTM software. We are affiliated with the Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society. All persons interested or potentially interested in Family Tree Maker and related software are invited to attend. Guests are welcome at no charge. For information on our group please feel free to call Richard Finn at 925.XXX.XXX or e-mail him at rwfinn@pacbell.net. If you can't get Dick try George Anderson at 925-XXX-XXXX or XXXX@home.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING John Bryan, Acting Program Chairman Tuesday, April 10, 2001 - 7:30 PM Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 1886 College Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/college.html Program: "Taking Your Genealogy on a Trip." Speaker: David Abrahams Past President of L-AGS David is a member of L-AGS from Livermore. While studying his family history over decades, David has made many trips around the USA and England. In the process he has learned what is essential and how to pack the most into the smallest space for a successful genealogical trip. Here we can pick up some tips that David uses with his genealogy pursuits as he travels based on his earlier experiences. David is a researcher who is involved with genealogical organizations at several levels - California State Genealogical Alliance (Co-Regional Director), San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society (member), the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (member) and L-AGS (Past President). David and wife Jolene have served as officers, leaders, teachers and volunteers in many different roles with our society. David will discuss planning a trip, organizing materials to be taken, conducting and taping interviews and making photocopies of both photos and other documents. Each time I have heard David talk, I have picked up useful suggestions. Last time I learned that he actually went through the Immigration and Naturalization process himself! What will I learn from him this time? Jon Bryan - - - - - Visitors are welcome. For information contact Jon Bryan at 925 XXX-XXXX, or mailto:president@L-AGS.org. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- GENEALOGY STUDY GROUP Kay Speaks, Leader Thursday, March 15, 2001 - 7:30 PM Always the Third Thursday of the Month Location: Mocho Street LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore URL for a map to the church: http://www.L-AGS.org/mocho.html The discussion topic will be announced later. The E-Mail Forum for our group is: mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org Group participants are invited to use the forum for questions and answers about the study topics, past and present. Beginning and advanced researchers are encouraged to participate and share their experiences and research techniques. Our discussions are not limited to the given topic, so if you have a problem or a solution, come to the meeting and tell us about it. Visitors are welcome. - - - - - Members needing help with a genealogy problem may call one of the club officers, who will attempt to find someone who can help. For information contact Kay Speaks at . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER INTEREST GROUP Dick Finn, Group Leader Thursday, April 26, 2001 - 7:30 PM Place: Livermore Adult Education Facility (formerly the Sonoma Avenue School), 543 Sonoma Ave., Livermore For a map to the school, surf to: http://www.L-AGS.org/sonoma.html Program: Purchasing a Digital Camera Speaker: Lynda Hadley Senior Photographer at Sandia/California Lynda Hadley, senior photographer at Sandia/California, is back by popular demand. Lynda will be talking about the pros and cons of digital photography, the many factors to consider in the selection of a digital camera, and archiving your digital records. Lynda has been a professional photographer for more than 25 years. She has been using digital photography for nearly ten of those years. She has a MFA in Computer Arts from the Academy of Arts College in San Francisco and a BFA in Photojournalism and Anthropology from the California University at Los Angeles. Lynda has taught classes in Digital Photography, Web Design, Studio Lighting Techniques, Digital Capture, and Multimedia Production. - - - - - The CIG E-Mail Forum address is : mailto:cig@L-AGS.org Group participants are invited to use the forum for discussion of CIG topics between meetings. For information on CIG call Dick Finn at 925-XXX-XXXX or mailto:computer@L-AGS.org If you can't get Dick try George Anderson at 925-XXX-XXXX or mailto:webmaster@L-AGS.org Members needing help with a computer problem may call one of the mentors listed in the Members' Handbook. ====================================================================== The Boilerplate We realize that not all L-AGS members have e-mail. If you have friends in L-AGS who do not have e-mail, please keep them informed about news in these e-mail bulletins. - - - - - To discontinue receiving these mailings from L-AGS please call me at 925 XXX-XXXX or e-mail me at XXXX@home.com. - - - - - The L-AGS Web site is located at . If you ever have trouble accessing the L-AGS Web site, or find any faulty links on it, please let me know immediately. - - - - - Readability To make sure this message is readable by the maximum number of different computer systems, it is transmitted in plain text, without embedded formatting. The message was composed in 10 point monospaced Courier font, in a 6.125 inch column width. Any necessary indenting and centering was done with spaces, not tabs. If the text appears ragged on your screen, change to 10 point Courier font, or copy the message to a word processor and change the font there. ====================================================================== ROOTS HOOTS The following excerpt from the U. C. Davis Magazine for Spring 2001 exceeds the length guidelines I set forth for contributions to Roots Hoots, but since the message is serious even though the presentation is humorous, it is worth an exception. - - - - - The following "digitized" version of the couplet from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, composed by Rand Corp.'s Jeff Rothenberg for a presentation to NELiNET (New England's Library and Information Services Network) in June 2000, is a tongue-in-cheek look at the challenges posed by migrating documents to digital format. Original: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee... Vs. the modern version: So long as the magnetic flux on this disk has not been disturbed, and so long as humans retain the appropriate size and speed disk drives, and so long as they have hardware controllers and software device drivers capable of reading the bits from this disk, and so long as they have access to the software that encoded the file structure, and character codes employed in the bit stream of this document, and so long as they can still find and recreate the computing environment necessary to run that software, and so long as they can still breathe or see, So long lives this... -------------------------------------------------------------------------