THE LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-BULLETIN FOR OCTOBER 2007 October 1, 2007 ======================================================= SUMMARY OF EVENTS FOR OCTOBER 2007 (See details on a later screen.) - Family Tree Maker Group: Thursday, October 4 - General Meeting: Tuesday, October 9 - The Master Genealogist: Saturday, October 20 - Study Group: Thursday, October 25 ======================================================= A N N O U N C E M E N T S Our Roots Tracer depends upon you, our members. The goal of our Tracer is to instruct, inspire and inform. We can do that if you will submit articles about your research, trips for genealogy, conferences you have attended, breakthroughs you have made. If you have read our Tracer, you can see that it involves what you have been doing with your own genealogy. Please share with us. Help us make a good publication. If you are not sure of your ability to write an article, please let us know and we can help you write it. Please communicate with us at mailto:tracer@L-AGS.org. The November issue of the Roots Tracer is now being compiled. Please let us know by October 15 that you will be submitting an article. Jane Southwick, Editor ======================================================= O C T O B E R M E E T I N G S Visitors are welcome free of charge at all of our meetings. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FAMILY TREE MAKER FOCUS GROUP Leader: Dick Finn at mailto:XXXX@wecare.net Date and Time: Thursday, October 4, 7:30 p.m. Always the first Thursday of the month. Place: We have moved rooms again. We are still in the back - check around - we will be looking for you also Almond Avenue School, 1401 Almond Avenue, Livermore Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Liv-AlmondSchool.html We will have a little more to say about FTM 2008/17 but most of our meeting will be devoted to helping each other in the use of FTM 2006/16 and earlier versions. Please bring your suggestions to better use FTM as well as any questions you have that we, as a group, can help solve. 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 mailto: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 (any version) and/or the FTM Handbook, you might bring them. Please avail yourself of the L-AGS FTM e-mail forum at mailto:ftm.group@L-AGS.org to post questions, answers and comments. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MONTHLY GENERAL MEETING Arleen Wood, 1st Vice President, Program mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2007 Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Pls-BethEmek.html Visitors are welcome at all of our meetings. Guest Speaker: Cath Madden Trindle Topic: But It's My Family: Copyright Issues for 21st Century This lecture offers a discussion of current US copyright law, international copyright, pending legislation and court actions and ethical issues of copying and sharing genealogical information electronically or in print. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP Leader: Kay Speaks, mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org Date: October 20, 2007 Time: 9:00 a.m. - Noon (each meeting is like a mini- workshop) Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html Formatted version of this announcement: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/TMG.doc Topic: Customizing Your Tags Instructors: Kay Speaks & Sue Johnston We continue with Terry Reigel's website tutorial on Customizing Your Tags, located at http://www.reigelridge.com/tmg/Tags.htm. TMG comes with a large number of Tag Types to record various events. The standard Tag groups deal with Name, Relationship, Marriage, Birth, Death and Other Events. TMG also comes with the option to create custom Tag Types. We will explore creating custom tags. Custom Tag examples could be Alt-Tags (dealing with conflicting dates and places which we discussed last month), Census Tag-Basic to enter all members of the household in one tag, or Census Tag-Expanded to list everyone in the Head of Household's narrative. There could be a Multiple Marriages Tag adding the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd labels, a Will Tag that includes the executor, heirs, and those "mentioned", or Miscellaneous Tags that might include research notes. As always, Sue will no doubt have some very useful customized tag types to share with attendees. If possible, please RSVP if you plan to attend the meeting, mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. About our meetings: With the aid of a digital projector, Kay and Sue work as an instructional team. We discuss, demonstrate, and brainstorm best practices of the software. We use a hands-on method, thus you learn TMG's features by actually entering samples of the lesson into a class TMG database. Each monthly session is like a mini three-hour TMG workshop. Guests are always welcome at our meetings. Accommodations for laptops are available. 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. A free demo version of the software can be downloaded at http://www.whollygenes.com. For additional information, contact mailto:tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STUDY GROUP MEETING Co-Leaders: Kay Speaks & Dick Finn mailto:study.group@l-ags.org Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007 Time: 7:30 p.m. - 9 p.m. Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Topic: Taking a look at Rootsweb.com using their new guide Learn about RootsWeb and how it can be used for genealogy research, http://www.rootsweb.com We will take a tour of the RootsWeb site, the world's largest free genealogy webiste. We will learn how to use the site's message boards, search databases effectively, connect with other users and in general use this valuable source to locate research resources. If you have a copy of the new RootsWeb Office Guide please bring it. We also ask all members to tell us of their favorite RootsWeb links. Have a brick wall that's driving your crazy? Need help brainstorming a particular research problem? Run out of ideas of where to research next? Have a great success story you want to share? How about a challenging research situation? Want to know how to research a specific ethnic group? Use the L-AGS Study Group Forum, mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org for sharing, helping, and brainstorming. That is what the L-AGS Study Group is all about! You can also post any suggestions for future Study Group topics. ======================================================= FUTURE GENERAL MEETINGS Arleen Wood, 1st Vice President, Program mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org ** October 9 -Cath Madden Trindle "But It's My Family: Copyright Issues for 21st Century" This lecture offers a discussion of current US copyright law, international copyright, pending legislation and court actions and ethical issues of copying and sharing genealogical information electronically or in print. ** November 13 - Shirley Reimer, "German Genealogy." Examine cultural and historical bases of ancestors' lives to gain clues to genealogical problems; to look into the many resources available for finding ancestors' often elusive place of origin in Germany ** December 11 - Mary Dillon - "101 Ranch Genealogy" - The 101 Ranch, considered to be the largest diversified ranch of the early 1900s, played a major part in her father's childhood in Oklahoma. Oil, Wild West shows, currency, and much more interesting "stuff" were part of the 101.