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12 January 2011

Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy - Jeff's Report #4

Jeff's series from SLIG continues:

Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy
Salt Lake City, UT
Wednesday, 12 Jan 2011

The morning began as a debriefing on the Tuesday evening homework with Claire Betteg. In general classmates were able to work through the challenging Library of Congress website. The point was made by someone that the Congress funds its own library well, unlike the National Archives and Records Administration. A user of both facilities in Washington, D.C. was of the opinion that the LOC has ten times the staffing of NARA!

We found ourselves a mere 24 hours behind schedule. The mornings topics were Census, Census-Substitute and Name List Strategies: Analysis, Interpretations and Correlation and Tax Roll Strategies: Analysis, Interpretations and Correlation by Dr. Thomas Jones. Jones has a wealth of professional genealogical experience which is brought to each lecture with examples. Of course, this leads into the Wednesday homework.

Richard Sayre, CG, was back in class talking about Rural and Urban Map Strategies: Analysis, Interpretations and Correlation. He pointed to the Library of Congress and its 5 million maps, 80,000 atlases and 6,000 reference works. He encouraged visiting it and the NARA location in College Park, Maryland, where there are another million+ maps. He spoke about the USGS topographical maps and showed how he was able to use them, along with other resources including Google Earth to pinpoint cemeteries. (Course 8 of the Samford Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research this June in Birmingham, Alabama will feature an entire week on maps!)


Then it was time for homework. The homework was a nine page assignment to find the father of a person who lived in the late 1700s in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. I spent a couple of hours hacking away at the problem and I spent a couple of hours at the Family History Library hacking away at my own research. In neither case did I solve any problems – does that sound familiar?

Jeffrey Vaillant
12 Jan 2011

Read the entire series:
Report #1: 2011 SLIG
Report #2: 2011 SLIG
Report #3: 2011 SLIG
Report #4: 2011 SLIG
Report #5: 2011 SLIG
Report #6: 2011 SLIG


Copyright © 2011 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

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