by Carolyn L. Barkley Banks seem to have undergone a transformation in America, moving from staid and secure sounding titles like First National Bank of (fill in the blank) to such seemingly meaningless names as “Sovran,” and “Cigna.” When I was in Cincinnati recently, I was amused by the “Fifth Third Bank” – what happened, [...]
by Carolyn L. Barkley In October of last year, I read a review of James Marten’s Sing Not War: the Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2011). As I am always interested in Civil War-related books, I ordered the e-book edition to read while on a trip. [...]
by Carolyn L. Barkley It’s hard to believe that another NGS Family History Conference is over, but a look at my pile of receipts and new books, tells me that it is. Perhaps now would be a good time to look back at the conference and summarize some of my experiences. I happily spent the [...]
by Carolyn L. Barkley Hi! My name is Carolyn and I write blogs. Since 2008, when this blog first began to appear, I have written a weekly article. Sometimes they are written easily in the middle of sunny Sunday afternoons, a glass of wine (or two) on my desk; sometimes my muse approaches late on [...]
by Carolyn L. Barkley At approximately 3:00 this afternoon, the lights dimmed in the exhibit hall and the “pipe and drape” guys quickly – and noisily – began to dismantle the booths. Soon everything was packed safely into boxes and we were ready to leave the exhibit hall. For me, that is the moment which seems most like the last [...]
by Carolyn L. Barkley Conferences take on a life of their own, with an ebb and flow in the exhibit hall that is driven by the session schedule. Periods of intense activity alternate with quieter hours during sessions. On Friday, individuals who had been browsing all week, began to make their final selections. Some were [...]
Day two in Cincinnati at the NGS Family History Conference. Some of the best opportunities at the conference are the various twenty-minute demonstrations held in the back of the hall. I attended one such presentation on the basic features of the genealogy-specific search engine, Mocavo, and another on the Flip-Pal‘s capability of scanning large documents in separate [...]
Today was the first day of the 2012 NGS Family History Conference in Cincinnati. For those of us working in the exhibit hall, the day went from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. One minute we weren’t open yet; the next hundreds of people were streaming through the main exhibit entrance. As [...]
by Jill Seaholm Jill Seaholm, this week’s guest blogger, was born in Moline, Illinois, to extreme 100% Swedish-American parents. At 14 she was lucky enough to go on a family trip to visit distant relatives in Sweden, and, while there, became hooked on all things Swedish. At Augustana College she majored in Scandinavian Studies, studying [...]