Some gifts from Ancestry.ca who was one of the sponsors of the conference |
I attended the Ontario Genealogical Conference (OGS) in Toronto, Ontario (June 2016) and the OGS reported that the attendance numbers were high!
Conference attendance totals - from The OGS newsletter |
I attended the following sessions at the OGS Toronto Conference:
- P1 - Plenary: Judy G. Russell
- P2 - Plenary: Lisa Louise Cooke
- S5 The OurOntario.ca Discovery Portal: Searching Digital Newspapers — Walter Lewis
- S8: Beyond Ancestry: Other “Don’t Miss” Genealogy Resources —Judy G. Russell
- S10 What’s New at the Archives of Ontario? — Keisha Banhan
- S16 What’s New at Library and Archives Canada? — Robert GrandmaĆ®tre and Sara Chatfield
- S22 What’s New at Canadiana.org? — Daniel Velarde
- S26: What’s New at FamilySearch? — Stephen C. Young
- S28 What’s New in Irish Records? — Maurice Gleeson
- S33: Agriculture: Was Your Ancestor on the Cutting Edge? — Jane E. MacNamara
- S40: Archival Research in the Digital Age — Daniel Heidt
- P3: Plenary: CeCe Moore
- Pop-up presentation by Rural Diaries
It would take me a long time to transcribe my notes from the conference and to put ALL of the valuable things that I learned here on my blog so I have distilled the three days into the following highlights and links worth repeating and sharing:
Plenary: "The Ethical Genealogist in the 21st Century"
Judy G. Russell did the opening keynote address on Friday evening. She was delightfully animated, entertaining and most wise on the subject of genealogical ethics. I learned a lot. Highlights and links worth repeating are:
- The three rules are: Tell the truth; play nice with others; and don't tell tales out of school
- There is lots of guidance available on the internet for free ( i.e. https://www.apgen.org/ethics/index.html)
- And I found the following link a very helpful reminder: Elizabeth Shown Mills, QuickLesson 15: Plagiarism—Five "Copywrongs" of Historical Writing
I was live tweeting Judy G. Russell's presentation |
Plenary: "Future Technology and Genealogy
Five Strategies You Need"
Lisa Louise Cooke did the keynote Saturday morning on future technologies. At the end of the plenary, I doubt that there was a dry eye in the house as she concluded her presentation with her own family history journey and a quote from her father who said to her, "you keep the quilt, l'll keep the note". Other highlights and links worth repeating are:
- Data Visualization: Journalism's Voyage West | Rural West Initiative
http://web.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/visualizations/us_newspapers - And while I do blog and belong to many genealogical Facebook groups, I don't podcast but I really DO want to publish my family history and Lisa Louise offered the following self-publishing resource Lulu - Online Self Publishing Book & eBook Company https://www.lulu.com/
- Most importantly - it was helpful to hear that there's always room for low-tech. Not everything is online!
Lisa Louise Cooke's slide deck |
Plenary- "Lessons From The Cutting Edge"
CeCe Moore (who we learned has Ontario ancestors!) gave the closing plenary and it was a sweet way to close the conference as she described how genealogy can unite and heal and how sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction.
To get a sense of what CeCe's DNA genealogical work can help people do, watch this:
FINDING YOUR ROOTS DNA SPECIAL WITH CeCe Moore from The DNA Detectives on Vimeo.
CeCe Moore's slide deck |
To get a sense of what CeCe's DNA genealogical work can help people do, watch this:
Pop-Up Talk - Rural Diaries
The one pop-up that I did attend was about the Rural Diaries project which is an amazing project for folks to get involved with. It was so great to meet and listen to Dr. Catherine Wilson and it was alarming to learn that because longhand cursive writing is no longer taught in Ontario schools, the ability to read these old journals is now being lost.
The Rural Diary Project needs help transcribing |
Genealogy Bloggers
More Highlights and Links Worth Repeating
Rather than recap each individual session that I attended, here are some helpful take-away links:
News To Me:
- Family Search has apps! I was surprised to learn this and most (if not all?) are free! Visit: https://familysearch.org/apps/
- Ancestry announced the release of updated Ontario marriages and deaths during the conference!
- Ontario, Canada, Marriages, 1801-1928, 1933-1934
- Ontario, Canada, Deaths, 1869-1938, 1943, and Deaths Overseas, 1939-1947
- Ancestry is working on the honeymoon registers for Niagara Falls (1949-2011) This collection contains records of honeymoon register books that were signed by newlywed tourists at Niagara Falls, Canada. Also included are guest books that do not contain marriage records.
- 100s of pages of Upper Canada Sundries 1766-1841 will be indexed by Canadiana.ca
- The David Rumsey Map Collection http://www.davidrumsey.com just added 15,342 new maps (now over 58,000 now online) and most are under creative commons license
- Our Digital World has over 1.25 million digital newspaper pages from Ontario! http://ink.ourdigitalworld.org
- More (YouTube) videos are uploaded every 60 days than the three major US television networks produced in 60 years!!
- Many genealogists at the conference were graduates of the National Institute for Genealogical Studies http://www.genealogicalstudies.com/
- Claire Santry's free Irish genealogy resources should be a first stop when researching Irish genealogy http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/ & http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/
- My Kerry county ancestors can be researched for FREE! https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
- Maurice Gleeson's presentation was recorded and will be put online on his YouTube channel Genetic Genealogy Ireland at some point in the future http://dnaandfamilytreeresearch.blogspot.ca/p/presentations-downloads.html
- Family Search has LOTS of family history books at this URL http://books.familysearch.org
- If you have Essex county ancestors (like me) - for newspapers visit http://ink.ourdigitalworld.org
- CANADA: Archives Canada http://www.archivescanada.ca/ is a gateway to archival resources found in over 800 repositories across Canada
- CANADA: The Canadian National Digital Heritage Index (CNDHI | IPNPC) is an index of digitized Canadian heritage collections located at Canadian universities and provincial and territorial libraries. http://cndhi-ipnpc.ca/
- CANADA: IMMIGRATION: Immigrants to Canada in Nineteenth Century - Ships - Emigration Reports - Emigration Handbooks
https://personal.uwaterloo.ca/marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html - CANADA: NEWSPAPERS: CanGenealogy – Newspaper Genealogy Sources
http://www.cangenealogy.com/newspapers.html - ESSEX COUNTY, ONTARIO: FARMING: Report of the Commissioners
https://archive.org/stream/reportofcommissi05onta#page/n515/mode/2up/search/essex - IRELAND: Landed Estates Database: a searchable, online database of all Landed Estates in Connacht and Munster, maintained by the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway. http://www.landedestates.ie/
- IRELAND: DIPPAM is an online virtual archive of documents relating the history of Ireland and the migration experience from the 18th to the late 20th centuries http://www.dippam.ac.uk/
- MOYNAHAN SURNAME: Genealogy & Family History - FREE Wikitrees
http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/MOYNAHAN - WEBSITE: Linda Corupe UE: History and Genealogy Publications of Ontario
http://lindacorupe.com/ - WEBSITE: Exit Permits 1942-1946
http://www.exitpermits1942-1946.com/ - WEBSITE: Order In Council Lists
http://www.orderincouncillists.com/ - WEBSITE: Research Help - The Family History Guy
http://familyhistoryguy.weebly.com/research-help.html - WEBSITE: CanGenealogy – Canadian Genealogy / Family History Sources
http://www.cangenealogy.com/ and Dave Obee - Family History - Local History
http://daveobee.com/
OGS Conference 2017 will be held in Ottawa (
Thanks for the mention Cindi!
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