Tuesday’s Tip – Use the Genealogy Digital Bookshelf
19 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Education, Writing Tags: DuPage County Illinois, genealogy, genealogy blogging, genealogy books, Woodridge Illinois
Want to grow your family story? Have you used the Internet Archive and found it difficult to use or lost what you once found? Try using a new website called Genealogy Digital Bookshelf instead!
This is a new website created by Taneya Y. Koonce. It categorizes genealogy books found at the Internet Archive by state and counties within general topic areas. General areas include Biographies, Cemeteries, Directories, Families, Military and Vital Records, just to name a few.
To use the site you can click on a topic area to see what books are indexed. I looked for resources on Chicago. Clicking “Biographies” will list several resources for Illinois and Chicago like Who’s Who in Chicago. You can also enter a search term into the search box above the general topic areas. Entering “Chicago” as a search term brings up two general topic areas where books can be found, Biography and History.
The Genealogy Digital Bookshelf can be used for more than Chicago research as all states, except North Carolina are represented somewhere in the site. North Carolina has its own site.
Want more information? You can follow Taneya on Twitter. The site is continually being updated so check it out often.
Activity: Conduct an Interview
24 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized, Writing Tags: ancestor, ancestry, family, family history, family tree, genealogy, researching family history, writing family history
Now that you have begun gathering information on your family, it is time to do a little writing. The best place to start is with your parents. Here are a few questions to get you going. After you conduct the interview, write up a short story about what you learned.
- What is your full name?
- When and where were you born? What hospital?
- What are your parents names?
- When and where were they born?
- When were they married?
- When did you get married?
- What schools did you attend growing up?
- What was your favorite subject?
- Where did you live growing up?
- Did you go to college? Where? What did you study?
- What are the names of your siblings?
- What are their birth dates? Who did they marry and when?
- What is your occupation?
- What did your parents do for a living?
- Did your parents go to college?
- Are you right or left-handed?
- What color are your eyes?
- What color is your hair?
- What about your parents eye color?
- If you are interviewing your mom, ask her what her maiden name was.
After the interview is over, write a short story about your parents’ lives. This is the beginning of the story of your family.
