THE LIVERMORE-AMADOR GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY E-MAIL BULLETIN FOR FEBRUARY 2008 February 2, 2008 ======================================================= SUMMARY OF EVENTS FOR FEBRUARY 2008 (See details on a later screen.) - Family Tree Maker Group: Thursday, February 7 - General Meeting: Tuesday, February 12 - The Master Genealogist: Saturday, February 16 - L-AGS Board Meeting: Tuesday, February 26 - Study Group: Thursday, February 28 ======================================================= A N N O U N C E M E N T S PROGRAMS FOR 2008 GENERAL MEETINGS Arleen Wood, First Vice President, Programs See a formatted version of this announcement at: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/program_calendar_08.doc See also details of the February program in the full announcement below, and details of the March program at the end of this bulletin. We have been fortunate to get a calendar of excellent speakers for 2008. The programs are held at our regular meetings on the second Tuesday of each month. Meetings are open to the public at 7:30 p.m. at the Congregation Beth Emek, 3400 Nevada Court, Pleasanton. Visitors are welcome, admission free. Date Topic Presenter ----------------------------------------------------- February 12 Ancestry: Review and What's New Kay Speaks March 11 Tradition and Tradition Breakers: One Korean Family Lineage, 720 A.D.-1955 Hildi Kang April 8 Detecting the Date of Historical Photographs Ron Willis May 13 Tri-Valley Civil War Veterans-What an Interesting Group They Were Dick Finn June 10 WPA Depression Era Jobs Turn into Great Gifts for Genealogists Pamela Dallas July 8 Using Maps in Genealogy Marcia Murray Holstrom August 12 Scandinavian Research Mel Stephensen September 9 Familysearch.org (Tentative) Marge Bell October 14 The Five Civilized Tribes of South- eastern United States Taffy Couts November 11 An American Story - The History of Abram Bradbury Lowell and His Family David Lowell December 9 (To be announced) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GENEALOGY AT LOS POSITAS COLLEGE Watch for a special announcement with details. A course in Advanced Genealogy is being taught by Sue Johnston at Las Positas College. The dates are March 8, 15, 22, April 26, May 3, 10. The hours are 10 AM to 12 Noon. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES FOR FREE Prices are going up for online genealogy databases that require a fee. There are alternatives: visit a local library or a local Mormon Family History Center. All have free access to for-pay online databases. The Pleasanton and Livermore Libraries allow access to some databases from home, if you obtain a free library card. Most libraries also offer many general purpose databases that are of use to genealogists. Here is a summary: ----- Pleasanton Library: Two-line URL (copy and paste to "Go" in your browser) http://www.ci.pleasanton.ca.us/services/ library/lib-genealogy.html Ancestry.com (Library version) (in-library use only) Heritage Quest (available online at home) New England Historic Genealogical Society (in-library use only) ----- Livermore Library http://www.ci.livermore.ca.us/library/eresources.html Ancestry.com (Library version) (available online at home) Heritage Quest (available online at home) ----- Mocho LDS FHC (all for use in the Center only) Ancestry.com (Limited version) Family Link Footnote.com Godfrey Memorial Library Heritage Quest World Vital Records Genlink ----- Alameda County Library System Three-line URL (copy and paste to "Go" in your browser) http://www.aclibrary.org:80/research/ default.asp?topic=Research&cat= GenealogyFamilyHistory Dublin, Castro Valley, and many other libraries are a part of this system. Ancestry.com (Library version) (in-library use only) Heritage Quest (in-library use only) ======================================================= F E B R U A R Y 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 Date and Time: Thursday, February 7, 7:30 p.m. Always the first Thursday of the month. Place: Old Almond Ave. School, now called Vineyard Adult Education Facility, at 1401 Almond Avenue, Livermore. As you face Almond Ave. Drive into the back parking lot. We are in the building to the right in the front complex, room 5. Look for the FTM sign. Map to the meeting site: http://www.L-AGS.org/maps/Liv-AlmondSchool.html The meeting will be devoted to answering questions about FTM 2006/16. However we will talk a bit about the new FTM 2008. We are very interested in comments from members who are using FTM 2008. 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 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 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 For a formatted version of this announcement, see: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/february_program_08.doc Date: Tuesday, February 12, 2008, 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 Free admission, visitors are welcome! Guest Speaker: Kay Speaks L-AGS Member, Study Group and TMG Group Leader Topic: Ancestry.com: Review and What's New Many new features and changes have occurred on the Ancestry.com Web site. We will review these new features and recent changes. Kay will also discuss how Ancestry's software uses "exact" or "fuzzy" search technology to make your results more applicable to your research. We'll also talk about Ancestry blog sites and much more. Kay Speaks Biography When twelve, Kay would type her Irish grandmother's genealogy research letters. However, she began actively researching her family's genealogy ten years ago. Since joining L-AGS in 1999, she has been the chair and/or co-chair of the Study Group and The Master Genealogist group. She also chaired our recent L-AGS and Livermore LDS church sponsored seminar featuring Stephen Morse and our own Susan Johnston. As with many L-AGS' members, she is a member of various local, state and national genealogy or historical societies. She also supports the Chinese Historical Society of America and the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. She has lectured and exhibited her family genealogy at genealogy societies, historical societies and county fairs. Kay has always worked in a corporate environment-as a corporate controller, a Director of Information Technology, and is now the Corporate Information Technology Manager for Leisure Sports based out of Pleasanton. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TRI-VALLEY TMG USERS GROUP The Master Genealogist Software Date: Saturday, February 16, 2008 Time: 9:00 a.m. - Noon Location: 7077 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 110, Pleasanton, CA 94566 Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Pls-KollCenter.html A formatted version of this announcement is at: http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/TMG_February_08.doc Leader: Kay Speaks, tvtmg.chair@l-ags.org Instructors: Kay Speaks and Sue Johnston Topic: Copying or Moving People Between Data Sets Note: In February we will continue to use TMG Version 6.12, even though Version 7 is now available to download. The February meeting topic will be "Copying or Moving People Between Data Sets," from Terry's TMG Tips: http://tmg.reigelridge.com/copy-move.htm. In TMG, Projects may contain many separate Data Sets. You can copy or move people from one Data Set to another. When using the Move option, caution and care should be taken to prevent corruption of data which could result in a permanent loss. Most of our session will be focused on copying people from on Data Set to another. When you copy people between Data Sets TMG must undertake a highly complex process accounting for copying not only the person with all their attached tags and sources, but also deal with potentially dissimilar Tag Types, Source definitions, Source Types, and Source Elements, among other issues. The user is more likely to obtain the intended result if he or she has a working understanding of some of the issues involved. 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 using a hands-on method. We learn TMG's features by actually entering samples of the lesson into a TMG class 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 have a laptop, bring it with you to the meeting. A copy of the group's practice database will be provided to you. A laptop is not a requirement as the lesson will be digitally 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 the next 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. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STUDY GROUP MEETING Leader: Kay Speaks Contact Mail: study.group@l-ags.org Date: Thursday, February 28, 2008 Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM Location: LDS Church, 950 Mocho Street, Livermore, CA Map to the meeting site: http://www.l-ags.org/maps/Liv-FHC.html Topic to be announced - watch for an e-mail announcement Don't forget to use our L-AGS Study Group forum for any genealogy topic discussion or computer interest questions. L-AGS is blessed with people willing to share their knowledge and expertise! E-mail the forum at: mailto:study.group@L-AGS.org. You can also post suggestions for future Study Group topics. ======================================================= MARCH GENERAL MEETING Arleen Wood, First Vice President, Program mailto:program.chair@L-AGS.org A formatted version of this announcement can be found at http://www.L-AGS.org/temp/march_program_08.doc Date: March 11 Topic: "Tradition and Tradition Breakers: One Korean Family Lineage, 720 A.D.-1955" Presenter: Hildi Kang, Retired Livermore Special Ed Teacher, Author, Lecturer Korean lineage records are among the oldest and most complete in the world, and after years of research exploring the records in general and her husband's family records in particular, Hildi completed a book on the results. Her talk, based on the book, will present highlights from the three separate threads of the research: the history of the records themselves, translation of the 39 generations of direct ancestors, and the Korean history that interacted with those ancestors.