Family Tree Frog

Image by  Leandro De Carvalho  from  Pixabay   Let's talk about writing, shall we? I'm contributing to a Talking About session tomorrow morning run by QFHS.    The session description says the following: The best way to preserve your family history is to write about it. You could write a story for our journal; upload a document to Ancestry; a page on a website such as the Virtual War Memorial, My Primitive Methodists; an entry on Convict Records, Wikipedia and Wikitree; a media output (blog, podcast and YouTube); or a play for your grandchildren to act out. Have you ever looked for pictures of writing on something like Pixabay?  Most of them are images of disembodied people. The focus is on their hands or their torso.  Most are missing their heads.   The photo at the beginning of this post is rare.  We can see the author's head and he is even smiling.  Good for him.  Obviously, he didn't lie down in an ant's nest in that p...

Or words to that effect. There has been a bit of debate in the geneablogging community about whether our blogging days are over. Julie Cahill Tarr's post here got the debate going, although James Tanner says he has raised this issue before and been howled down.  Thomas MacEntee announced recently that he's changing the way he's doing business on Geneabloggers.com . For the affirmative, Amy Johnson Crow has weighed in and said it's not dead it's just different.  And the lovely Alona Tester has identified the pros and cons of Blogging versus the suggested villain of the piece Facebooking. It's a very interesting and important debate and I don't begin to pretend to know the answer. What I will say is that 25 people turned up to attend a QFHS seminar this morning where we talked about how blogging your family history can maximise your research and why you might consider doing it.  The social media landscape is a crowded one and it will pro...

Transforming Tindale - A travelling exhibition from State Library of Queensland (SLQ) - at Arana Hills Library until 20 February The Transforming Tindale exhibition has finally been installed at our library and is attracting a lot of attention which is very pleasing. The exhibition explores the legacy of Norman Tindale’s 1938 anthropological expedition to Aboriginal communities. T hese records are both a source of contention surrounding the treatment of Aboriginal Australians, and a valuable resource for relatives.  If you are not able to visit the library to see the exhibition you can explore the virtual exhibition online here. #genealogyselfie How is your research going this week?  I have ordered and received a couple of inter-library loans through my library which I hope will help me with a couple of roadblocks and/or just give me more information about my ancestors and the lives they lived.   But I do seem to be a bit stu...

Things are slowly getting back up to speed now that people are returning to work from the summer holiday break.  There is a tsunami of books being returned to the library where I work, so families are getting ready for the return to school and tidying up their homes.  It's lovely to see so many people enjoying the benefits of a free library and all it has to offer. Perhaps you have been mulling over whether or not to write up all your research.  Go on!  Make 2016 your year of writing the family history book.  Join a writing group for support and to keep you honest about your progress.  QFHS' Family History Writing Group meets this Saturday morning for the first time this year.  For more information about the group and what it has to offer click here . Were you a bit shaken by the Family Tree Maker software news?  Perhaps you want to see what other family history software is like.  There are lots of software support groups and the Q...

At the beginning of the month I suggested that we spring clean or "pimp" our family history blogs. I tidied my blog up - design-wise - and am much happier with the look.  The font is bigger.  The background is light.  I think it looks much cleaner.  I hope it is much easier to read. I've been looking at my stats and created a score card  to analyse my top three blog posts of all time. I used Hemingway App and Wordle as tools for analysis.  My score card and analysis tool is here .  Please use it to analyse your family history posts if you think it's useful. My top scoring blog post in Google Terms and number of page-views was this one.    This post scored 2767 page views.   My headline was 11 words long. The optimal length is 6 words according to this author .  The post had only one picture and was 776 words long.  The optimal words length for a post according to Kevan Lee is 1600 words and according to this post ...

Cemetery Tour Redcliffe April 2015 I hope you are enjoying National Family History Month - there's certainly plenty on to pique your interest.  Don't forget to tick off Shauna Hicks 31 Activities for Researchers , will you?  Here is a just a taste of what's out there: Friday 14 August  10:00am - 11:30am  Fridays @ QFHS Brick Walls: solving tough research problems We all have them, these tough research problems that defy any solution. Come along to hear a presentation of some strategies to assist in solving 'brick walls'. The presentation will be followed by a one-on-one clinic (11.00 am-12.30 pm) with QFHS experts who will work with you to advise on ways that may help with these intractable problems. Once you have registered, we will provide further information on the one-on-one sessions. $11 members $15 non-members.  Book online. Saturday 15 August  9:30am -12:30pm  QFHS New Members Welcome and Orientation Are you ...

Alan Burnett of Sepia Saturday says: Our prompt this week couldn't be more self-explanatory if you were to type it out in capital letters. If you have any old pictures that relates to the theme image, just post your posts on or around Saturday 20th June 2015. I cannot see a typewriter without thinking of my mother.  She adored her Olivetti which you see here on her desk.  Many of her letters were typed on this although she had beautiful writing as well. I can't remember what happened to the Olivetti.  It certainly did a lot of work.  My mother was a prolific letter writer and she typed my father's thesis or theses over the years as well as her own University essays and assignments and I probably typed a few of mine on it as well. I have had to doctor this photo I am afraid as it wasn't black and white originally but colour.  I have cropped the original and used the Holga effect in Picasa to make it more dramatic. This is the phot...