Yesterday (January 19th) we had our first meeting this season. We have decided to do this group informal, no «speaches» or «lectures» – only research and help and talk about doing genealogy in Norway.

We had three discussions at the meeting:

• Links to put out on the egsfl.org web to help people in their research.
• Research in Denmark: one of the members has now gotten to the point that she can start her research in Denmark, I showed her www.arkivalieronline.dk and the DIS-danmark.dk webpage. She was pretty excited to learn that Danmark also (together with Norway) has their churchrecords and censuses online for free!
• Language-barrier: Sue has bought a great Norwegian beginners book with a cd. Also I told the group about different dictionaries to use for old words we might find in Norwegian or other scandinavian records
  Otto Jørgensen’s webpage with dictionary is pretty good, and includes a lot of words we will find in records, but maybe not in the newer dictionaries. (this is norwegian to english)
• NORDGEN has a dictionary that actually translates different words into english, from several languages. In the box «oppslagsord» – print the word you would translate, and you might get lucky!

Next meeting will be in March.

Oh I? I don’t know noothing – I am from Norway!

The Norway/Denmark bench – Denmark in the middle.

Next meeting we will put Marens 2 brickwalls on Slektsforum, to see if our friends in Norway might be able to help!

On the Scandinavian SIG ( Scandinavian Special Interest Group) meeting in March 2010, President Sue presented the new Englewood Genealogical Society FL  website ( http://www.egslf.org ) At the time  Sue and D’Ann were working on it, but now, (a couple of weeks ago) – I got my username and password, (wonderfully easy to remember) and the new web-pages looks great!

I am looking forward to our meetings – they are both fun and interesting. I am impressed by the researchers. The language-problems are huge, but they work hard and with just a tiny bit of help, they can do a lot on their own!

Looking forward to see you again, all of you Scandinavians! Also looking forward to christmas party, will bring norwegian goat-cheese and Lefse!

Again a great meeting with the «vikings» in Englewood Genealogical Society Even though they are refurbishing the Elsie Quirk library – trying to make it look modern and nice, we were able to have a good meeting. «The dusty halls of wisdom» now have a new meaning!

I brought with me some translations for Lois on her Grek-family from Sweden, and she was of course very happy to be able to read all the church-records she had from Genline.se. And, I was able to help Dottie on her research in Värmland (Gunnarskog) – we found both birthrecords from 1770, death record from 1839 and household-examination records from years in between have now been sent over to her by email. We also found some other people looking into the same family on Anbytar-forum, this might be Dotties relatives (also in the USofA).

It was also fun to see Maren, she has found her way into the Digitalarkivet, and was able to help others in their research in Vestfold. (Larvik) Also, Maren her self realized that the «Wee» name she is looking into, is a farm in Sande in Vestfold, and that we might be able to help her further in her research. 

The informal way of meeting, to be able to talk and help, work together discuss and have fun with our research it is a great way to meet. Our next meeting will be in late April, hopefully with lots of new questions from the «vikings»!

After the meeting we went out with friends to do some St. Patrick-eating… corned beef and cabbage. My first. And I liked it! Even Obama claims Irish ancestry on St. Patrick’s day…

Englewood Genealogical Society (FL) had their first Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting for members with Scandinavian research meeting today! At the wonderful Elsie Quirk Library, 12 people attended.

Instead of me standing in the front talking and talking, everyone told about their research of their scandinavian (actually Norwegian and Swedish) relative, and then we discussed the matter. Really interesting, and we all could ask questions and learn! Great group!!

EGSF has many SIGs (Special Interest Groups), and it gives ideas like how to organize big societies into interest-groups.

Here are examples on SIGs this year:

• British Isles SIG:
  Eastern States SIG: 
• Canada and Tri-States are combined with Eastern States SIG 
• Eastern Canadian Provinces, New England, Mid-Atlantic So. states: ME, NH, MA, VT, CT, RI, NY, PA, MD, DE, VA, WV, NC, SC, GA, FL, Quebec
• MAC Computer Users – REUNION – A Genealogy Family Tree Software program class
• Europe SIG: 
• Midwest states SIG: 
• Canadian Provinces, Midwest to Gulf
• Beginning Genealogy SIG –
• Family Tree Maker SIG
  Scandinavian SIG – with Laila Christiansen and Sue Davis

I will work on a document to send out to the group (and I will also put it here on my blog) after the seminar tomorrow Drew Smith will talk about  Social Networking for Genealogists 
«Specifically, you’ll find chapters devoted to the following social networking concepts and services:
«* Blogs
* Collaborative editing
* Genealogy-specific social networks
* General social networking (Facebook)
* Message boards & mailing lists
* Photos & video sharing
* Podcasts
* RSS feeds
* Sharing personal libraries
* Tags
* Virtual worlds
* Wikis«

Note to self: Remember to buy book to take home to friend Torill