Education and Genealogy

Today I did what I have been wanting to do for some time, I signed up to take some on-line courses at Family Tree University. I have taken courses in the past at National Institute for Genealogical Studies and plan to take a few there again this year as well.
The benefits I have enjoyed from taking on-line courses may not always be obvious to me but I know I have used the tools in my day to day research. When I was doing so much research in Ontario the tools gained for taking courses covering different areas of that Province saved me so much time, effort and money. The first thought that comes to mind is trying to locate land records, the course walked me through what to do and before long I had my great great grandfather Cornelius McMahon's land records in hand. The best part of finding them? The will that was filed with the land records, as the will was not in the index of wills for the area. Pure gold discovery!!

Another great way to learn more with genealogy is to watch a webinar. Most are free and you can find webinars at Legacy Family Tree as well there are some at Illinois State Genealogy Society, those are the first two that come to mind. A person needs to keep in mind, just because these webinars aren't in your State or Country for that matter, does not mean all can't benefit. There are a lot of general subjects, like how to get the most out of documents, or how to organize your research.

I also plan to attend a genealogy conference. After 16 years of research, I attended my first one last year and truly enjoyed it. On top of seeing great speakers and the latest gadgets, there is the benefit of networking and seeing other people excited about genealogy. The conferences I would love to go to this year are
1. Who Do You Think You Are Live this is a huge conference located in England.
2. Rootstech is a lot closer - Salt Lake City, Utah, the wonderful thing about this conference is that although you may not be able to attend in person you can watch some of the speakers live. You just have to go to the website. I "attended" a couple of presentations last year and loved them!
3. Last but definitely not least is the Southern California Genealogical Society and Family History Library which sounds like it is going to be great. One of the focuses will be genetic genealogy according to Cece Moore's blog post about the event.

A year of learning ahead!