Thursday, July 27, 2017

IAJGS Day 5: Resources and Queries

My last day at #IAJGS2017 began with another L-O-N-G visit to the Resource Room. Thank you to all the volunteers and vendors who made this possible! I found a newspaper mention of an ancestor's divorce in 1915 (a clue I'm going to follow up by contacting the courthouse for more details). Also found news items about an ancestor active in the early motion picture distribution business, as well as a sad obit for a young child in my husband's family tree. What a productive research session it was.

Next, I attended Judy Baston and Renee Steinig's session, "It's All in How You Ask: Discussion Group Queries." Sure, we've all been posting and answering queries for years, right? But Judy and Renee had some good pointers, based on their years of experience moderating discussion lists.

Takeaway #1: Just because Facebook is the new thing in town, keep your subscriptions to discussion groups on Jewish Gen and the SIGs. Having access to both FB groups and traditional discussion groups means you can tap the knowledge and advice of a large pool of people.

Takeaway #2: The message police (AKA Judy and Renee) say--Don't quote at length from print or online publications, don't "flame" others, and "go easy on the alphabet soup" in queries and posts.

Why?

Not every participant in every country will know abbreviations like SSDI (Social Security Death Index) or ALD (All Lithuania Database). For clarity, spell it out!

2 comments:

  1. Good point about those initials. So many times I've had to Google in order to follow a discussion.

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  2. I agree that people get carried away with initials. They assume we know but we don't always know what they represent. I also find that people will post about or write a query about a town or other location without giving a state. Folks assume we know which state it is in. Town names can be found in more than one state. These things slow down the exchange of information.

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