july112015meeting

Italian-American Genealogy Group (Washington, DC Metropolitan Area)

July 11, 2015 Meeting Minutes

The Italian-American Genealogy Group (Washington, DC Metropolitan Area) held its quarterly meeting on July 11, 2015 at the Dolly Madison Library, 1244 Oak Ridge Avenue, McLean, VA. We had a good turnout with 14 people attending.

Marie Melchiori started the meeting at 10:10 a.m. The scheduled topic for our round-table discussion focused on the genealogy software that people are currently using. Since there are many free and affordable programs available, we all should be documenting our family genealogies on personal computers. Some programs appear to offer more features than others, but in the end they all are able to help the average hobbyist find, organize, document, report and share their family’s genealogy. The majority of us use Windows-based programs, and much of the software is cross-platform compatible between Apple products, and hand-held devices. All offer GEDCOM transfer protocol, and many provide direct Internet access to commercial databases such as Ancestry.com.

~ As a professional genealogist, Marie uses Legacy V.8 Family Tree software. The standard edition is available as a free download. She likes it because of its easy-to-use feature to document and cite sources during data entry. Many charts and reports can be generated with links to the sources. A brief review can be found on their website: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/WhatsNew8.asp

~ Family Tree Maker by Ancestry.com appears to be the most popular program within our group. The tutorial for this product can be found at: http://familytreemaker.com/Learn/Tutorials

~ Brother’s Keeper was mentioned as a good product with a GEDCOM to HTML converter.

~ Utilizing the versatility of Spreadsheets has proven to be helpful for sorting and analyzing data to identify family relationships from census data and other listings.

~ Clooz 3 is used in conjunction with any genealogy program, and it can be utilized as a general document filing system. People have said it is a great way to keep track of the many bits of information on family members, because of its efficient means of finding and recovering the data. Detailed information about Clooz 3 can be found at: https://www.clooz.com

~ Only one person uses the Reunion 11 by Leister Productions. It is a full-feature genealogy application that runs on Apple’s Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPads. Details with video tutorials can be found at: http://www.leisterpro.com

The experiences of each participant’s comments were helpful for the few who have not yet computerized their data. The importance of backing-up data to an external hard drive, CD/DVD or flash drive was mentioned. Questions were raised about the accuracy and validity of the various on-line sources of family data uploaded by other genealogy hobbyists.

The remaining time was spent sharing our genealogy research experiences.

~ At our next meeting:

The scheduled speaker for our next meeting will be Thomas H. Shawker, M.D., who will discuss Basic Genetic Genealogy: Y Chromosome Testing for Beginners. This talk will introduce the topic of Genetic Genealogy explaining the Y chromosome test, the most popular and basic genetic test. It will explain the DNA molecule; the types and number of DNA markers used in genetic genealogy; the mode of inheritance of the Y chromosome and how it follows surname descent.

Please check back to see the exact date and location of our next quarterly meeting which is planned for a Saturday in October from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Depending on the availability of a meeting room, the location will either be at the Dolley Madison Library, 1244 Oak Ridge Avenue, McLean, VA 22101 (703) 356-0770 or the Westover Branch Library, 1644 N. McKinley Road, Arlington, VA 22205 (703) 228-5260. Join us for our roundtable sharing of our ancestral research. You can verify the actual date, time and place by viewing our website at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vapip6gs.

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Other information:

~ Are there any retired public relations people looking for a fun project? We would like someone to develop a flyer to use as a handout with information about our Italian-American Genealogy Group (Washington, DC Metropolitan Area). There are several events occurring over the summer and into Fall 2015 where we could distribute these flyers to let people know there is a genealogy group in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area that they can join. Please submit your ideas to this Webmaster with IAGG Flyer in the subject line. Thank you.

Our meetings run from 10:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. After our meetings everyone is always welcome to join us for lunch at a local restaurant.

Submitted by: John DiBella
Keep digging and cite your sources.

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