The Life of a Genealogist

Is there any other life?  It's the best!  However, genealogy can consume every minute of my day and into the night.  Such has been the last seventeen days.  I have been scanning hundreds and hundreds of documents and photographs.  Sorting them into appropriate categories, sharing originals with my sister-in-law, I have barely come up for air.  

This afternoon I finished my project.  There are photographs left and a few documents, but basically it is over.  Those can wait, maybe a week or two or perhaps a couple months ... definitely not tomorrow.  

It is amazing what happens when you are scanning.  I am behind in reading genealogy blogs of others.  I noticed that my daughter found time to blog at Growing up Genealogy.  Good for her.  She's not scanning.  I have had no time to check all the new newspapers that have been added to Ancestry.com's subscription service.  There's no hurry as I have a subscription.  Maybe tomorrow! 

Because I have been living in the digital world, I decided to check out some of the places I have ignored.  These include HBLL Online Collections where you can search the holdings of BYU, Utah newspapers and many more, all with one click.  It's a great place to look for manuscripts and books, then download them in PDF format.  It is really growing.

I have also discovered the digitals at Illinois Harvest, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.   Particularly if you have ancestry in that part of Illinois, this is something you will want to search.  I found many news articles and obituaries for relatives.  And now that I have finished with my scanning (for the moment) I don't feel guilty about searching all day and night. 

The University of Missouri Digital Library will also keep me busy for a few days.  They have both text and image collections.  With so many Missouri ancestors, I will undoubtedly find a lot of good things.  

Each time I find a Utah ancestor, I have to check out the Historical Photographs from the Harold B. Lee Library.  There are seven collections to search individually or all at once.  The photographs are of excellent quality. 

Have you checked FindAGrave lately?  The site keeps getting bigger and bigger with photographs of tombstones and also individuals or family on it.  It's a great place to find missing information along with the photographs.  

If my genealogy mind doesn't switch me back to scanning, I need to check out the web site, 250+Killer Digital Libraries and Archives.  Just think of that ... over 250 places to look for digital images.  My mind is swimming already with ideas.  

It's great fun to be a genealogist today and tomorrow and the next day ... never been better!