Term 1 courses at Parramatta Computer Pals

Financial members may now book for courses commencing the week of January 31. Check the course timetable here at  Term 1 courses.  We have a range of five week courses, with the second half starting in early March.  There are also a number of short courses being offered on Fridays during Term 1. 
 Members and enquirers are now starting to use PCs and laptops with the new Windows 7 operating system, and there is no longer a demand for Vista courses, so we have decided to offer our Beginners courses and Beyond the Basics courses in XP and Windows 7.  However, we still run Vista as a third operating system in our training room, for those who feel more comfortable using that to do our more advanced courses.

Visit to the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG)

Deborah sent in this update on the doings of the Club's Genealogy Special Interest Group.  This is the fourth field trip undertaken by the SIG and I think the most popular so far.  John and I are really sorry we couldn't go.  I'll let Deborah tell it in her own words:

On Friday, 12^th November the Genealogy SIG enjoyed our own private tour of the Society of Australian Genealogists’ library in Kent Street, Sydney.  Sixteen of us travelled by train and ferry to the city and met up at a café just down the street.

The Librarian, Lorraine Brothers, welcomed us  and began by explaining that the library’s collections of books and journals is organised by country, starting with A for Australia, through N for England  and finishing at Z, rare books.   There are some interesting card indexes worth exploring, including indexes to some of the books in the library as well as Victorian Cemeteries and newspaper cuttings for the Hunter Valley area. 

Deborah and Judy

The library has microfiche and microfilm readers  (where we can look up material such as the indexes to the UK Old Parish Registers, NSW Parish Registers and Irish Civil Registrations) and 15 computers with access to Ancestry, Find My Past, The Genealogist, National Archives and Origins as well as various databases on CDs.  SAG has a team of volunteers who help visitors with their research.

After the tour twelve of us had lunch together at the City Bowlers Club in the café upstairs before heading off in different directions.  We agreed that it had been a very interesting visit and Lorraine was very knowledgeable and able to answer everyone’s questions.

Suggestions on our next Genealogy SIG excursion are welcome

Meeting Peter Blasina at the ASCCA conference

 

ParraPals member John Lee wrote this little memoir after yesterday's conference:

Back in the computer age of 286 and 486 computers, I started editing my home video tapes by computer, using Pinnacle connection equipment and its analogue computer program.

At the time I subscribed to a local video magazine edited by Peter Blasina. Pinnacle upgraded their product regularly and I attended a couple of  evening presentations held at Chatswood to introduce each upgrade, and the presenter was Peter Blasina.

So, today I attended another presentation by Peter,who is now the well-known Gadget Man, on The Digital Revolution is Just Starting.

 I was later pleased to be near  Peter during the lunch period, and we talked about those early days of analogue video editing, and his Pinnacle presentations in those pre-digital days.

 I still continue to use current Pinnacle video editing programmes to make my home movies, not in analogue thank goodness, but digital.

ASCCA 2010 Conference

I've just registered to attend the 2 conference days in September, and am looking forward to my first attendance at this Computer Clubs Association conference, with other members of Parramatta ComputerPals.

Genealogy Special Interest Group - meeting report for 16th July 2010

This is what we discussed at our meeting on Friday, 16th July.

GENEALOGY COURSE

Agreed that in Term 4 Deborah (and other topic experts) will run this as a series of short courses and members can choose the topics relevant to them. Most popular topics are:

• Research English/Welsh ancestry

• Researching Australian convict ancestors

• Researching other Australian ancestors

• Researching Irish ancestors

• Researching Scottish ancestors

• Genealogy software: Personal Ancestral File (PAF) and other software

• Genealogy networking sites (such as Genes Reunited and Lost Cousins)

• Researching European ancestors

Other topics were:

• Researching Canadian ancestors

• Researching USA ancestors

• Researching NZ ancestors.



We recommended that Judy Joyce be a guest speaker at a Members’ Meeting to talk about researching indigenous family history.



NEXT FIELD TRIP

Options included:

• Society of Australian Genealogists

• Family History Centre (Latter Day Saints)

• Parramatta Heritage Centre

• Unlock the Past events (Deborah to find out what’s on in Sydney*) http://www.unlockthepast.com.au/

• State Records at the Rocks

• Cemeteries

We agreed that Deborah would find out about doing a tour of Society of Australian Genealogists research library in Kent Street, Sydney.



*Unlock the Past:

• Expo at Parramatta RSL, Friday, 22 October to Saturday, 23 October http://www.unlockthepast.com.au/events/unlock-past-expo-sydney

• Roadshow at North Ryde RSL, Friday, 19 November to Saturday, 20 November http://www.unlockthepast.com.au/events/australian-and-new-zealand-roadshow



SOFTWARE

We asked members what genealogy software they are currently using:

• Family Tree Maker (various versions)
• Legacy

• Brothers Keeper

• Genes Reunited (web-based) – - http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/

• RootsWEb (web-based, Ancestry) – http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/




PAY TO VIEW SUBSCRIPTIONS

We asked members what subscriptions to Pay To View sites they have:

• British Vital Records
• Ancestry  – www.ancestry.com.au

• Genes Reunited - http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/

• Find My Past UK – http://www.findmypast.co.uk/

• Find My Past AU - http://www.findmypast.com.au/ (currently have an introductory offer of two months free when you subscribe: quote UNLOCK in the voucher/promo code field after completing your registration and payment information)

• Scotlands People - http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/

• The Genealogist - http://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/

• Lost Cousins (NB this is free) - http://lostcousins.com/

Bev, Margaret, Margaret and Deborah are willing to look up these records for other members. (Please provide as much relevant information as possible when you make a request.)



OTHER USEFUL WEBSITES DISCUSSED DURING THE MEETING

An article in the Travel Section of the Sun Herald about researching Irish ancestry mentions these sites:

• www.irishgenealogy.ie

• www.genealogyireland.ie

• www.ancestry.com

• www.irishfaminerecords.com

• www.irishorigins.com

• www.apgi.ie (Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland)



Genuki’s gateway website is http://www.genuki.co.uk/ and it provides links to other websites, organised by geographic location as well as general resources.



We talked about historic newspapers online at the National Library of Australia - http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper - and Margaret  reminded us that Ctrl + F opens a Find dialog box to help with searching within a web page. [Trove searches other digitised NLA resources besides newspapers. Note that you can also help the project by correcting scanned text.]



The Ryerson Index is an index of death notices and obituaries from Australian newspapers: http://ryersonindex.net/ .



We also mentioned FreeBMD - http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ - free access to the England and Wales Civil Registration Index of Births, Marriages and Deaths. See also FreeCEN (census data) - http://www.freecen.org.uk/ and FreeREG (parish registers) - http://www.freereg.org.uk/



Margaret  says the Parramatta Computer Pals website has genealogy links (click on Links on the home page, and then Genealogy) and she will add more.



PROBLEM SOLVING

Margaret G. brought along her Asus EEE netbook, on which she has loaded Legacy. She asked how to copy her family tree data from Legacy on her PC to Legacy on her netbook. Deborah said look in Legacy on the PC for a way to export the data as a GEDCOM file, and then save the file to a memory stick. Then look in Legacy on the netbook for a way to import the data from the GEDCOM file on the memory stick. All good family history software will have this ability so that you can move data around (from an old software program to a new one, or from your computer to a web-based program like Genes Reunited) without having to retype it all.



Margaret T wants to know how to go about researching ancestors in Scotland. None of us have much experience. We suggested starting with Scotlands People (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk ). There are good books available on family history research for particular countries, e.g. Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors.



Margaret G asked how she could research ancestors who worked in mines in Broken Hill and Western Australia. We think Hazel  may have some experience with this.



John L reported on his research into a military ancestor, Richard Guise, who came to Australia with the Second Fleet in 1790. He has found some old records in the Mitchell Library. John is trying to find out more about Richard’s wife Elizabeth. We suggested looking for Elizabeth’s death certificate.



NEXT MEETING

Next meeting will be after the Members’ Meeting on 15th September.