This week's news includes: The North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) announces a workshop on 14 March 2009 with Craig Roberts Scott, CG, in New Bern, NC -- more information is available at the NCGS website at http://www.ncgenealogy.org/ (click the Calendar button); Science Daily has published an interesting article at this location; Tim Skinner, author of the Map My Ancestors program (http://www.familytreeassistant.com/), informs us that the program allows you to view your tree on Google Earth, Google Maps, and many GPS and SatNav devices; and Mike O'Laughlin has two new genealogy podcasts -- Irish Families enhanced podcast at http://www.irishroots.com/podcasten/rss.xml (free QuickTime player preferred) and Irish Roots Cafe video podcasts at http://www.irishroots.com/irishvideo/rss.xml (free iTunes player preferred).

This week's listener email includes: Marie found lots of Body/Bodi surnames in the FHL microfilm for Ottawa County, Ohio, birth records; Ian Towler shares information on another open source program, PhpGedView, at http://phpgedview.net/ that allows you to view and edit your genealogy on your website -- and Ian has shared the URL for his website (http://familytree.itowler.com/) that uses this program so that everyone can see what he was able to do with the software; and Michael Moore has begun a website and library called Bookscanned (at http://bookscanned.com/) which allows you to upload scanned pages of a book, such as a family history, and then he OCRs them, and then adds the image and the OCR text to a Web page -- and then a search engine can find the page; Scott tells us that (re: episode #159) that he maintains his family tree at Ancestry.com, and then downloads a GEDCOM file into his copy of RootsMagic genealogy software.

The Guys discuss Christmas traditions in their families and others over the years.

This week's news includes: Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, submitted his resignation to the President, effective 19 December 2008, citing health reasons for his decision; and FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) just completed digitizing its 25,000th book. (Visit http://www.familysearch.org and click on Search Records and then on Historical Records.)

This week's listener email includes: Rich discusses how he used Windows Home Server to back up his data, and how he was able to use it when his son's hard drive failed; he also shared another website at which a small program can be downloaded for free that allows you to locate and use special characters -- It is at SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars; Rollin wrote to clarify that support for adding GPS coordinates is available in the purchased Deluxe version of Legacy and not in the free Basic version; Rich in PA advised us that Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/) has added the great facility to link parents and children, and spouses, to records there (using the Find A Grave Memorial number at the bottom of the left-hand column); he also shares another social networking site for book lovers called Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/), similar to LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com); Claire shared an excellent census map resource at http://www.familyhistory101.com/map_census.html at which you will find maps for most U.S. states that you can use to see boundary changes for each of the census years; Tom shared a story from the Kansas City Star from 15 November 2008 [the story has been retired from their website] in which Linda K. Lewis was highlighted as having spent 5 years with volunteers documenting and photographing 40 of the 44 known cemeteries in Johnson County, KS -- and she has documented them all at http://cemetery.cottonhills.com/;  Tim asked for The Guys' opinions about using a genealogy database software program vs. Ancestry.com as a repository for his genealogy information; Rod in Australia shared an excellent interview from Australian Radio National regarding cousin marriage with Cathy Day, PhD researcher, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU -- listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2426440.htm or click on the link above.

We have a new microphone cable for the mixer this week, and we hope that alleviates the stereo cut out problems. We are also sending out our logo as album art.

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This week's news includes: Footnote.com announces a new Interactive World War II Collection; The Generations Network, owner of Ancestry.com and other companies, announces the appointment of Howard Hochhauser as the new CFO; Ancestry.com's first World Archives Project Collection, Wisconsin Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880, has been completed; The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced two new awards to recognize significant achievements in genealogy research, based on records from the National Archives, and eligible applicants must attend a U.S. college or university; the Arizona State Archives (http://www.lib.az.us/archives/) has moved into the new, $29M Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building in Phoenix; and the Ohio Genealogical Society (http://www.ogs.org/) has reached its $2.5M funding goal to construct a new 18,000 square foot library in Bellville, Ohio, with construction beginning in early 2009.

This week's listener email included: Brian asked if there are online church records available for Northern Ireland, and Drew suggested the Ulster Historical Foundation site at http://www.ancestryireland.com/, a pay site; Brian also has started a family site at MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com/) and was concerned about privacy -- Drew found that you can log in, set up your site, and specify that it is a) a public site, b) a private site (for invited persons only to access), or c) a mixed site that is a combination of public information and private information that you define; Mike had asked for help locating his great-grandfather in the census prior to his marriage; Gus provided an excellent link to a website that shows the keyboard equivalents for UTF-8 special characters, at http://www.typeart.com/special_characters.asp; Rollin advises us that Legacy Family Tree software allows the recording of GPS coordinates; Peter advises us that Brother's Keeper software also allows recording of GPS information; Karen shares information about the importance of using small, hometown newspapers in your research; Bill asks for help with linking to the podcast using a WiFi radio, and Drew suggested the use of Reciva.com (https://www.reciva.com/); Jack shared information about communities and church membership, and about another look at researching the information; Russ shares information about the destination of Episcopalian records for a church that closes; and Jonathan discusses the transformation of maiden names down through the generations.

Drew discusses DNA mailing lists: the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (http://www.isogg.org/) has a free monthly email newsletter, as well as other resources at its site; and RootsWeb's DNA-Newbie mailing list is available for free subscription at http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/DNA/DNA-NEWBIE.html.

Drew also explains how a DNA paternity test works.