CVGS Computer Group meeting today

In the computer group today, we were able to work in the Library Computer Lab rather than be stuck in the Conference Room, as scheduled. Shirley is out of town, so she loaned her projector to me, and I led the group today. Gary hooked up Shirley's projector to the Lab computer with the wireless keyboard and mouse controlled at the podium, so the group could see what the leader was doing online.

Of course, we couldn't get to Ancestry Library Edition for the first half hour (the library changed their web page and didn't include the Databases on the "home" page). We got that fixed...by the diligent library staff.

While we waited, I took the group to our Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe (http://cvgencafe.blogspot.com/) and also to my own blog, Genea-Musings (http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/) to demonstrate how easy it is to get information about web sites and answers to questions. One of the web sites I blogged about was the Get Grandpas FBI File at http://www.getgrandpasfbifile.com/form.php. I knew that member Dick would benefit from this, and thought others might also - especially if they had a "black sheep" ancestor or relative in the 20th century.

We were able to access Ancestry eventually, and we went to the Ancestry Card Catalog page - at http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/alldblist.aspx. On this page, you can use names, locations or key words to search for entries for your family searches. I demonstrated how to search for records on Ancestry from a certain county. Hopefully, that will be helpful to the attendees.

We also investigated some of the links at the web sites http://www.militaryindexes.com/ and http://www.genealogybranches.com/. I wrote a blog post on these at Genea-Musings today in anticipation of discussing it today at the meeting. The attendees were amazed at the organized way these records were presented, and overwhelmed by the amount of information.

Gary hooked the projector up to his laptop, and demonstrated some FamilyTreeMaker tasks that his "mentee" had asked about. We will do a lot more of this in our 3-session class in July.

One of the attendees asked about http://www.footnote.com/, and I showed their web site and did a few searches so people could get a feel for the interface. We then went to http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ and did the same. We discussed the different databases available and noted that both Footnote and WVR, plus several other sites, have partnered with LDS FamilySearch and will be available for free in the near future in the LDS FHL and FHCs.

I encouraged the attendees to read the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe and Genea-Musings blogs on a regular basis - weekly, or more often, so that they don't miss out on interesting and important genealogy news. You can sign up to receive email for every post on these blogs, you can read them using a reader (available on Yahoo, Google, etc.) or put them in your Favorites/Bookmarks and click on them on a regular basis. I have been double posting some articles - once on Genea-Musings, and then on the Genealogy Cafe, in order to broaden the coverage. Some of the posts also appear in the CVGS newsletter as space permits.