Capital District Genealogical Society (CDGS)

Last Saturday the 28th of October, I was invited to give a lecture in Albany at the Capital District Genealogical Society (CDGS,) the subject was on how to build a website and new wondrous data available on the Internet.

There was also a Computer Interest Group meeting that was held first that was led by Robert Plunz, where we learned of many new utilities and websites of interest for genealogists. Bob talked about and demonstrated how to download and install Microsoft's brand new Internet Explorer IE-7 which has just been released. He emphasised that before you run the install utility that you should run a good anti-virus, anti-spyware, and any other nuiscance elininator programs that you have to be sure your system is very clean before you do the install of IE-7.

Bob also demonstrated some neat websites such as www.heirloomslost.com, a free site where you can search for and list items that you would like to find to help you with your genealoogy. Some other good resources are www.yourpastconnections.com, www.fordnagle.com, and www.idreamof.com/lost.html. These are additional places to help you locate documents, books, bibles, and three dimensional heirlooms that might help flush out your family history research. He also gave a good explanation of SKYPE which is a free Internet telephone service, and he recommended "Internet Genealogy" magazine.

My lecture was an updated version of my Internet Genealogy program with special emphasis on how the Upstate New York Genealogy (UNYG) website at www.ny-genes.com was built and how it grew from a www.freewebs.com account with a few features to a very busy and better looking website by utilizing the expert help of website designers at www.s-go.net, who are recommended very highly if you have any ideas of growing your own.

Some of the newer sites that were also demonstrated were; www.newspaperARCHIVES.com with emphasis on the millions of papers that are already on-line and the thousands of pages that are aded every week, www.accessible.com which provides American County Histories to 1900, and GenealogyBank which is a brand new resource for finding unusual items that have been abstracted or digitized and will help everyone locate some new info that they would not noramlly have access to for their research. One other place to search for documents, photos, old letters, diaries and ephemera of all types that are offered for sale at www.ancestorville.com.

A good time was had by all.