I have had a VERY busy summer which has resulted in a very inactive blog. However, there have been several happenings in the genealogy world that I wanted to share. You may have already learned about some of these, but if not, check them out:

1. From the FGS Voice Website: “The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) and the National Park Service’s Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park announce a partnership to develop a searchable database of more than 130,000 soldiers of the U.S.-Mexican War…The database will allow descendants of U.S. soldiers to connect to their personal history and help Palo Alto commemorate and tell the stories of these soldiers. After the database is developed, unit histories, digitized documents, and information on U.S.-Mexican War soldiers will be added. Efforts will also be made to include names and information about Mexican soldiers in this war.” This is going to be another fantastic partnership from FGS for preserving records.

2. The Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) has partnered with Legacy Family Tree Webinars for their monthly webinar series. From the news release: “The Board for Certification of Genealogists and Legacy Family Tree Webinars are excited to announce a new partnership. Legacy, host of the webinar series at FamilyTreeWebinars.com, will now also serve as host, producer, and publisher for future BCG webinars. This arrangement will produce and promote high-quality education in genealogy standards and methodologies by one of the leading creators of genealogy webinars.” The first webinar under this new partnership will be “Another Kind of Navigation: GPS for Genealogy” presented by Shellee Morehead, Ph.D., CG on Tuesday August 16, 8pm Eastern and can be registered for at: http://familytreewebinars.com/webinar_details.php?webinar_id=477

3. PERSI (the PERidocial Source Index) has a new landing page on FindMyPast. From the PERSI webpage: “The Periodical Source Index enables you to easily locate key information about people and places. It contains over 2.5 million entries from thousands of historical, genealogical and ethnic publications, making it an invaluable, comprehensive family history resource.” PERSI is one of my favorite resources. I will be giving a lecture on the subject at the Association of Professional Genealogists Professional Management Conference September 22-24, 2016 at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

4. “Refining Internet and Digital Skills for Genealogy,” a new SLIG course being offered by Cyndi Ingle (of Cyndi’s List), is sure to be one of those courses you think you might not need but you really do. We all get really comfortable with our computers, and our data and research processing systems, but we don’t know what we don’t know about how to be better or more efficient researchers. From Cyndi’s List Facebook Page: “There are still some spots open for SLIG 2017, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. My course is, “Refining Internet and Digital Skills for Genealogy.” We will focus on getting your digital research organized, performing more productive searches online, locating records and repositories necessary to move your research forward, using tools that help you analyze data in your research, and the final output of your research efforts. If you’ve been spinning your wheels for a while and want to take full control over your computer, please join us in SLC next January. Sign up for the course here: http://slig.ugagenealogy.org.”