Making the Most of Quarantine Time: Genealogy Learning Online

With all the extra time we are gaining as we conscientiously obey the need for social distancing, why not take advantage of learning more online? Genealogists are indeed fortunate because there are many ways for us to continue learning from the comfort of our homes. A slew of trusted genealogy websites offer free video content that can help us become better researchers while we sit in our jammies and sip a hot beverage. You can watch a video on your own schedule or sign up for a live-streaming webinar at a particular time and date.

Webinar: Virginia Minor, Early Suffragette

Thursday, 2 April 2020, 11:00 a.m. (Central Time)

The Show Me Missouri Speakers Bureau presents Sandy Davidson speaking about "Not So Minor: Supreme Court Denies Women's Right to Vote." Virginia Minor was an early suffragette from St. Louis, pre-dating Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She sued for the right to vote in 1872, a case that went to the Supreme Court, which upheld that Missouri law did not permit women to vote. When she died in 1894, the situation had not changed. Sponsored by the Missouri Humanities Council and the State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO), this lecture is free but pre-registration is required. If you are interested, you can register on the SHSMO website.

Online Classes at FamilySearch

FamilySearch, one of the major online players in family history research, offers dozens of free instructional videos. The FamilySearch wiki is filled with videos narrated by experienced genealogists. You can watch at your leisure, stopping and starting as you like. You might want to start with "FamilySearch Research Wiki: What It Can Do For You!" an overview of the wiki, one of the most unheralded but valuable resources online. If you are new to FamilySearch, be sure to watch "Tips and Tricks Using FamilySearch Historical Records Collection." This video will help you navigate the vast FamilySearch collection.

Note that both these and other videos in the wiki bear a caution against using Firefox for viewing; however, both videos ran just fine in the newest version of Firefox so maybe the trouble is with older versions. Note, too, that if you scroll beneath the videos, you will see that you have the option to download both the video and handout material to your own computer. At the bottom of each screen is a list of more videos with related content.

If you are doing region-specific genealogy, you will be excited to see the wiki page with a list of countries on which there are instructional videos available.

As you can see, if you click "show" at the end of each line of black text, there are multiple classes with handouts for many countries. At the bottom of the list are also entries for North and South America. And at the top of the page are more general webinars and past research seminars (2016, 2017, and 2018 are currently available.)

If you want to see all the offerings in one spot, check out the "Classes in the Learning Center" page. Here you will find more than 2,000 videos, although not all are in English.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Search for genealogy videos on YouTube and you will find  hundreds. CyndisList also can steer you to many more. Have fun and remember that you do occasionally have to get up and stretch!