Tami osmer glatz's Blog

Win a Geni.com 12 month Pro Account, but Hurry!

The good folks over at Geni.com have given me a 12 month Pro Account to give away for free! Please visit my blog, Relatively Curious About Genealogy, for the details. Drawing is this Friday, April 1. Hurry, and Good Luck!

Added by tami osmer glatz on March 30, 2011 at 4:30pm — No Comments

30% Discount on New Ancestry.com Memberships

I'd heard about this a while back, but just today verified it for myself - and it's true! If you go to your local LDS Family History Center, all of which are free to use and open to the public, and ask them to show you how to use their library version of Ancestry.com through their "portal", from the opening screen there will be a "sign up" offer on the right side of the screen. When you enter your email address, it will email you an… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on March 15, 2011 at 7:29pm — No Comments

Death, Deceit and a Couple of Sea Captains

A while back, my niece's husband asked me if I would help him look into his ancestry. (He thought that perhaps his family had “come from whales”.) Seeing as he was and still is serving our country in the Air Force, I was happy to see what I could help him find. In addition to showing him how to do basic census records research, I ran some searches on several of the online digitized book sites. We were both amazed at what I found about one of his ancestors in a book on HeritageQuest --…

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Added by tami osmer glatz on March 9, 2011 at 9:24am — 1 Comment

Free "Great Family Search" Genealogy Conference in Plano, TX plus LOTS of genealogy websites

This is one of the best kept secrets in Texas... an all day genealogy conference, with nationally recognized speakers, and its entirely free! There are presentations on just about every topic you can imagine relating to genealogy -- its great for any level of genealogy knowledge, from beginners to advanced. I'll be lecturing on Internet Genealogy, Using Search Engines Effectively, and Finding Treasures in online Libraries… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on October 1, 2010 at 9:15am — No Comments

Almost 1000 folks using my genealogy toolbar, and then I'm giving away a copy of RootsMagic 4!

I've posted here before about the free browser toolbar that I created, that is all genealogy websites, making it so much easier to do genealogy research online. (If you havent heard about it, its free, no ad/spy/malware - and every site on it is handpicked, or recommended to me). Anyway, I was adding a few sites to the Internet Genealogy browser toolbar this morning and happened to check the stats on… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on July 2, 2010 at 3:35pm — 3 Comments

Great Opportunities for Learning in Second Life

We've submitted bylaws for approval, and now the proposed chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Second Life (APG-SL) will be having our third meeting, tonight, Thursday, April 7, at 5:30 pm Second Life time (which is Pacific Time). In keeping with the goals of the organization, we will be having a presentation by a very well-known speaker, on Revolutionary War Research. Members and non-members are invited to attend this presentation.… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on April 8, 2010 at 7:04am — No Comments

My favorite genealogy websites

Because I found I was going back to the same great websites over and over, and am constantly sharing web addresses with other people, I put together a toolbar for my computer so that I can easily access all my favorite genealogy websites. Its is set up so anybody can download it and use it for free, too. a I constantly update it when I find new sites, or if somebody suggests a good solid one to me. There is… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on March 27, 2010 at 8:18am — 1 Comment

Local Resources Rock! Dallas Public Library

I tend to write mostly about internet resources, but as you should know by now, when it comes to genealogical research, you can’t find everything online. I’ve written previously about the importance of spending time at local libraries, because they often contain location specific collections that can be found nowhere else. Today I thought I'd spotlight MY local library, the… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on January 9, 2010 at 12:08pm — No Comments

Internet Archives - audio, video, texts & more!

It’s Christmas eve day, and its snowing here in Dallas, so everyone is just huddled indoors trying to stay warm, and enjoying being in the company of family... which always sets me to thinking about my ancestors and genealogy, of course.

Since the presents are all wrapped, and its just a countdown to Santa, I’ll go ahead and write about another site for finding family stories online, and we’ll call it my Christmas present to you :)

Internet… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on December 24, 2009 at 5:01pm — No Comments

WorldCat and Online Special Collections

Every third Thursday I give a presentation in SecondLife. December’s discussion was part two of Finding Your Family Stories Online, with an emphasis on using Special Collections that are available online. While last month’s topic focused on digitized texts, part two focused on finding all sorts of other treasures – photographs, letters, oral histories, sound recordings, videos... the kinds of things that can add color… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on December 24, 2009 at 1:47pm — No Comments

Where to find your family's stories online - part 1, Digitized Texts

(The following is from my presentation in SecondLife on Nov. 19th, at the Just Genealogy fire pit. And as always, all sites I mention are on my toolbar, under Publications tab (http://relativelycurious.ourtoolbar.com - completely free)

It’s always exciting to find a birth, marriage or death date on one of your ancestors. So many online resources are becoming available now that make filling in those blanks… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on November 23, 2009 at 8:32am — No Comments

SteveMorse.org and an immigration mystery solved

I've been working with the passenger lists and ship manifests from the Ellis Island website (www.ellisisland.org) and, like many people, became just a bit frustrated with some of the inabilities of the search engine to find and sort the search results. Particularly, I wanted to find all of the people that came from a very small, mountain town in Hungary between the years of 1900-1920. It appears that most of the young adult men were… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on November 12, 2009 at 5:25pm — No Comments

What is there for genealogists in Second Life?

I have been encouraging folks to join the virtual world website Second Life for genealogy lately, but maybe I haven’t been clear enough on exactly why you might want to do that, and what Second Life has to offer genealogists. As always, I’m just going to go at this based on my own experiences, and not on any particular expertise on the subject.

1. LEARN

One of the main reasons to spend time in Second… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on October 18, 2009 at 7:30pm — No Comments

Where to Find Obituaries Online - and hopefully for Free

Its worth the effort to locate an obituary when you can, and, as always, my favorite place to start looking is online. Ancestry.com has quite an assortment of obituary indexes, as well as newspaper archives available, but not everyone is fortunate enough to have a subscription. So I’ve tried to dig up as many free sources as I can - and I've personally had good luck with several of these sites!…

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Added by tami osmer glatz on October 7, 2009 at 7:02am — 1 Comment

2.5 million microfilm digitized by next year!? Here comes the whole iceberg!!

Its been pointed out lately that only 5-10% of all genealogical records are available online, at best. This is so true, and reinforces the idea that genealogists need to get off their computers, and head to the courthouses, the cemeteries and to Aunt Mable's house for a history lesson. Those are valuable and generally really fun things to do anyway, but can be time, energy, and finance consuming. So the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working to bring all those records to your… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on October 3, 2009 at 7:30am — No Comments

Can 13,000 genealogists make a difference?

What if you went to your local research library and it was closed. Empty. Gone.

What if the records they had in there were scattered to other repositories. A piece here, a piece there.

What if that really is happening right now.

And what if YOUR voice could make a difference. Would you take a minute and speak up? Would you take thirty seconds to click on a link and add your name to the list of those who don't want this to happen?

"The governor… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on September 6, 2009 at 9:30pm — No Comments

One reason behind the new FamilySearch Record Search pilot makeover

Y'all might have noticed that just a couple days ago the FamilySearch Record Search Pilot took on a new look - new fonts, new color scheme, new layout - that sort of thing. Scared me, at first, to tell the truth, fearing that I was going to have to figure out how to get all those great indexed records and images all over again! But a quick perusal calmed my fears, that it's still the same Record Search Pilot site, with a minor cosmetic makeover, and just a couple other… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on September 3, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

How I Organize My Genealogy Papers

I've read a few other folks' ideas on the 'best way' to organize your genealogy. Honestly, the 'best way' is the one that works for you. Organization is the key to survival in any aspect of life!

You already know that genealogy research generates mountains of papers, from seriously important copies of vital records and heirloom family notes and letters, to simple “notes to self” on ideas of where to research next on a family line. And I’m sure you’ve already figured out that it sure… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on August 21, 2009 at 7:00pm — No Comments

Researching Your Foreign Ancestors - Online & Elsewhere

It can be a bit disheartening when you start chasing a family line, and you soon find yourself in a foreign country, like Denmark, Italy or Czechoslovakia (Or perhaps the US is a foreign country for you!) What do you do next? How can you further your family research if you can’t afford a trip overseas and you don’t speak the language?

Well believe it or not, you actually have several options. They all involve a little work, mind you - nothing quite so simple as typing your name into… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on August 14, 2009 at 9:30am — 2 Comments

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