Genealogy This Week - 15 May 2010
Our weekly compilation of interesting new tools, resources and stories for genealogists. This week:
A Tool for Tracing First Names – Every year the US Social Security Administration updates their list of the most popular first names in the US for both males and females. The information is organized by year of birth. They just updated their list for 2009 this week. This is a great resource for genealogists because the annual information goes back to 1880. It can help you fill in the blanks for difficult-to-read handwritten names in old documents. The site also has a great calculator where you can enter any first name and it will show you how the popularity of the name has changed over the years and decades. This is great fun if you try your own name. [Link]
A Tool for Tracing Last Names – World Name Profiler is a great site for tracing last names. Simply enter any last name and it will show you a world map with the frequency distribution of the last name across various countries. It will also show the top regions and top cities for any given surname. The site will only take exact spellings, so be sure to try different spelling variations. [Link]
Personal Archiving Week – This week is the first annual Personal Archiving Week in the US. The event is sponsored by the Library of Congress. Many local libraries throughout the US are participating in this program. Some of these libraries have put their archiving tips and tricks on the internet. This is a potential learning opportunity for genealogists and people who enjoy scrapbooking. [Link]
Nominate Your Favorite Genealogy Article – A new website called GeneoloGee has just started up. It allows people to share their favourite genealogy articles and sites with other genealogists. What a great idea, and something definitely worth checking out. Incidentally, we would be honored if some of our readers chose to nominate some of our articles or news stories. Give it a try. [Link]
How Do You Store Lots and Lots of Genealogy Records? – Apparently very carefully if you are the Mormon Church, which has the largest and most extensive collection of genealogy records in the world. The central depository is Granite Mountain outside of Salt Lake City Utah. The Granite Mountain Records Vault is massive and extremely impressive. Watch these two YouTube videos to see how it all works. Note: you should have JavaScript enabled on your browser and a recent version of Flash player installed on your computer to see the videos.
