More Google : How to Subscribe to RSS Feeds

You can get all of the new PAF-LUG Blog posts automatically in your GOOGLE READER.
Click here

Howard's Delicious Bookmarks

What is Delicious?
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.

Things you can do with Delicious
Bookmark any site on the Internet, and get to it from anywhere
Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you're not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.
Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.
Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web
See what's hot with Delicious users by checking out our popular tags. By looking at popular bookmarks for a tag, you'll be able to discover the most interesting bookmarks on the topics you're most interested in. Browse bookmarks on just about anything from the best programming tips to the most popular travel sites, all in an easy to read format.

Delicious has a bold new design that is more powerful and easier to use, along with a revamped search that's faster and more robust. It's also full of useful features that people have been requesting for years.

• Save a new bookmark
• Navigation
• New organization
• Fast contextual search
• Contextual sub menus
• Tag Bar
• Tag navigation
• Autocomplete
• Sorting
• Bookmarks
• New layout
• Blue boxes
• Details page
• Sidebar
• Top 10 tags
• New bundles
• Private nicknames
• Action Box
• Contextual actions
• Tag Descriptions
• Public Profiles

Click on the Title Link at the top and see Howard’s ever growing bookmarks (mostly related to Family History and Genealogy). Click here to see video describing DELICIOUS.

The Ireland Roots Website

If you are looking for your Irish Roots you have come to the right place.

From here you can visit the Irish Roots message board. It covers every county in Ireland and it is a free service.

You can choose a link directly to the county you are interested in from the menu on the left. If you are not sure of the county your ancestors are from use the "Ireland Section".

Michigan Family History Network

This site holds a collection of genealogy transcriptions and records to help Michigan Family researchers. Our main concern is get data on the internet. We do transcriptions to put online and many people have helped by transcribing and donating data to this site.

In putting this site together we hope to make files available in different formats that are not available for one reason or another on the other sites that we have created. An internet tie up someplace, a server being down, etc. and eventually new format that may be easier to navigate for visitors.

New files are being added continuously so make sure you stop by often.

The files here are free for you to look through, as long as you understand that they are under copyright protection by the person who did the work to get them formatted to go online and cannot be copied for commercial purposes.

If you have web pages with Michigan data please use our new Linking Database feature and put a link from your pages back to ours, please.

Michigan Family History Network

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you find something you can use in your family research.

Legacy 7 : Free Family Tree Software

1. Mapping – Use Microsoft Virtual Earth to automatically pinpoint and plot important locations in ancestors’ lives from within Legacy. See 3-D, satellite and bird’s eye images of where your ancestors lived. Now it is easy to track your ancestor’s migration.

2. Wall Charts – Experience the enjoyment of showing off your family tree by producing stunning full-color wall charts – ancestor, descendant, fan, hourglass, bow tie, and even DNA charts. Use them for your next family reunion or for a deserving wall in your home.

3. SourceWriter – Cite your sources easily and correctly with the new SourceWriter. SourceWriter makes it simple for you to select the correct input screen so that you enter all the pieces needed to correctly cite any source of information in the thousands of formats that exist for them. The information you enter is correctly and precisely formatted to match the genealogy industry standards for source citations when printing footnotes, endnotes, and bibliographies. Multiple citations for an event can be combined into one paragraph, thus avoiding a long string of superscripted numbers within the report body.

4. Interview Reports – Choose from over 1,200 carefully pre-written interview questions and memory triggers to help you capture your family’s memories before it is too late.

5. Guided Setup Wizard – Getting started with Legacy is even easier now. The new guided setup wizard takes you by the hand and guides you through the setup process in an easy-to-understand way.

6. New Relationship Calculator - See how any two people are connected, not only through direct blood relationships but also by marriage. A person might be the "great-grandfather of the wife of your 2nd great-grandnephew. You can also specify how many of these non-blood relationships you want to see.

7. More Powerful Searching – Searching your Legacy data is easier than ever before. You can now search for individuals that are missing parts of names, birth or death information, marriage information and much more. You can also search for missing source citations as you document your family files.

8. Now Attach Any Document to Individuals and Marriages - Along with attaching pictures, sounds, and video to individuals, events, locations, and sources, you can now also attach any other kind of document (PDFs, Word files, etc.).

9. Enhanced Backups - Legacy can now backup your family file and multimedia files at the same time, making it easier to transfer everything to another computer.

10. Edit Records from the "Used By" Lists - All of the master lists in Legacy have an option to view the individuals who use the items in the list. You can now edit those individuals right from the list instead of having to exit the list and edit them separately.

11. Standardization Tips – New alerts will appear if something questionable has been entered in the Individual's Information screen. This helps users keep their data standardized. The Standardization Tips comply with Getting it Right.

12. Privacy – enhanced privacy options ensure that only the information you want to share will be visible to others.

13. Best Fit Child Columns - The new Best Fit option in the Family View expands or contracts the child list columns to fit the number of children for the current couple. No more trying to guess the optimum number of child columns. Legacy does it for you.
Click here for the Legacy 7 Video Tour.

FREE Genealogy on the Web

The USGenWeb Project is a group of volunteers working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone.

Organization is by county and state, and this website provides you with links to all the state genealogy websites which, in turn, provide gateways to the counties. The USGenWeb Project also sponsors important Special Projects at the national level and this website provides an entry point to all of those pages, as well.

Clicking on a State Link (on the left) will take you to the State's website. Clicking on the tabs above will take you to additional information and links. You can also use the drop down menu in the upper left hand corner which will also take you to the State's website of your choice

All of the volunteers who make up The USGenWeb Project are very proud of this endeavor and hope that you will find their hard work both beneficial and rewarding. Thank you for visiting!

Minnesota Historical Society : Online Resources

FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH - The Minnesota Historical Society has a variety of resources to help you learn about your family's history. Your research will be more productive and fun if you proceed in a systematic way.

Family History Research in 8 Easy Steps
Step 1: Start with what you know.
Step 2: Decide what fact(s) you want to find.
Step 3: Determine the kind of record you need.
Step 4: Record your results.
Step 5: Decide what you want to find out next.
Step 6: What you can do at home.
Step 7: Read about the areas in which your ancestors lived.
Step 8: Read about doing family research. Join a society.
Types of Records

There are a number of resources available to individuals interested in conducting family history research. In this section, Library staff have provided access to a large number of these Minnesota Family History Resources.

Genomics : Family History and Health

Health care professionals have known for a long time that common diseases - heart disease, cancer, and diabetes - and even rare diseases - like hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell anemia - can run in families. If one generation of a family has high blood pressure, it is not unusual for the next generation to have similarly high blood pressure. Tracing the illnesses suffered by your parents, grandparents, and other blood relatives can help your doctor predict the disorders to which you may be at risk and take action to keep you and your family healthy.
Create your own family history of health

Free Commander Windows File Manager

FreeCommander is an easy-to-use alternative to the standard windows file manager. The program helps you with daily work in Windows. Here you can find all the necessary functions to manage your data stock. You can take FreeCommander anywhere - just copy the installation directory on a CD or USB-Stick - and you can even work with this program on a foreign computer.

Main features in FreeCommander:

* Dual-panel technology - horizontal and vertical
* Tabbed interface
* Optional tree view for each panel
* Built in file viewer to view files in hex, binary, text or image format
* File viewer inside archives too
* Built in archive handling: ZIP (read, write), CAB (read, write), RAR (read)
* Nested archive handling
* Built in FTP client
* Easy access to system folders, control panel, desktop and start menu
* Copy, move, delete, rename files and folders
* Multi rename tool
* Wipe files
* Create and verify MD5 checksums
* File splitting
* File properties and context menu
* Calculation of folder size
* Folder comparison / synchronization
* Modification of file date and attributes
* Folder / program favorites
* File searching (inside archive too)
* File filters for display
* User defined columns for detailed view
* DOS command line
* Multiple language support

Houston Public Library Joins FamilySearch in Digitization Effort

November 24, 2008 - The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—Thousands of publications that capture the diverse histories of Gulf Coast states will be accessible for free online. FamilySearch and the Houston Public Library announced a joint project today to digitally preserve and publish the library’s vast collection of county and local histories, registers of individuals, directories of Texas Rangers, church histories, and biographical dictionaries. The digital records will be available for free online at FamilySearch.org and HoustonLibrary.org.

“Houston Public Library has one of the top 10 genealogy libraries in the nation and a very strong Gulf Coast and international collection,” said Susan D. Kaufman, manager, Houston Public Library's Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research. “Visitors come from all over the country to visit the library. Researchers will benefit from the convenience of online access to the collection targeted under the joint venture with FamilySearch,” added Kaufman.

In 2007, FamilySearch announced its plans to create the largest and most comprehensive collection of free city and county histories online. Over 23,000 digital publications have been made available online since then. The addition of Houston Public Library and its collection furthers that goal.

Under the agreement, FamilySearch will digitally preserve thousands of Houston Public Library's historic publications collection and provide free access to the images online. The targeted publications range in date from 1795 to 1923.

The new digital collections published online will have “every word” search capability, which allows users to search by name, location, date, or other fields across the collection. The search results are then linked to high quality digital images of the original publication. Users will also be able to just browse or read the publications as digital books online if they prefer.

The digitization efforts have already begun, and publications are now viewable online. Texas records are the first publications targeted by the initiative, followed by other Gulf Coast states. The project will take up to five years to complete.

Digital publications will be noted and hyperlinked in the Family History Library Catalog at FamilySearch.org as they are digitized. The growing collection can be accessed currently at FamilySearch.org (go to Search Records, and then Historical Books).

“We are honored to be part of such an important and beneficial initiative with a world leader like FamilySearch,” said Kaufman. “The digitization and online publication of Houston Public Library's historic collections will help increase the inquisitiveness of library patrons and create a heightened sense of awareness of the library’s resources—which then brings customers back more often with more research questions. It’s a win-win for everyone,” Kaufman added.

FamilySearch is providing the computers, scanners, and camera operators required to complete the project. FamilySearch previously announced projects with Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, and FamilySearch’s own Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

The Houston Public Library’s Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research is also a FamilySearch Affiliate Library. That means local patrons have access to millions of microfilms from FamilySearch’s vast genealogical collection in Salt Lake City, Utah. Patrons can order research material from FamilySearch through the library and use the library’s film readers and copiers to further their genealogical efforts.

ABOUT FAMILYSEARCH INTERNATIONAL

FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

NARA records on Footnote.com - November 2008

Footnote is second only to Ancestry.com in the number of NARA publications available on its website. And unlike Ancestry.com, all Footnote.com content is available for free to patrons (that includes you) at a Family History Center near your home.

On the other hand, unlike Ancestry.com, Footnote.com doesn't provide a way to assist the researcher to find a publication using the NARA publication number or the NARA title. Hopefully this is an inadequacy Footnote.com can soon fix.

For the present time, the good folks at Footnote.com provided me a current list of NARA records available on Footnote.com. I'm not certain if the titles shown are the NARA publication titles or the Footnote.com titles. Also, no indication is provided as to the number of NARA microfilm rolls currently included in the Footnote.com publication of the same, so there is no way to compare the roll count to the total number of rolls currently available from NARA.

In the list on this link, I've created hyperlinks for each publication. Click on the NARA publication number to go to Footnote.com's online, digitized copy of that publication. The publications are sorted in publication order. Use your browser's find or search capability to quickly locate a publication number or search for a keyword in the title.

At the bottom of the article in this link are six publications or collections without NARA microfilm publication numbers. Presumably, these are collections that Footnote has digitized directly, saving the time, expense and trouble of going to microfilm before going to digital. If that is the case, then these are records that previously were never visible outside the walls of the National Archives and Footnote.com deserves kudos for going beyond digitizing NARA microfilm.