How to Watch Elevenses with Lisa

How to Watch Elevenses with Lisa Elevenses with Lisa is a free weekly genealogy webinar show by Lisa Louise Cooke. It premieres live and then is available to watch as a video replay both here on our website and the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. Over time older...

Video #2 of our 25 Websites for Genealogy!

VIDEO & SHOW NOTES: Video #2 of our 25 Websites for Genealogy Playlist. In this video, my guest presenter Gena Philibert-Ortega covers top genealogy finding aids and society websites that are must-have for family history research. Even though some sound specific to a certain area, don’t be fooled. They have resources available for all genealogists.

Websites 5 through 12 of our 25  Websites for Genealogy

I’m Gina Philibert Ortega, and welcome to 25 Websites for Genealogy, What I’d like to do is talk to you about websites that are must-haves for your genealogical research. 

Some of these websites will be new to you, and others are going to be very familiar to you. In talking about the familiar websites, I want to get you thinking about them differently, explain a little bit more about what you can do at these websites, and how to get the most out of them.

In this series of 25 Websites for Genealogy, we’re going to be looking at websites in different categories. Our second category is the Finding Aids & Society Websites (#5 through 12). 

Download the ad-free Show Notes cheat sheet for this video here. (Premium Membership required.)

Websites #5: Cyndi’s List

https://www.cyndislist.com 

Cyndi’slist is a free genealogy website with more than 317,000 genealogy links, categorized & cross-referenced, in more than 200 categories.

Website #6: Linkpendium

https://www.linkpendium.com 

Linkpendium provides links to free and subscription websites that can help you with your genealogical research. The directory includes 10,000,000+ links to information about families around the world as well as helpful information about U.S. states and counties. The site emphasizes free resources provided by libraries, government agencies, genealogical and historical societies, and individuals.

Website #7: Conference Keeper

https://conferencekeeper.org

ConferenceKeeper.org is the most complete genealogy calendar of events anywhere!  Here you will find thousands of genealogy webinars, seminars, conferences, workshops, podcasts and more, from genealogy societies, libraries, and other organizations all around the world.

Website #8: New England Historic Genealogical Society (American Ancestors) 

https://www.americanancestors.org

AmericanAncestors.org databases include 1.4+ billion records for the United States, the British Isles, and continental Europe. And according to the website it also features:

  • one of the most extensive online collections of early American genealogical records,
  • the largest searchable collection of published genealogical research journals and magazines,
  • and the only online source for records from Boston’s Catholic Archdiocese.

Learn More: Early American Ancestor Records with NEHGS

Website #9: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society

https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org

Founded in 1869, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society provides access to genealogical records, journals, periodicals, special collections, digital books and other free resources. In addition, they host educational events. 

Website #10: National Genealogical Society

https://ngsgenealogy.org

Known for its annual genealogical conference, NGS also features an online Learning Center and special features available to subscribing members. 

Website #11: African American Historical and Genealogical Society

https://www.aahgs.org

From the website: “AAHGS provides content-rich resources to aid in the research, study, and exploration of African American history and genealogy.”

Website #12: The Foundation for East European Family History Studies

https://feefhs.org

The Foundation for East European Family History Studies is an international organization that provides education and resources to support Eastern and Central European genealogical research. 

Resources:

Download the ad-free Show Notes cheat sheet for this video here. (Premium Membership required.)

Not a Premium Member yet? Discover the benefits and join today. 

Episode 5 Elevenses with Lisa – Online Productivity

Live show air date: April 23, 2020

Episode 5 Video and Show Notes

Join me for Elevenses with Lisa, the online video series where we take a break, visit and learn. Click to watch below, and scroll down for all the details from Episode 5.
(Online Productivity training begins at the 14:09 mark)

Download the Handout

Genealogy Gems Premium Members: Show Notes PDF – Genealogy Gems Premium Members can click here to download the show notes PDF for this episode. (Log in required.) 

This week’s tea cup:

Old Country Roses by Royal Albert.

From My Viewers:

From Barbara C.:

When teaching 2nd grade years ago, I read Winnie to my kids after lunch each day.  When I began, little did I know it was a story for adults, too.  I’ve always remembered this line.

“When late morning rolls around and you’re feeling a bit out of sorts, don’t worry; you’re probably just a little eleven o’clockish.”

It's 11 o'clockish!

It’s 11 o’clockish!

Genealogy News this Week

The National Archives of the UK

The National Archives is making digital records available for free online for as long as Kew is closed to visitors. If you have British ancestry, this is a great time to do some genealogy research from home.

“Registered users will be able to order and download up to 10 items at no cost, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of our digital services for everyone.”

Learn more here at the National Archives UK.

 

MyHeritage.com

MyHeritage is making U.S. Yearbooks available for free and they are in color.

MyHeritage has opened up access their yearbook collection for FREE, through May 23, 2020!

The collection includes 290 million names in 36 million pages, from yearbooks across the U.S. from 1890 until 1979. 10 million photos were colorized in the first 3 months following the launch of MyHeritage In Color™.

MyHeritage In Color™ has been applied to the Yearbook collection.

The goal is to “give people a fun activity to do when they are isolated at home that is genealogical, enjoyable, and free.”

Search MyHeritage U.S. Yearbooks for Free Now

 

Viewer Questions

Cristen shared a photo of herself watching the show with her Great Grandmothers hand painted China (which is lovely!)

Here’s her question:

Q: Can you create a new tag in Evernote on mobile?

Answer: Yes!

How to create a new tag in Evernote on mobile:

  1. Tap the Info (“i” in a circle icon) and
  2. Tap Add Tag
  3. Type in the new tag you want to create
  4. Tap the Return key on your keyboard
  5. The tag will appear in green, and will now be included in your list of available tags.

 

How Alice the Genealogist Avoids Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Part 4

 

Creating a Supportive Computing Environment

The following tools are available for your computer desktop or laptop.

Restore Tabs

In addition to using Ctrl+Shift+T (Win) or Cmd+Shift+T (Mac) to restore a closed browser tab, you can also right-click on the new tab plus sign and select Reopen closed tab from the pop-up menu. You can do this multiple times and web pages will continue to open in the reverse-order that they were closed.

Turn Multiple Tabs into One and Save Memory with OneTab

Online genealogy research can leave you with a lot of open web browser tabs. While using multiple tabs allows you to jump back and forth between web pages and records, they can take up valuable computer memory.

You can dramatically reduce your memory usage with the OneTab extension available for both the Chrome and Firefox browsers. With one click, OneTab will combine your open tabs into a clickable list in one browser tab. You can even export the list for future reference.

Get OneTab in the Chrome Web Store here
Get OneTab in the Firefox Web Store here

Reduce Email Distractions

Gmail now has a Snooze feature which allows you to temporarily file an email until the date and time you select.

Snoozed emails will reappear in your Inbox at the scheduled time.

Retrieve snoozed emails at any time by clicking “Snoozed” in the menu on the left.

Get Back on Track with MyActivity

When you are signed into your Google account, MyActivity tracks the searches you conduct and the websites you visit. By visiting your MyActivity, you can search for and return to any previous activity. You can also turn it off. Go to MyActivity and click Activity Controls from the menu. Switch the slider to the off position.

Visit MyActivity at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Save Time by Previewing Your Google Search Results

Rather than clicking on each search result and loading the page (which also takes you away from the rest of your search results), use  the Google Results Previewer web extension for Chrome. Once installed you can simply hover your mouse over a result link to reveal a preview of the page. Then you can decide whether to click through or preview additional results.

Click here to get the Google Results Previewer web extension for Chrome.

Resources for Further Learning

Organize Your Digital Life

Premium Video: Full length class by Lisa Louise Cooke.

  • Genealogy Gems Premium Video: Using Evernote to Create a Research Plan.
    The key to a successful family history research plan is having a set process for gathering and analyzing data. I will show you how to set up your plan in Evernote. 

Evernote for genealogy genealogical sources

Next Episode of Elevenses with Lisa

Click here for Episode 6 of Elevenses with Lisa on how to organize your genealogy paper.

Snagit versus Evernote Which One Should You Choose?

Show Notes: Over the years I’ve talked a lot about how to use Evernote and Snagit. Both are amazing tools for research and make it easy to do web clipping. If you’ve been wondering what the difference is between these two powerful tools, or if you haven’t and you’re trying to figure out which one you should start using, you’re in the right place. Today we’re doing a head-to-head comparison of Evernote and Snagit (with a focus on web clipping) and figuring out which one is best for you and your genealogy research.

I got an email from one of our Premium Members named Nancy, and she says, “Can you help me understand why I would need Evernote and Snagit? I have both installed on my computer, but need to spend time becoming proficient in both. If they duplicate one another wouldn’t want to spend time learning both if Snagit is superior.”

This is a really smart question because like the old saying, time is money. And in the case of genealogy, time is ancestors! No one wants to stop and learn yet another tech tool if they don’t have to. So, let’s look at Evernote vs. Snagit, in a head-to-head comparison, and dig into their strengths and weaknesses. If you have both, this will also help you decide what to use in any given situation.

Watch the Video

Show Notes

Downloadable ad-free Show Notes handout for Premium Members

BONUS: Evernote vs. Snagit Comparison Cheat Sheet for Premium Members

Get Snagit with our affiliate link and get 10% off for a limited time. (thanks for supporting our free content!) 

Comparing What They Can Do

Evernote is a cloud-based notetaking tool that includes a web clipper.

Snagit is a screen capture / AKA web clipper tool.

So, first and foremost the thing they have in common is that they both can capture all or a portion of content that appears on your computer screen. You can clip exactly the part you want and save it as an image for future reference or use.

That’s a pretty simplified description –  but essentially, web clipping is the common denominator. But from there, they diverge.

Evernote is primarily a note taking tool. It takes all kinds of notes (audio, photo, video, documents, web clipping, typed, handwritten.) All notes are added to it, and you work in it like a workstation where you can organize and quickly search and retrieve your notes. It can apply OCR to your screen captured notes, making them keyword searchable and editable. Evernote allows you to instantly access your notes from any device that you are signed into your account.

Snagit is primarily a screen capture tool. In fact, it’s screen capture on steroids compared to Evernote. It’s not a place to store notes, but it’s a fantastic way to web-clip or capture information, edit, annotate and manipulate it, save it, and use it in other programs (and we’ll talk more about that in a moment.) Snagit can capture both images and video of content on the web, and it can do other things like use OCR to convert the text that appears in the web content you’re clipping as an image and turn it into editable text. When you web clip with Snagit, you are creating an image. That image must be saved to a cloud service like Dropbox in order to be able to access the note from all your devices.  

You can learn a lot more about what these two tools do in my other videos:

You’ll find many more videos on Evernote and Snagit at Genealogy Gems Videos page under Technology.

Comparing Costs

Another thing they have in common is that they are both software programs.

Evernote: In addition to being able to use it as a software program on your computer, you can also use Evernote on your mobile device by downloading the app from your app store. You can also use it on any computer by simply signing into your account at Evernote.com. That being said, the software is preferred over the website because it resides on your computer and is faster.

Cost: About $9/monthly or about $80 for the yearly subscription ($6.67 / MONTH).

There is a free version, but you can only use it on 2 devices, it doesn’t include OCR and there are very strict limits on storage, which we’ll address in just a moment. If you’re going to use Evernote for your research and other things, you’re going to need the yearly subscription.

Snagit: Snagit is software that you download to your computer (whether desktop or laptop.) You can buy it as a stand alone purchase, or you can also purchase an ongoing maintenance subscription which provides you with upgrades. There is not mobile app.

Cost: About $64 for one software license + 1 year maintenance (free upgrade). You don’t have to pay for ongoing maintenance.

Conclusion: Unless the free version of Evernote is adequate for your needs, Snagit it more economical. 10 months of Evernote on-going subscription would cover the cost of the one-time purchase of Snagit. However, if you need all the features of Evernote, then go for the yearly subscription to keep the cost down.

Storage and Retention

Because Evernote is a subscription, this brings up the question of whether you can use your notes after you stop subscribing. And storage limits are also a concern.

Snagit: No storage limits. All the content you capture is stored on your computer, not the cloud. It’s yours forever. There’s no limit to how much you can clip or create.

Evernote: Evernote does store your notes on your computer, but it also stores them in the Evernote cloud. While Evernote doesn’t have an overall storage limit, it does have limits on how much you can create each month. There is a free version that allows you to 60 MB of monthly uploads. This is talking about the size of your notes. If you add photographs to Evernote, you’re going to use that up very quickly. There’s also a 25 MB maximum note size limit. No note or clipping can be larger than 25MB. With the subscription you get 10 GB of monthly uploads (which would be pretty hard to max out) and the note size limit is 200 MB.

Conclusion: You’ll need the yearly subscription to really be able to use Evernote for genealogy. And while there are limits, you’re likely never to reach them. And you can use it offline because notes are on your computer.

Snagit has no limits and stores only on your computer unless you share your content to other sources. And that brings us to comparing how these tools allow you to export your content. In other words, can you get stuff out that you put into it?

Exporting Content

The necessity for an ongoing subscription to Evernote brings up to the next important comparison: how can you export and use your web-clippings and in the case of Evernote other types of notes?

Evernote: Not easy. You can export your notes as the Evernote file format called ENEX or as HTML, which is used in structuring web pages. Keep in mind that web clippings are image files, and we normally need image files in JPEG or PNG format to be able to use them in a variety of other programs.

exporting Evernote note

In the menu click File > Export Note. Available file types are limited.

Snagit: Easy. You can export your clippings in countless ways. Pretty much all major file types are supported. You can easily add content directly to a large number of popular programs such as Word, PowerPoint and even Evernote! So, if you’re writing a family history story or book and you want to clip something on the web and include it, Snagit can send it right to your document with just a click.

Conclusion: If you need to be able to easily get web clippings and captured content out of the program and use it in other ways, use Snagit. If you want to keep your clippings and notes all in one place and be able to keep them organized and find them easily, use Evernote.

Sharing Content

When it comes to sharing content with other researchers or your family, both Evernote and Snagit do a great job in their own way.

Evernote: Each note has a convenient Share button that allows you to invite other people to view just that note. It also gives you a unique link to the note that can be shared. And you can email notes. You can also put a group of notes into a notebook and then share the entire notebook. You can control whether the person being shared with can just view the notes or if they can edit them. So, it does facilitate collaboration by allowing you both to edit the same note. That permission can also be turned off. That all being said, Evernote is really a tool for you, and it’s not focused on sharing as a priority, or on sharing in order to be able to publish the content in many other ways.

Snagit: With Snagit, if you want to share with someone else to collaborate, you’ll need to send it to them, either by email or shared cloud storage. They can then edit the item in their Snagit software and send it back. So, it doesn’t offer the ability to collaborate quite as easily as Evernote. However, Snagit’s sharing and publishing capability is one of its greatest strengths and priorities. Just click Share in the menu and you’ll have the ability to save the content as a file to your computer, email it to someone, upload it to your own website, your printer, a wide range of software programs and cloud storage services, and yes, even to Evernote!

Programs that Snagit can Share / Send to

Click Share in Snagit’s menu

Conclusion: If you want to share with other people, both tools can do the job, although Evernote inches ahead because it facilitates both people being able to edit the same note within Evernote. If you want to share your content for use in other programs and publish it in other ways, Snagit is the best choice.

Evernote vs. Snagit Conclusions

After a head-to-head comparison, we’ve discovered that your selection between these two tools depends on your task and your goals:

Use Evernote if you want to be able to:

  • keep all your work in one place organized and searchable
  • create a wide variety of notes such as audio, video, web clippings, PDFs, typed notes, etc.
  • have OCR automatically applied to web clippings and images
  • collaborate with other people on your notes
  • easily create notes on mobile

Use Snagit if you want to:

  • create high-quality web clippings and videos in universally usable file formats that are exportable
  • create web-clippings of hard to capture content like wide screen family trees, and information that appears further down a web page that you can’t see all on the screen at the same time
  • be able manipulate your content with annotations or drop it into project templates
  • easily export your captured content into a variety of other programs
  • not have to pay an ongoing subscription.

Another way of looking at it is that Evernote is more of a final destination for content you’re collecting, and Snagit is a content collector that makes it easy to use that content wherever you need it.

Conclusion

If you want to have one place to store and use a wide variety of notes including web clippings, Evernote is the best choice. If you want full flexibility in capturing and creating online content and using it in other programs and projects, Snagit is the best choice. I like to use them in combination. I keep my genealogy and other notes organized in Evernote, and then I use Snagit to capture web content exactly the way I want it and send it into Evernote as needed. And I use both programs for a whole lot more than just genealogy! I clip recipes, projects and ideas, and I use Snagit for all the images I create for Genealogy Gems.

How do you use Evernote and Snagit?

Please leave a comment below.

Resources

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How to Find and Use the Family Bible – Premium

The Family Bible: Elevenses with Lisa Episode 29

The family Bible is an important resource for genealogy. Here’s how to find family Bibles and use them for family history.

Family Bible for Genealogy and Family History

Watch episode 29 of Elevenses with Lisa to learn how to find and analyze your family Bible for genealogy

Start by watching this video to learn how to find and use family Bibles. Then keep reading below for all of the website links and resources to help you be successful in your research of the family Bible.

Elevenses with Lisa, the online video series where we take a break, visit and learn about genealogy and family history.

Places to Look for the Family Bible

The best place to start looking is around your own house!

Where you Can Find Family Bibles Offline:

  • Reach out to close family and distant cousins, particularly female lines
  • Archives
  • Historical societies

I reached out to my cousin Carolyn. She relayed a strange story to me about the family bible that was in my Great Grandmother Lenora Herring’s home:

The Strange Story

“Many years ago, probably when I was in my 20’s or 30’s I was visiting at the Herring home in Oklahoma.  Lenora had already passed but Jewel (her daughter) still lived in the house. 

I was asking her some questions about the family history.  She got out the Bible and said it contained the only information she knew about.  It was a large Bible – I don’t remember much about its condition – and getting pictures of things certainly wasn’t the trend.  But she opened it up to the pages where the family history was written and she proceeded to tear out those pages and give them to me! 

Using family bibles for genealogy and family history

A page torn from the family Bible.

Looking back on that, I kinda wish I would have stopped her!  So, she kept the Bible and gave me the family info pages!  The Bible itself didn’t seem to impress me much.  But I was very interested in what was written on those pages! 

So after Jewel could no longer live in the Herring house and my mother placed Jewel in a nursing home, my mother disposed of all the things in the house and the house was sold to help pay for Jewel’s care.  I was not there in Oklahoma when this occurred, but I guess Janette must have  picked up the family Bible. 

Eventually, Janette and I got our heads together and realized who had what.  I’ve attached images of the family history pages.  Some of it is hard to read – I think most of it was written in pencil.  And for some reason, I didn’t make sense of some of the info till recent years. 

I think there were multiple people that wrote on the pages – including my mother. 

There was a Herring / Jump family reunion several years ago at the home of one of the Jump cousins.  I went and so did Janette.  She brought the family Bible to show.  It was in very, very poor condition and if I remember right, stored in an old cardboard box……….”

Where You Can Find Family Bibles Online

Here’s a list of free websites where you can find digitized family Bibles. 

Family Bibles at Library of Congress

Family bibles at the library of congress

Search for family Bibles at the library of congress

Internet Archive: Archive.org
Click here to see the search results for “family bible” at the Internet Archive.

The Streepy Bible is a great example of variation in handwriting.

Click here to see Genealogical records taken from the family Bible of James Monroe Palmer : born 1822, died 1897 and Caroline Frances Bacon, his wife, born 1830, died 1899 of Boston, Massachusetts.
A good example of a transcription of the records from a family Bible.

Ebay
Search for “family bible”. Try adding a surname.

Premium Members: Listen to my Premium Podcast episode 76 that includes strategies for using ebay for genealogy.

Google
Search for the surname along with the phrase family Bible using the quotation marks search operator. Example: “Cooke” “family Bible”
Resource for Google search strategies: The Genealogists’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke

FamilySearch
Search both the Card Catalog and the Digital Books collection for “family bible” and a surname.
In the Notes section of an item, you may find a link to click to view the digital version if one is available.

World Cat
Catalogs approximately 2 billion items from 10,000 libraries around the world.

Allen County Public Library

Archive Grid
Includes “over 5 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.” Includes materials from over 1,000 different archival institutions.

Examining the Family Bible

  • Check the title page
    Is there a date that it was printed / published?
    This may help you determine when it made its way into the family
  • Look through every page as things may be tucked in there.
  • Look through the pages – look for markings. You may find passages that were particularly meaningful to them.
  • Was the publish date after many of the dates entered into the Bible? There’s a chance the info may have been copied.
  • Use a photo editor to preserve and even improve Bible pages. I use Snagit to invert the image. Get Snagit with our affiliate link and get a discount for a limited time. (thanks for supporting our free content!)
  • In the menu: Image > Effects > Filters > Invert. (Learn more about using Snagit for genealogy with my video and article How to Use Snagit for Genealogy.)

Interpreting the Family Bible

Here are questions to ask and things to consider as you interpret the contents of your family Bible for genealogy. 

Was the information copied? If so, who then has the original? Keep in mind that mistakes could have been made during the copying or entered by memory.

Could the information have been recorded by people over time?

Is the handwriting all the same? If so, it’s more likely some copying.
Different handwriting in the family Bible may indicate more first-hand knowledge, or it may be someone filling in years later.

Analyze all of the entries. Like a scrapbook, there is significance to the order and each entry has significance. Is anyone missing?

Was there an incentive for inaccuracies? Was a marriage date fudged to hide a pregnancy before marriage?

Cross reference with other genealogical documents.

Did a wedding occur around the time of the Bible’s publication? The Bible may have been a gift.

Restoring the Family Bible

My cousin Carolyn had a large family Bible from her father’s side of the family restored.

family Bible in need of restoration

The family Bible in need of restoration

“The woman who restored this Bible did an awesome job.  She had  available the correct restoration materials. It’s not perfect, like-new.  But still very good.”

“She also did something to the leather to renew it in some way. When I first acquired the Bible, the brass latch would not close, but now it does!  The Bible can now be viewed and handled (carefully, of course!) without it falling apart. She also constructed a special storage box for it, using archival quality materials.”

Since there wasn’t a restoration expert available in her area, she reached out to a book restoration expert in Indiana:

Leonard’s Book Restoration, LLC

“Website was helpful and they were pleasant to work with…They put a new cover on my own personal Bible, and I was very pleased with their work.  A few years ago, I also had them re-do a small hardback Bible that my mother used. ”

Resources

Listen to the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 68 on the Family Bible, Google Search
Rodney McCulloh shares his inspirational story of the path that he followed that lead him to the old family Bible.

Bonus Download exclusively for Premium Members: Download the show notes handout

Become a Genealogy Gems Premium Member today. 

Answers to Your Live Chat Questions

One of the advantages of tuning into the live broadcast of each Elevenses with Lisa show is participating in the Live Chat and asking your questions. 

From Sian: Is Archivgrid US-based only or worldwide?
From Lisa: It’s worldwide. In the “Search for a Location” list you can scroll down to see all the countries. You can also hover you mouse over the map and zoom out to see the full coverage.

From Kimberly: ​Hi from East Aurora NY. I can’t wait to take take another look at my grandmother’s Bible! Is it ok to add my information to her Bible?
From Lisa: While in the end, it’s a personal decision, I think it’s a wonderful idea to add information to the family bible. They are meant to be added to over generations.

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