Press Release

IAJGS Virtual Conference 2020

Sorry that we didn’t send this notice out sooner, but IAJGS is doing its conference virtually this year and it’s this week.

This year, there are some live lectures and there’s an on demand library. So even if you sign up late, all the live lectures ought to be available on demand at some time after they have concluded.

But there’s a bonus free part of the conference. SIG and BOF meetings are free, as well as the JewishGen annual presentation and the IAJGS annual meeting. The SIG and BOF schedule is online here.

What are SIGs and BOFs? Special Interest Groups and Birds of a Feather. This is how we divide ourselves by the regions our families came from. Most Jewish American researchers will find themselves in multiple groups. These groups work to obtain and index records mostly, but may also help with coordinating research trips, recommending local researchers, or more, focusing on just their area of the world. SIGs are bigger geographical areas and BOFs often fit into specific SIGs, but work in smaller areas.

Visit iajgs2020.org to sign up. You will need to register for the free sessions, or you could pay for the full conference. Again, you’ve missed the first day already, but there are three more days to go. The SIG meetings are being recorded, so they may be available on demand at some point too.

Call To Meeting

Call to Virtual Meeting – 20 July

We’re sorry that last month’s meeting planning slipped through the cracks, but we’re still here and having a meeting on Monday, July 20 at 6:30pm.

Our speaker will be Brian Podoll and his presentation is “Other German Record Sources, Beyond the Vitals”.

We use GoToWebinar. All attendees will need to register online before the event. The webinar will show two hours’ length, but we’re generally finished around one.

See you there.

Call To Meeting

Call to Virtual Meeting – May 18

It’s time for another UJGS meeting, on May 18 at 6:30pm.

With so many of us trying to research from home, we’re going to have a virtual question and answer session.

The experts in our society will try to answer any questions you may have. You can ask questions during the meeting, but if you have some questions ready, please send them in advance.

You will need to register for the webinar. Please visit the registration page before our session is set to begin so you can join us.

See you there.

Press Release

One Webinar A Day Extended To May

Last month, we told you that Legacy Family Tree Webinars were offering one webinar a day for free from their catalog. They have extended that to May.

The schedule can be found on their web site.

They provide a list for the month, followed by a list by topic. Each day of the week has a different topic.

Sunday: Methodology
Monday: DNA
Tuesday: Ethnic Genealogy (May 19 and 26 are Jewish)
Wednesday: TechZone
Thursday: Around The Globe
Friday: Beginners
Saturday: Technology

This is your chance to watch some of the older webinars that you missed the first time, or to rewatch and refresh your memory. They also have upcoming live webinars listed on the home page, which are free when they’re live and then for another week. You can also pay for access to their entire webinar library which goes back to 2010.

Call To Meeting

Call to Virtual Meeting – April 20

That’s right friends, UJGS is having a virtual meeting.

We hope everyone who can has been staying home, maybe getting some genealogy research done. One day, things will get back to more normal, and when that happens, we’ll all be wanting more records from the archives in Eastern Europe.

Join us on Monday, April 20, at 6:30pm for Janette Silverman of Ancestry ProGenealogists as she tells us about Researching in Eastern European Archives.

For this meeting, we will be using GoToWebinar. If you are not familiar with the program, we will be online at 6pm for you to log in and test it out before the meeting begins. You will need an Internet connection and a speaker or headphones, or you can call in with your phone for audio. Some instructions can be found here.

You must register online to attend. You will receive an email confirmation with instructions and a link to use to join the meeting, including a reminder email 1 hour before the presentation.

We hope you’ll join us.

Press Release

Free Genealogy Webinars Daily

We hope our members are doing well, staying home, and staying healthy. During this difficult time, a plethora of information and entertainment is being offered online for free and we’d like to tell you about one.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars is releasing for free one webinar from their collection every day of April. Each day of the week has a different theme and there are quite a variety of topics.

Sundays are for methodology, Mondays are DNA topics, Tuesdays are ethnic genealogy, etc.

And we’re just in time to catch tomorrow’s (April 7) webinar on Sephardic Research.

You can view he entire schedule for the rest of month on the Legacy Family Tree web site.

What else have you been doing for the past month? Have you caught any operas at The Met? Seen any musicals or plays? Researched something on JSTOR? Virtually visited a museum? If you’re not using social media, you may be missing out on all the wonderful things now being shared for free online. You can also search on Google for “free things to do online”.

Press Release

24 Hours of Genealogy Webinars

MyHeritage is hosting a 24 hour marathon of webinars at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, on March 12th and 13th.

The webinars begin at 3pm today, March 12, and conclude the tomorrow.

You can see the list of webinars, the times, and register on their web site. Registration is for the full day, but you can log in for only the webinars you want to see. Additionally, the webinars will be available for free for a week, so if you miss the one at 2am, or even at 2pm, you have a week to catch it before you’ll have to pay to see it.

There are webinars on Swedish, Dutch, Belgian, Australian and New Zealand records, as well as evidence and proof, name-changing ancestors, several on DNA, US census, and more.

Be sure to check out the list to see which ones apply to your own research and don’t miss your chance for more genealogy education.

We meant to send this message out earlier, but even if you don’t make it to the live version, you still have a week to watch.

Call To Meeting

Call to Meeting – March 16

Our next meeting will take place on Monday, 16 March, at 6:30pm in the main floor classroom of the Family History Library.

Daniel R. Jones, the Manager of The Slavic Research Specialist Team at FamilySearch will talk about some of the things that FamilySearch has that could help people researching in the area. Bring any additional questions for Daniel to answer to help with your research.

We’ll see you there.

Miscellaneous

RootsTech Live Streaming – Free

You probably already know that RootsTech is this week. Some of our members may be attending. Some are working in the Expo Hall.

But if you haven’t bought a ticket to the conference, you can still enjoy some of the sessions. RootsTech is live streaming, as in previous years, and you can watch from home.

The schedule is on their web site: RootsTech Live Streaming.

The live stream will probably be right on that page, or they’ll provide a link from that page. They will stream all of the keynotes, this year called “general sessions”, along with many other presentations

Be sure to check the schedule so you don’t miss something you might want to see. Also, RootsTech usually shares those videos after the conference, so you’ll have another chance to watch them for free later. (Some keynotes in previous years were not shared later, so try to catch them live if you can.)