Education for the Genealogist

Do you have a few minutes or an hour or two in your busy day? Why not go back to school and become an educated genealogist. Even if you think you know everything about genealogical research, you will still benefit from the many videos and webinars on Internet.

FamilySearch has a great listing of Research Classes Online. They cover research in England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Mexico, Russia and the United States. Other topics are Reading Handwritten Records and Search Principles and Tools. Classes are anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour in length. Some have downloads in PDF format.

There are excellent PMC Webcasts available at the Association of Professional Genealogists web page. Some of the very best speakers present topics such as A Key to Success: Your Online Presence, Choosing the Best Continuing Education Opportunities, and the very intriguing topic of The Bachelor: Reconstructing A Solitary Life Using Obscure & Far-Flung Records. Their webcasts consist of the speaker in audio/video along with the slide presentation.

Online Presentations of various topics can be found at the Mid-Continent Public Library web page. The topics are very interesting, such as Colonial Land, State and Special Census, Locating and Using Maps in Your Research and Cherokee Genealogy.

Legacy Family Tree is host for webinars. Check out their web page for topics and information on how to register. If you cannot attend a webinar on your computer at the designated time, they are usually archived for a few weeks. You can always return to the web page and click on an archived topic of interest. Webinars, which are a type of web conferencing, are normally more than an hour in length.

If you like webinars, sign up for the Jamboree Extension Series, produced by the Southern California Genealogical Society. They are new to the area of genealogy webinars. The series begins on Saturday, March 5th. Going out of the starting gate is Thomas MacEntee, known in genealogy circles as THE professional genealogy social networker. Of course, he will be speaking about Social Networking -- New Horizons for Genealogists. Be sure to register early for a session. The topics are all very interesting and the speakers are knowledgable.

All of the videos and webinars are free. You can stop a presentation at any time and return to it. It's a great way to become educated for free at home.