March Ruminations

I've noticed that many books posted at Internet Archive have better images than those at Google Books, but Google Books has better ways of searching through books, so I have taken to working back and forth between the two.

For example, images for "The Alvord Look" were taken from the book A Genealogy of the Descendants of Alexander Alvord. To find the images within the book, I used the book's Overview page at Google Books, scrolled down to Selected Images, clicked More, and then made note of the page numbers. Then I found the Internet Archive version of the book, went straight to the page numbers, right-clicked and chose Copy Image, then went over to Paint Shop Pro and pasted the images there to work on.

I also like that you can easily print single pages from Internet Archive books. And for viewing online, I like that Archive's page images are color, not greyscale, although when you print them it takes more ink because the background, even if it looks white, may be enough of a color to print.

But Google Books still has, by far, the best Search tool. What a boon it is to have both!

------------

I'm very thankful this month for help received from Barbara Poole at Life From The Roots and from Karen at Benson Memorial Library in Titusville, Pennsylvania, both of whom went above and beyond the call of duty to provide me with information I was searching for.

Incidentally, Barbara and I found that we are Alvord-Voar cousins, both descended from Alexander Alvord and his wife Mary Voar.

Another of my geneablogging cousins, Cheryl Schulte, has resumed posting at Two Sides of the Ocean, after a long period of absence due to time constraints. She's completed the 12-part series she started last year--From Whence I Came--and is now posting in the present. Welcome back, Cheryl!

Early in the month, Jasia's post, Genealogy as Therapy, struck a chord with me and with a lot of others as well. A week and a half ago, she did it again with Melancholy and Melancholy Too. Readers with ancestral roots in Detroit will identify with what she has to say in these two poignant posts.

The other day I visited several blogs looking for something I recalled reading. I discovered that a number of bloggers have removed the NavBar at the top of the page, and thus there is no Search This Blog feature. I wish y'all hadn't done that!

Don't miss NPR's great interactive slideshow, The Jobs of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations.

So happy to say that the North America section at Sedgwick.org is back up and running!

------------

March Accomplishments

• More than a third of the 78 surnames listed on my Surnames page have now been linked to a post with more details about my ancestors of that name.
• Remaining focused on the Surnames page project has resulted in what may be a first-ever accomplishment for me--a full month of blog posts! And, while the formulaic nature of these posts does not make for the most exciting reading, that's the very trait which is helping me stay on task and get the job done. I also believe these posts will make my blog more useful in the long run.
  
• The Surnames page again! Preparing the posts to link there has resulted in a fairly orderly (for me!) search for information and sources to link to, and I've actually added a few surnames to my tree as a result.
  
• I added a Contact page to my blog, and I'm happy to say it was taken for a successful test run by a reader who needed some pages from a book I own.
  
• I set up a new binder for ancestors of Elijah Sedgwick. At present I'm collecting published information about them. I'm in no hurry to research people about whom books have already been written.
• I finally managed to make a backup copy of my Legacy database on a cute little thumb drive that my cousin Cheryl sent me. It's not the same as backing up my whole hard-drive, but it's definitely the most important single item and by far the hardest to replace.
  

And in the other column . . .

I'd intended to participate in the 91st Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, A Tribute to Women, but I just didn't get my act together. And I haven't even started on my taxes yet either!