====================================================================== LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR MAY May 1, 2001 ====================================================================== Meeting Reminder The Family Tree Maker group will meet this week. See details below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Angels Wanted! Don't fail to inspect the Wish List of CDs at: http://www.L-AGS.org/buy-wish.html to find those disks that you are willing to help buy for the L-AGS col- lection. A donor of at least 50% of the purchase price of a CD will have exclusive use of the CD for up to 60 days. ====================================================================== M A Y 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, May 3, 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. 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-XXX or XXXX@home.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING John Bryan, Acting Program Chairman Tuesday, May 8, 2001 - 7:30 PM Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 1886 College Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/college.html Speaker John Heyse Sacramento German Genealogical Society Title German Research: Finding the Church Records John is a genealogist who helps other researchers with their German research. He is a mentor for Bavaria and Palatinate for the Sacramento German Genealogical Society (SGGS). Their website is: http://www.sacgergensoc.org/ He usually attends SGGS meetings on the last Tuesday each month. The SGGS meetings are held at: St. Mark's Methodist Church, Lusk Drive & St. Mark's Way, Sacramento, CA John also is often found at the LDS Family History Center in Oakland on Friday mornings. He says "I'm not employed there, but I help people just the same." John writes: "I am from Valley Stream, NY. I was born in 1944 and am married with one daughter. I have a PhD. in Geochemistry from SUNY at Stony Brook and am a recently retired mineralogist from Chevron Corp. I have been engaged in genealogy research for over 25 years. I am experienced in records from Germany, of course, but also Italy, France, Russian Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia. I currently serve as SGGS Mentor for Pfalz and Bavaria." Gail and I heard John speak in January at the San Ramon Valley Genealogical Society. We certainly recommend him. His numerous trips to Germany make John an experienced German traveler and researcher. This earlier presentation began with the suggestion of trying to contact current German cousins to see what records and information they have. John mentioned using the current German telephone book on the Internet, Teleauskunft in English, French or German to help locate concentrations of your surnames. Our experience with European genealogy suggests that Church Records play an important roll in many countries there. The biggest differences may be the languages! History is important because German borders have changed frequently. 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 NO MEETING IN MAY Do you sometimes feel as if you are "running in place" in your genealogical research? Do you feel like you sometimes need that extra "boost" - like you are so close to finding that one special fact that will tie your ancestors together? Hit a brick wall - and feel you are at your wits end? Well, you are amongst friends. All of us feel these same emotions during our family research -- frustration, joy, hopefulness, as if you are standing in the lowest valley and then as though you could shout from the highest peak with joy. At times like these it always nice to be able to share your challenges and victories with fellow enthusiasts - other family historians and genealogists. The L-AGS Study Group is an informal meeting for just such researchers. We represent those who have spent many decades learning methods and techniques Š to those of us who are "newbies", just beginning our journey through the archives and old documents. We are just learning about the joys, and yes, frustrations of this wonderful lifelong hobby. One of the many things we have in common is the willingness to share and help others. We meet on the third Thursday of every month at the LDS Church, 950 Mocho, Livermore at 7:30 p.m. Please note, there will not be a meeting in May, as yours truly will be at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Portland, Oregon. However, I do hope you will mark us on your calendar for future meetings. So far this year we have discussed: Naming Patterns (January), On-line Census (February), Deciphering Old Handwriting (March), and Researching Female Ancestors (April). In June we will discuss the NGS Conference highlights and our topic "Posting An Effective Query". 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. 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 . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP Joyce Siason and Kay Speaks, Leaders mailto:tvtmg.chair@L-AGS.org Thursday, May 10, 2001 - 7:30 PM Always the second 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 Spring, the time for planting new things and watching them grow - the opportunity to add new color and style to your living environment. Have you considered doing the same thing to your genealogy software? Many of us have alternate genealogy software programs - we like the ease of entering data in a particular program, while another software program is that which most of the folks you share data with are using. Perhaps you are looking for more flexibility in report writing. Whatever the reason, The Master Genealogist (TMG) may be the alternate software for which you have been waiting. This is the software used by many professional genealogists. And remember, alternate programs can be used by transferring data between different packages using a GEDCOM file. Hit that brick wall and looking for something else to do? Why not join us at our second meeting for the Tri-Valley TMG Users Group. We meet every second Thursday of the month at 7:30 p.m., LDS Church, 950 Mocho, Livermore. We are a beginning TMG users group - literally starting from the very basics. The May meeting will be our second gathering, so what better time to join with us and learn this new genealogy software? Users with several years of experience have offered their assistance to those attending the meetings. With the use of a laptop and a digital projector, we are able to demonstrate techniques and answer questions. A free demo of the TMG software can be obtained from http://www.whollygenes.com/ Non-members of L-AGS are welcome. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER INTEREST GROUP Dick Finn, Group Leader Thursday, May 24, 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: Create Your Own Web page Instructors: L-AGS members with experience in Web design - - - - - By popular request, we will repeat the class from last year on building your own Internet Web page. This time the emphasis will be on the practical steps to getting a working personal Web page on your own server. Those who attend will be expected to do some homework in advance of the May 24th meeting, and to follow through with work at home after the meeting. L-AGS members experienced in Web authoring will be on tap for telephone consulting. Everyone who has an Internet Service Provider (ISP) almost certainly has Web server space available for no extra charge over the monthly fee. An exception may be some of the free accounts like Juno, Hotmail, etc. In addition, Family Tree Maker (and maybe other program publishers) offer free but limited Web space to owners of their program. Almost everyone probably has some Web authoring software also, whether they realize it or not. Netscape and Internet Explorer, the most popular browsers, have special sections devoted to creating Web sites. For Netscape, that part of the program is called "Netscape Composer." Web page creation software is bundled with most full strength word processors. In Microsoft Word, a button to launch that software is found on the opening "Gallery Page". Stand-alone programs like PageMill and FrontPage can also be purchased. Finally, Family Tree Maker 8.0 includes facilities for preparing a genealogical Web page. The homework asked of those who want to take the Web-building class is: * Find the instructions on your ISP's "customer support" pages for opening a Web server account. On @Home the URL is: http://www.attbroadband.com/support/answers/32_hostsite.html Follow those instruction to get your account opened. There should be NO charge for this account. You will be asked to create a password. Write the password down and don't lose it! If you have trouble with this process, contact tech support at the ISP, either by telephone or e-mail or chat. * Find the Web-authoring software that you probably already have. Play with it to examine the menus, the options, the Help file. Type in a sample sentence like "Roses are Red, ...", save it to your hard disk and open it in Netscape or Internet Explorer. Try changing the font size, color, type style, etc. L-AGS members (only) will be sent a list of members' e-mail addresses so that those with the same ISPs can try to help each other get set up with Web space. If you plan to attend the meeting on May 24, please send a message to: mailto:webmaster@L-AGS.org so that we can better tailor the meeting to expected needs. Questions should also be directed to this e-mail address. ====================================================================== 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. ======================================================================