I ran into a great site, Roots Tech. It has videos from their
latest convention, which is the largest genealogy Tech
convention in the country. It is held yearly in Salt Lake City. I wish it were a lot closer so I could attend. Anyway, the videos seem to run about an hour each. I watched one from a guy from Google and using Google for genealogical research. It had lots of really great tips. Probably the best one was using the tilde parameter. For example, searching for “Arthur Brown ~genealogy” will yield results that only relate to genealogical research, vital records,
etc. Really cool. Also, you can use the double dot parameter in dates.
Such as “Arthur Brown 1868..1928 will return results for the date
range and will ignore an Arthur Brown born in 1929. Really helpful. So often, Google searches are like drinking water from a fire hose. These two parameters can reduce the flow to a manageable level.The video I watched also talked about Google Image Search, wherein you can
upload a picture and have Google look for similar views. Subsequently, I have not had much success with it, but I think it could lead to a breakthrough on that rare photo that you know is of someone that is related, but you don’t have a name for them, and I have a bunch of them. (I have about 20 photos from 1890 plus/minus 20 years, which are “Hubers from Switzerland.”)There was a bit about searching Google News but only searching the archives and leaving out the current events, which we don’t typically care about in genealogical research. The same thing with using Google Books. They also mentioned using Google + to link with others doing research.Just the Google presentation will revolutionize my research methods. I can’t wait to see the other videos.As you can tell, I was impressed and will use their google tips a lot.
latest convention, which is the largest genealogy Tech
convention in the country. It is held yearly in Salt Lake City. I wish it were a lot closer so I could attend. Anyway, the videos seem to run about an hour each. I watched one from a guy from Google and using Google for genealogical research. It had lots of really great tips. Probably the best one was using the tilde parameter. For example, searching for “Arthur Brown ~genealogy” will yield results that only relate to genealogical research, vital records,
etc. Really cool. Also, you can use the double dot parameter in dates.
Such as “Arthur Brown 1868..1928 will return results for the date
range and will ignore an Arthur Brown born in 1929. Really helpful. So often, Google searches are like drinking water from a fire hose. These two parameters can reduce the flow to a manageable level.The video I watched also talked about Google Image Search, wherein you can
upload a picture and have Google look for similar views. Subsequently, I have not had much success with it, but I think it could lead to a breakthrough on that rare photo that you know is of someone that is related, but you don’t have a name for them, and I have a bunch of them. (I have about 20 photos from 1890 plus/minus 20 years, which are “Hubers from Switzerland.”)There was a bit about searching Google News but only searching the archives and leaving out the current events, which we don’t typically care about in genealogical research. The same thing with using Google Books. They also mentioned using Google + to link with others doing research.Just the Google presentation will revolutionize my research methods. I can’t wait to see the other videos.As you can tell, I was impressed and will use their google tips a lot.
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