Did You Know?" A New Series for The Family History Guide's Facebook Page

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Our CEO, Bob Taylor, is a constant source of information and inspiration at The Family History Guide.  He has such a vision of what we all need to get the work done in family history and genealogy.  He knows the questions we seek answers for and he diligently and regularly answers them for us in his programing and writings.  

One of his greatest talents is teaching sequentially and in a language we can all understand.  Remember the old booklet type manuals you would get on the "how to" instructions of a purchase? Were they ever easy or did they just flow for you?  They never did flow for me.  Who wrote that stuff?  People that didn't speak my language and that couldn't bring it down to a viable level for a novice about the product.  Bob is the antithesis of that.  He is a brilliant program developer with an incredible insight into what we need. He speaks the language of family history in an easy to understand and organized way. if you have program questions you can easily access a staff member or comment on your questions on social media and get a very quick response.

He writes great blog posts weekly and has recently started a few new series on Facebook.  

This is a sample of what he's doing for us now.  4 Questions with 4 Answers. These questions are about the Country Pages  https://www.thefhguide.com/countries.html

These short "Did You Know?" Posts on the Facebook page  are coming out about once a week now. Remember you need a Facebook account to access this.  If you don't have one go to facebook.com and follow the instructions.  I can add them here as I have this time, if that works for those of you that want that.  Just let me know in the comments section.

"DID YOU KNOW ... #10

Country Pages Q&A

Q1. Where can I find country pages in The Family History Guide for doing research?

A1: The most obvious place is to use the Countries menu. The "All Countries" entry at the top (https://www.thefhguide.com/countries.html) takes you to the main Countries page, while other entries in the menu take you to continents with their sets of countries.

Q2: Does the Countries page list all the countries that The Family History Guide references?

A2: No, some of the countries are in "collector" pages, such as Eastern Europe Misc., So. America Misc., etc. Countries that don't have enough Goals and Choices in The Family History Guide are listed in these collector pages. For example, So. America Misc. includes Goals (but not Projects) for Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Q3: What about other countries that aren't listed in the Countries page or in collector pages?

A3: In some cases you can find QUIKLinks for these countries at the end of collector pages. For example, at the bottom of So. America Misc. you'll see QUIKLinks to record collections for Bolivia and Paraguay, countries not included in the collector page. If a country has no page or QUIKLinks, it's because there aren't enough available records or research links for the country. This is the case in much of Africa and Asia, where record sources are scarce. As more information becomes available, we'll add the country to The Family History Guide as appropriate.

Q4: Where else can I find country links in The Family History Guide?

A4: Two places in the Intro menu: Topics, and Site Map. These pages list country links alphabetically, which may be helpful if you're not sure of which continent a country belongs to. Also, countries that are part of collector pages are listed individually in Topics and Site Map, for easy reference."

I love the way these four questions simplify and clarify what can be found on the Country Pages of the Family History Guide.  I hope you will too.  If you have never checked out a Country Page, they are found on the Homepage of the Family History Guide.  Click on the first link on the top of this post on the left side of  the page. Click on the United States and choose a state.  It opens with a beautiful banner photo.  Scroll down and see what you can access from the page.  After you see all of that  as you scroll down, you can also go up to the banner at the top and click on it and it will even take you to the Wikipedia page for that locality as well.  It's just amazing!  It would be a great way to plan a family history trip in advance.  

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Learning The Basics of Family History and Genealogy Part 2-September 1, 2017

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If you happened to miss Part 1 you can find it here.  I'm preparing my strategy for helping Scott through his next few visits to our Family Search Library.   He is a bright man, and he has made a commitment to keep coming to the library each week to learn more.  Adding those things to his technological skills on the computer, he has some very good elements going forward to proceed and be successful.  His success with The Family History Guide last week has established his confidence in it and the likelihood that he will continue to look there for solutions and answers to his questions in the future.

The thing that holds him back now is that he needs to acquire a firm foundation in the basics of Family History. So the first place we are going to go next Tuesday is the Home page of The Family History Guide. www.thefhguide.com He'll then click on the For Beginners link. He can skip the first section on Computer Basics because he doesn't need it. http://thefhguide.com/begin.html   

The first thing I will show him is where he can find the various Glossaries of terminology that he will need to know at some point in his genealogical work.  There is a really cool entry on how to determine relationships.  The things like great and grand designations and 1st and 2nd cousins and how "removed" fits in with that. There is also a choice to learn about acronyms and abbreviations.  Of course he doesn't have to learn it all at once, but he should know where to find it for when the need arises.  I'll suggest that he take a few notes as we talk and work together.  

Further down on the page there are choices for learning various aspects of getting started.  Some are videos and some are articles.  I looked through several of them but will just feature one with Scott that I thought was great.  It is called Getting Started with Genealogy On The Web. It is the 5th selection on the list. It contains several links to things he can learn about if he doesn't already know them.

https://www.vodien.com/blog/education/getting-started-genealogy-web.php  

If I feel it is too advanced for him as we are actually talking I can switch to another one at the time.  In this way I can customize my approach to his needs the more I discover about him.

I'll also point out to him that there is more information in the Vault which is a black link on the page up near the top and slightly to the right.  In the Vault there are also other videos and links considered secondary to what is on the Beginner page.

And one last thing to note on this page, up on the top to the left is a link that takes you to videos that had been translated into various languages that pertain to getting started.  

Whether you are a trainer or a learner or both, I hope these ideas will assist you in what you desire to accomplish. I love that when I use The Family History Guide I can work with a patron without overwhelming them with a bunch of information they are not ready for yet.  We don't want to discourage anyone. We want their experience to include some successes right away.  That is why I like to be guided by the Family History Guide as I go.  I want Scott to keep coming back because he is enjoying the process and making progress.

Learning the Basics of Family History and Genealogy Part 1-August 31, 2017

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This past couple weeks I have had an interesting experience with a patron coming into our Family Search Library.  He lives out of the Bay Area but is working here on a temporary assignment.  He decided he'd come in once a week on our shift and work while he's away from home. 

He is a fairly young man and very proficient on the computer. 
He had been on Family Search/Family Tree before and was quite excited about all his lines going back to the 1700s. He wanted to start with the end of one of his lines and move back in time adding names.  I realized he was a true beginner in Family History at that point. 

We discussed several of the basics, got him signed up for his accounts with the Partner sights and I gave him some basic information about verifying each generation with attached sources.  He'd need do that to even know if he was connected to any of those many many names on the tree.

If all that panned out he would then have some credible information to go on to search for the missing names for his next generation.  It was a pretty common first session with him.  I gave him my card with The Family History Guide website <www.thefhguide.com> on it.

The other night when Scott came back he sat down and felt he was all ready to dive in and find a death record and a marriage record for a deceased relative.  I let him get started and kept an eye on him.  I could see he was getting pretty frustrated as his fingers flew over the keyboard he was not finding what he wanted.  I asked him if he has looked at the Family History Guide.  Nope, he had forgotten.  

So we opened The Family History Guide together.  We went to Project 9, found the state he needed.  He found his records and got an inkling that is a little more complex then Googling.  It was going to take a little more time and patience. But he also realized it is doable with the proper tools like The Family History Guide, The Family Search Research Wiki, etc. By the end of the evening he was attaching sources to his grandparents and using the Partner sites along with Family Search records to get the job done. His computer skills just helped him move along so fast once he got some basics.  I am pretty excited about him as I think he will take the Family History Guide back to his home town and share it with others.

Tomorrow I will be posting about the recently brought forward section on the home page  For Beginners.  I am going to point this out to, Scott, next week and have him start going though some of the things I'll be featuring tomorrow.

The most fantastic thing with the Family History Guide is it can move you along so fast by just giving it a try.  The learning potential is all there. But you have to put your hands on it.  (I wonder how many times a week I say this to people?) LOL!   So we'll take a look at the basics tomorrow!  Make it a good day everyone!