I'm Just Home from the NEAPG Annual Meeting

Today I spent most of the day at the annual meeting for the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG).

The programs was hosted by member Connie Reik at the Tisch Library at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

We had a one hour business meeting where we elected new officers.  They include:

Tim Firkowski - President
Kate Lowrie - Vice President
Sarah Nesnow - Secretary
Alice Kane - Treasurer

Tim is doing a great job as president.  After a year of jumping straight in with both feet I am confident he will do an even better job in the coming year.  Many thanks to Sarah and Alice for continuing on. And welcome to Kate for accepting the Vice Presidency.  I'm sure she will get many pep talks from Polly to spur her on.

During the lunch break NEAPG treasurer, Alice Kane, gave a talk on the use of Second Life in genealogy. I am not the best person to describe Second Life, but it is like a parallel universe within the internet.  A newly formed virtual chapter of APG exists and meets in Second Life. Alice demonstrated how Second Life works for those of us who haven't ventured there yet.

After our business meeting we were spoiled to have not one, but two great talks. 

The first was a talk on non-population censuses by Nora Galvin.  I was particularly interested in hearing this talk after exploring some agricultural censuses earlier in the year.  Nora gave a terrific talk and walked us through all the various non-population schedules.  I can see many uses for these censuses, including helping me with my house history research. 

Afterward, Connie Reik gave a talk on a citation tool called Zotero.  Zotero is a Firefox plugin that allows researchers to capture citations easily from websites on the internet such as worldcat.org., loc.gov, Google Books and even Amazon.com.  Zotero makes the process of capturing and creating citations and bibliographies easier than ever.  I was very excited by the prospects of using Zotero and can't wait to get starting exploring it.

Be sure to catch both Nora's and Connie's talks at the upcoming New England Regional Genealogical Conference (NERGC) in Springfield, Massachusetts, April 6-10, 2011.

The coming year promises to hold many opportunities for NEAPG members.  There will be more great talks, repository visits, networking opportunities and Ancestor Road Show opportunities.  Now is a great time to get involved with a dynamic group of professional genealogists.  Give a shout and check us out.