This week's news includes: condolences to the family of Chuck
Knuthson, a great genealogical speaker, researcher, and former
board member of FGS, GSG, and other organizations; Halvor
Moorshead, head of Moorshead Magazines [
Family Chronicle, History Magazine, Internet
Genealogy, and the new
Discovering Family History] is
retiring and has sold the company to staff members Ed Zapletal and
Rick Cree.
Listener e-mail includes: Greek genealogical research links are
available at Cyndi's List (at
http://www.cyndislist.com/greece.html)
and at Kimberly Powell's column at About.com (at
http://genealogy.about.com/od/greece);
a request for help reading an occupation on a 1920 census schedule
for Flint, Michigan, draws a unanimous opinion from The Guys
[Quarry]; thanks for suggestions for recording an interview with a
mother who transcribed contents of a now-lost Bible; an explanation
of the source for information used by a census enumerator to
complete a mortality schedule in the 1880 census; and a true life
story of backing up one's data.
Drew describes and discusses Mark Tucker's brilliant
Genealogy Research Process map and
textual description at
http://www.ThinkGenealogy.com.
It is derived from concepts of the
Board for Certification of
Genealogists and by Elizabeth Shown Mills, expert on the
genealogical proof standard and author of
Evidence Explained, the new and
definitive book concerning citation of genealogical evidence.
Drew discusses the use of dictionaries to locate the definitions of
older, more obscure terms found in historical and genealogical
documents. The example he cites is the term, "Fresno," a piece of
equipment once used for scraping road surfaces.
The Guys discuss databases for historical newspapers and more
recent (ca. 1980 to present) newspapers. The companies discussed
are
LexisNexis (the Nexis portion);
NewsBank's
"America's Genealogy Bank" database; and
ProQuest. Newspaper databases may be
available through your local public library and/or your local
college or university library. Drew discovered that sometimes the
newspapers available in a database inside the library are greater
in number than when you access the database remotely from outside
the library. This can be due to differences in licensing contracts.
George encourages listeners to check out all the databases
available through their libraries.