========================================================= Summary of Meetings for May 2005: · Family Tree Maker Group - May 5, 2005 - Review by Dick Finn · General Meeting - May 10, 2005 - Tri-Valley Heritage Families Project presented by Dick Finn · Second Annual Scottish Games and Celtic Festival - May 14 & 15, 2005 - at Robertson Park in Livermore · Study Group - May 19, 2005 - Finding Cousins: A DVD Tutorial presented by Ed Mason · The Master Genealogist Group - May 21, 2005 - Sources, Source Citation, Citation Detail, and Repository by Kay Speaks & Sue Johnston (AM & PM!) ========================================================= The Second Annual Livermore Scottish Games and Celtic Festival will be held Saturday, May 14th and Sunday May 15th, 2005, at Robertson Part in Livermore on the Livermore Rodeo site (between Arroyo Road and Concannon Boulevard). Gates open at 10 AM. Admission will be $ 12 for adults and $ 8 for persons age 12 and under and 65 years and over. Parking will be $ 5 per vehicle. Advance tickets are available at a small discount on the Games website at www.livermoregames.com. L-AGS is scheduled to have a display. Please contact Dick Finn at (XXXX@wecare.net) or [925-XXX-XXXX] or Leo Vongottfried (XXXX@earthlink.net) or [925-XXX-XXXX] for more details. (Some information "stolen from" The Independent - Spring issue) ============================================================== FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Date and Time: Thursday, May 5, 2005 - 7:30 PM Leader: Dick Finn at XXXX@wecare.net Location: Ed Rundstrom Learning Center, Room 8, 543 Sonoma Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Liv-SonomaSchool.html Topic: Review of some of the topics we have covered this last year. Also, a chance to bring up your FTM questions. This will be our last FTM meeting until school starts again in the fall. Please watch your email for a new place when we meet again in September. Also, we will have door prizes at our May meeting. Come and see what you did/might have won. The L-AGS Family Tree Maker (FTM) Focus Group meets (during the school year) the first Thursday of the month at 7:30 at the Ed Rundstrom Learning Center (formerly the Sonoma Avenue School), Room 8, 543 Sonoma Ave., Livermore. URL for a map to the school: http://www.l-ags.org/sonoma.html. Most of our group are FTM users (from beginners to experts) who discuss problems and solutions, share successes, answer questions, and in general help each other with the Family Tree Maker genealogical software. All persons interested or potentially interested in Family Tree Maker are invited to attend. For information on our group please call Dick Finn at 925-XXX-XXXX or e-mail him at XXXX@wecare.net. Contact Dick for information about topics to be discussed. Visitors are welcome and there is no charge to attend. Bring your questions, comments, and if you have a laptop with FTM loaded and/or the FTM Handbook you might bring them also. &&& General Meeting Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: Congregation Beth Emek 3400 Nevada Court Pleasanton Topic: Tri-Valley Heritage Families Project Speaker: Richard (Dick) Finn What Valley family was involved with the Donners in the murderous winter of 1846? What Valley family was killed in the most deadly U.S. avalanche? What Valley cemetery was partly washed away in a flood? What Valley pioneer had a city, county, and high school named after him? What Valley pioneer had a store and road named after him? What Valley pioneer was killed over a chicken? These are just a few of the questions raised as we research Tri-Valley Heritage Families - families that were in the Tri-Valley area before about 1910. Dick will share the answers to these and many more questions as he talks about the new Heritage Families Project and some of the very interesting things that have been found about Valley families. The Tri-Valley History Council, has embarked on this new project that we believe will be of potentially great benefit to all Valley history centers, genealogical groups, museums, libraries, historians, and other interested researchers. We are collecting data on pioneer families of the Amador, Livermore, and San Ramon valleys. We are generating a database of information to share with local libraries, museums, and genealogical societies. Retired as manager of Integrated Design Services and Engineering Information Management, after 37 years, at Sandia National Laboratories/California. Adjunct faculty member of Chabot and Las Positas Colleges since 1986. Served on four community college advisory committees as well as high school and Regional Occupational Program committees. Past president of the Alameda County 4H council. Judge at local, county and the state fairs since 1977. Past president of the Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society. &&& Study Group Date: Thursday, May 19, 2005 Time: 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map of meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Topic: Finding Cousins: A DVD Tutorial Presenter: Ed Mason, Member of L-AGS, retired owner of computer business Ed will show a 20-minute DVD documenting a successful genealogy research trip to ancestral hometowns in Michigan. The theme is, "How to find cousins, and benefit from finding them." This is a tightly-edited high-tech diary using a whole bag of tricks: video of the computer screen as he conducts Internet searches; video interviews with cousins; descendant charts marked up John Madden-style; maps showing his trail as he criss-crosses Michigan; copies of newspaper stories about a tragic event in the family; photos of ancestral homes and businesses; and samples from the troves of old photographs uncovered during the trip. Ed will be available to discuss his research techniques and his techniques in making the disk. Ed graduated from Princeton with a BSE in aeronautical engineering and from Harvard with an MBA. He spent his career in electronics and computers, recently turning over his manufacturer's representative business to his two sons. He started genealogy in 1981 and joined L-AGS in 1999. &&& Tri-Valley TMG Users Group Special Afternoon Personal Data Entry Session! Focusing on Birth, Marriage, Death and Burial data entry. Date: Saturday, May 21, 2005 (Third Saturday of the month) Time: Regular Meeting: 9:00 a.m. - 11:45 a.m. Lunch Break: 11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Data Entry: 12:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. approx. Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html Leader: Kay Speaks, mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org Subject: Sources, Source Citation, Citation Detail, and Repository Instructors: Kay Speaks & Sue Johnston We continue with Chapter 7 of Leo Hoffman's Getting the Most Out of the Master Genealogist - Sources by Jim Byram. Mr. Byram states, "Next to collecting data in your genealogical research, the second most important task is to document the origins of your data. The primary value of documenting your data is to provide a record that can be passed on to others and that will allow your readers or other researchers to reconstruct your research process by being able to review the data that you used. In addition, the quality of your source documentation facilitates your own research by allowing you to review and reconsider your own work and by giving you a tool to analyze the value of the data obtained from a particular source. First time users of TMG are confused by sources and source citations. We will review Sources, Source Citation, Citation Detail, and Repository. Assignment (if you have the time): · Read Chapter 7 - Sources (if you don't have time, read the summary located at http://www.whollygenes.com/images/GMOTMG%20Ch07.pdf. We encourage you to read the chapter, as there is a lot of very worthwhile information you need to understand. · Source assignment for our meeting will be sent to the Tri-Valley TMG Users Group mail list. The afternoon session will include a brief review of birth, marriage, death and burial events. The rest of the afternoon session will be used to enter your personal data into your family research projects. Be certain to bring your records. With the aid of a digital projector, Kay and Sue work as a team. We discuss, demonstrate, and brainstorm best practices of the software. We use a hands-on method to learn TMG's features by actually entering samples of the lesson into TMG are a class database. Guests are always welcome at our meetings. Accommodation for laptops will be available. If you have a laptop, bring it with you to the meeting. A new feature of our teaching sessions is the ability to connect up to eight laptops to the digital projector so that attendees can also share their ideas and projects. A laptop is not a requirement, as the lesson will be projected. If you can't stay for the entire 3 hours, come and leave early. TMG questions not specific to all attendees will be addressed in the later part of our meeting. Please bring samples of your problem if possible. We hope to see you at this month's meeting! TMG Version 6.0 is now available as an upgrade to the software and is the version used at our meetings. You can find out what's new in 6.0, purchase the upgrade, and download the new users manual at http://www.whollygenes.com/tmg.htm. The manual is a large file and can be a lengthy download, depending on our ISP connection. By request, we will have a copy of the manual available on CD for those attending the meeting. A free demo version of the software can be downloaded at http://www.whollygenes.com. For additional information contact tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. Any genealogy software will help you organize your family history, but TMG stands out for its ability to record every detail, properly cite many kinds of sources, track your correspondence, maintain a research log, and produce the most professional books." - Family Tree Magazine, January, 2005 &&& Tentative L-AGS General Meeting Schedule for 2005 L-AGS 2005 General Meeting Programs Barbara Huber, Program Chairperson Date Topic Presenter May 10, 2005 Heritage Families Project Dick Finn June 14, 2005 Harlan Family History Bill Harlan July 12, 2005 Lists, Indexes and Special Collections Cath Madden Trindle August 9, 2005 Mayflower Presentation Don Dickenson September 13, 2005 Tombstones Linda Garrett October 11, 2005 Research Facilities in the Golden State Chick Knuthson November 8, 2005 Research at the Pleasanton Library Frank Geasa December 13, 2005 101 Ranch Genealogy Mary Dillon _____________________________________________________________________________