GRIP: Day 2

Another early start today (Tuesday) for breakfast and catching up online.  Our first session today was on German church records.  John discussed how church records brought the common man out of obscurity.  Prior to these, you can only research nobility or the winners of history.  With local parish records, every person has a name and a spot in the past.  These are the records that will help you put together families and the joining of families (through marriage).  They are the most important record group for German research.

After our church record introduction it was time to learn to read said records.  The Germans used Gothic script, which is what has kept me from ordering parish records from the villages I have identified as my ancestral home.  After a couple hours of reading words and paragraphs with his Gothic script font, I was a parish reading rock star.  Then came the copies of actual parish registers after lunch and it was like I had never seen these characters before.  As with anything, this will be a skill I learn in a slow and steady manner.  I intend to practice as much as possible on films from the FHL when I get back to Syracuse.

After dinner tonight, I purchased my pile of books which will make for some interesting reading for German research and narrative writing.  Then I headed to Rick and Pamela Boyer Sayre’s lecture on Google Earth for Genealogists: The Sequel.  This was one of the lectures I was not able to attend at the NGS conference, so it was nice to have a second chance.  I am amazed by all that you can create with Google Earth and all of the ways it can help in your research.  I have to admit that it is not a program I use frequently, but I will be ordering some introductory books on it when I get home.  The Sayre’s will be teaching a course on advanced land records at the 2013 GRIP which I am told is fantastic.  Deciding which course to take next year is going to be tough.

The lecture ended at 8:30 and after dropping off my belongings I took a walk around campus.  La Roche is a beautiful campus surrounded by the woods.  They have large statues of the Stations of the Cross that lead down a gravel path toward the woods which ends at a cemetery.  Since it was late, I did not make it all the way to the cemetery, but I plan on wandering around it tomorrow.  Only a genealogical institute would have attendees excited by a cemetery on the grounds.

Our lectures Wednesday will be the Pennsylvania Germans, finding places of origin in Germany and typefaces, published sources and German-American newspapers.  At night there is a public lecture on Pennsylvania Research, which I may not attend due to my lack of Pennsylvanian ancestry.  I do have a great-great uncle who randomly got married in Scranton, however, so maybe they can tell me why (he and his wife were from and living in Buffalo).

Upload any Document Type to Google Docs!

Google Docs now allows any type of document to be uploaded! After seeing this announcement I tried to upload my Gedcom and it does indeed work. This is one more place I recommend you back-up your data each month!

Google Personalized Results

Google has become tremendously important to genealogists.  Some, such as myself, use their blogging platform to share their research.  Others use Google alerts to stay on top of what others are posting about their surnames.  Many more use the search function to try to find ancestors, research help and a multitude of other items.

Over the past month, you may have noticed a difference in your searches.  If once a week you search for your surname, the same sights now seem to be at the top of the list and genealogy sites seem to be a majority of the hits you receive.  It almost seems as if the Google search bar now knows who you are and creates personalized results.

Indeed, this is now the case.  In December, in an uncharacteristicly quiet move, Google launched a new personalized search result tool.  When signed into Google, they now keep the information you searched for 180 days.  If they notice you view the links for RootsWeb ofter, other RootsWeb links will then get more weight in the search logarithm.  What does this mean for genealogists?  It can be both a help and a hindrance.  By "knowing" that you often search for genealogy related items, it will push those items to the top of your list.  I have found the problem that it keeps putting the same sites to the top of my search list, making it more difficult to find new sites that may have information for me.

This is the wave of the future for the internet.  If you do not like it, however, there is an option to opt-out of this personalized searching.  Follow the instructions posted here.