Genealogy Jottings

More meetings! This week, the Colorado Genealogical Society and its sub-group, the Computer Interest Group (CIG), kick off the fall season. These meetings usually inspire my enthusiasm for more research, but CIG fell short this time.

At their Monday meeting, I learned about the new website, Fold 3, formerly Footnote.com. I have not found much of interest on this site in the past although it does have records from the  Pennsylvania archives. Now Ancestry.com has purchased the site, and in the future, it will focus on military records. Ancestry plans to charge separately for access to Fold 3 so I probably will not use it.

The local library system subscribes to Ancestry but is unlikely to add Fold 3 to its databases. To get a free look, I will have to use it at the local Family History branch (hard to get computer time) or else travel to the National Archives in Lakewood. If I come up with a new ancestor who may have served in the military, it might be worth the trip, but I certainly do not have enough military research needs to warrant a subscription to this site. I wonder how many people do. Perhaps that is why they sold out to Ancestry.

Tomorrow’s program at the Colorado Genealogical Society will not inspire more research either. The scheduled topic, self-publishing family histories with Lulu, will instead offer new ideas for sharing one’s research. In the past, people aspired to write books about their ancestry, but publishing one was very expensive and there was a limited market for it. Self-publishing websites have cropped up, and I am looking forward to learning how other Colorado genealogists are using them.

Much as I love the research aspect of genealogy, periodically I need to digest, synthesize, and preserve what I have found. Maybe at this month’s CGS meeting, I will find some inspiration for doing that.

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