Nov 12, 2014

The news includes:

· The Guys have been named RootsTech 2015 Ambassadors for the upcoming conference on February 11-14, 2015, in Salt Lake City.

· RootsTech 2015 has announced two special speakers at the conference. They are:

o A. J. Jacobs, host of the World's Largest Family Reunion

o Donny Osmond, one of the biggest names in entertainment

· The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) is accepting applications for their Young Professional Scholarship 2015. The deadline is 23 November 2014. To obtain a copy of the application, contact APG Executive Director Kathleen W. Hinckley, CG, at admin@apgen.org.

· The Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (CAFG) is now accepting applications until Friday, 5 December 2014 for a $225 scholarship to the fourth Annual Forensic Genealogy Institute to be held 26-28 March 2015 in Dallas, Texas. Those wanting to apply for the scholarship but who have not yet registered for FGI can do so online at https://fgi2015.eventbrite.com before submitting their application.

· The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society announced the FGS 2017 National Conference to be held 30 August - 2 September 2017 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

· The Guild of One-Name Studies has announced the addition of several new services.

• MyHeritage has made several announcements:

o Millions of new record collections have been added to their offering and their Smart Matches facility makes finding matches to your family tree very simple.

o An enhanced family tree editor has been implemented that improves the process of adding people to your family tree, adding photos and videos, working with Smart Matches, and navigating the site.

o MyHeritage has announced an important new collaboration and product integration between MyHeritage and 23andMe, the DNA testing firm. This new agreement joins a previously announced collaboration between the company and Family Tree DNA.

o MyHeritage and EBSCO have partnered to launch an institutional version of its service, the MyHeritage Library Edition^TM. This partnership brings MyHeritage to libraries and educational institutions worldwide.

o FamilySearch has announced that the MyHeritage Library Edition^TM is now available for free at every FamilySearch Family History Center worldwide and at the Family History Library.

· WIkiTree.com has announced an important new feature for genealogists who have taken DNA tests with 23andMe, AncestryDNA, and Family Tree DNA.

· The British Newspaper Archive has announced that it has reached the milestone of digitizing 9 million newspaper pages, with 282 British and Irish newspaper titles online. These are accessible through the company's website and through findmypast.

· Findmypast has announced a major partnership with The Wall Street Journal's WSJ+ membership program. Members of WSJ+ can claim a complementary three-month subscription to findmypast.com as one of their benefits.

· The Indiana Commission on Public Records has approved a contract with Ancestry.com to digitize more than 13 million birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage records.

· Ancestry.com has just added 11 new databases to their American Indian collections, with a total of 3.2 million new records. They also have a new American Indian page from which you can search all the records.

· Ancestry.com has also launched 31 new German databases with 11.7 million records, consisting of civil registration records of births, marriages, and deaths from 1874 to 1954

· The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) has announced that the 2015 Excellence-in-Writing Competition is now open for entries through 15 July 2015. Information is available at http://www.isfhwe.org.

· FamilySearch and GenealogyBank announced an agreement to make over 1 billion records from historical obituary searchable online.

· Drew highlights the almost 4,000,000 indexed records that have been added by FamilySearch.

Listener email includes

· Jim discusses "the process" highlighted in one of The Guys' Down Under: Florida episodes on YouTube. He also thanks Drew for his response to a DNA question relating to a mystery in his genealogical research.

· Cheryl asks about the meaning of the letter A that appends the Social Security number on her great-grandfather's 1956 death certificate. The Guys respond that these are suffix letters used in conjunction with Medicare numbers to help designate whose Social Security record entitles a beneficiary to use the Medicare benefits. A chart is available at http://www.ncdoi.com/_Publications/Beneficiary%20Identification%20Codes_SNE1.pdf .

George continues his discussion of three more mobile genealogy apps:

· Family Tree History and Genealogy Coat of Arms of Last Names (iOS only)

• Atlas 2014 (Android only)
• National Geographic World Atlas (iOS only)

George reviews three new publications:

• The Surnames of Wales, Updated & Expanded by John and Sheila Rowlands. Published by Genealogical Publishing Company.
• North Carolina Genealogy Research , by Michael A. Ports. This is a new Genealogy At A Glance reference sheet published by Genealogical Publishing Company.
• A Weekend of Genealogy: Things to Know and Do Online and Offline by Margaret M. McMahon, Ph.D.

Drew discusses the RootsWeb Surname List at http://rsl.rootsweb.ancestry.com and why it is important to your research.

Drew shares an important Evernote tip.

George reports that the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa) was given an award by the Tampa Preservation, Inc., in recognition of its project collaborating with the University of South Florida to digitize, index, and make available for free online immigration records in Hillsborough County, Florida, dating from the 1890s and early 1900s.