Your Quick Tips, 10 April 2006

LibraryThing.com
While you are spring cleaning you can catalog your library. At LibraryThing.com you establish an account and begin adding titles by searching for the ISBN or the author/title. LibraryThing goes out to 47+ libraries including the Library of Congress to retrieve a catalog record for your title. If the search shows no result, you can add the information yourself. Each book can be “tagged” with multiple tags of your choice. It could be family surname, location in your office/home, or subject or all three. 

Cataloging for the first 200 books is free. Beyond 200 the charge is $10 a year or $25 for life. Having an online catalog of your own holdings, that can be downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet, is good for insurance purposes, shopping, research and LibraryThing’s prime purpose, finding people who own the same books you do (although you may keep your collection private). Imagine the possibilities for genealogy. Have a look, but beware, you will be hooked!

Marnie Oakes

QuickSheet for Citing Sources
I am not really good citing my sources, but since Citing Online Historical Resources, by Elizabeth Shown Mills came along I am getting better at it. This QuickSheet is 4 pages, and she went one step further and laminated them. Anyone can learn how to cite their sources with this QuickSheet.

Diane D. Shaw

Vogel or Bird
Yesterday, I had a break through! I called a church in Kalamazoo, Michigan to ask if they had a copy of my great-grandparents marriage license from 1887. The woman who answered the phone referred me to their historian who would know what happened to the surviving records since there was a fire in the church in 1925. I called the historian who was just getting ready to leave her home to go to the church and she said that she would look into other records for me such as member records. When I told her the bride’s name was Catrina Vogel. She said Vogel is the German word for “bird”. That totally blew me away as on the marriage records of my great-grandmother’s children their mother is sometimes listed as Catrina Bird. All this time, I have been wondering if my great-grandmother had another marriage and these children were from a previous marriage. Now I know that she was only married once and her children used the English word “bird” for her last name. Mystery solved.

Char

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: mailto:[email protected]. Thanks to all of this week’s contributors!    Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the “Ancestry Weekly Journal,” please state so clearly in your message.                  

     

 

9 thoughts on “Your Quick Tips, 10 April 2006

  1. I have a child named “Bird” as a member of my Voltz family. Always thought maybe it was a mistake but now I’m not so sure. As a first name would “Bird” be interchangeable for Vogel or Voltz or should I assume that the child’s name might be Vogel Voltz??

  2. I enjoyed reading the Quick Tips for 10 April 2006. I would like to get a copy of the “Quicksheet.” I thinking that it will be helpful to me.

    Bill Carreker

  3. I searched genealogy.com but didn’t find reference to the QuickSheet for Citing Sources mentioned about. Can someone post the URL, please?

  4. Oops, I hit the Submit button too quickly. I was searching the wrong web site. I found the QuickSheet at genealogical.com, just as Dot Hosking Huntley said!

  5. Thanks for the tip about the QuickSheet, I did a quick search via on-line and found a site that was having free shipping until May 31st. So only cost me $4.50. WOW. I too was bad about not siting my sources until I started using Elizabeth Shown Mills book. Now it is just habit to source everything, but I like the idea of the QuickSheet, especially since it is Laminated, will be great to take with on research trips since it will take up less space than the book.

  6. LibraryThing.com is a wonderful website, easy to use. I will have to try to export to excel because then I can transfer it to my PDA and have it with me at all times. I hate going to the book store and buying the same book I already have. Thanks for the great tip.

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