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Top 5 WWI /WWII Memorial Day Research Resources
As we pause to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country, consider learning more about those in our family. After some thought, these are the resources I recommend to get you started or move you farther along on your research into WWI and WWII fallen service members. There are links to our blog posts with how-to’s for researching military members who fell in WWI and WWII. There is also a link to our post about an archived reference about America’s wars. With the link to the partially digitized WWII...
read moreFamilySearch Full-Text Search for the Win!
Recently I followed up on an Ancestor hint relating to a branch on my maternal line, which led me to interesting discoveries. In my family tree, Maria, a seemingly abandoned Irish woman and her three children entered a workhouse in England. Fortunately, she and the children left it in a year. At least one of the children (my great-grandmother, Mary Ann) made her way to Providence, RI, where she married my great-grandfather. (I have previously blogged about finding an ancestor in a 19th century workhouse in...
read moreGoogle NotebookLM Tutorial
This is it! You have decided to give Google’s NotebookLM a try! Maybe you want step-by-step instructions, or just want to look over the process before diving in. Either way, this tutorial stands ready to help. What will you do in this Notebook? One suggestion is to upload a group of documents related to a subject or ancestor. These are documents that you want to understand better or analyze. Don’t overthink it. You just need to have an idea of your subject, because once you begin to use the Notebook more ideas will probably...
read moreHave You Tried Google’s NotebookLM Yet?
Trying out NotebookLM has been on my to-do list for months. I just did, and I was blown away by it. The accessibility of technologies that I knew existed but had so well not seen integrated was impressive. You can chat with the AI about what has been added to the Notebook, and you can generate products based on what the uploaded documents. The AI-generated media and responses in the Notebook are all based on the documents that you upload to it, which should reduce the opportunity for AI hallucinations. Keep in mind that the best idea is...
read moreFinding WWII Rosters Online at NARA
For researching a WWI or a WWII soldier, have you considered using the Rosters at NARA? They are located Series: Muster Rolls and Rosters, November 1, 1912–December 31, 1943 within Record Group 64. This blog post will show where to search for rosters, including how to use an online finding aid for finding WWII rosters that will make your task much easier. The rosters are arranged in three subseries within Muster Rolls and Rosters, November 1, 1912–December 31, 1943: Muster Rolls, November 1, 1912 – June 30, 1918 and...
read moreNow Open: “Tracing Your New York Ancestors with the NYG&B”
Are you researching Ancestors in New York State? If so, you will probably be interested in the free on-demand online course from The New York Genealogy & Biographical Society: “Tracing Your New York Ancestors with the NYG&B.” In the six video sessions of the course, you will learn about NYG&B, its services, membership and publications. The sessions cover the use of their online collections. When you sign up for the course, you have 60 days to complete it. During that time you can review the on-demand lectures...
read moreBook Review: Your Stripped Bare Guide
Having earned a Ph.D., worked as a professor, and published research, I know that citing sources is essential in academic work. Having published in multiple disciplines, I have used different styles of citations and variations of those styles. Students can usually understand why direct quotations need to be cited, but do not always grasp why the facts they use in their writing must also be attributed. The methods in technical papers are explained so that they can be reproducible. For a technical discipline, citations can be used by...
read moreMore WWII Morning Reports in the NARA Catalog
It should not be a surprise that to anyone who has read my most recent book Finding and Using U.S. Army WWI and WWII Morning Reports: A Research Guide for Historians and Genealogists or seen my presentation about Morning Reports that I periodically check the NARA catalog. Specifically, I have been checking to see if reports later than July 1944 have been uploaded. Today I searched, and success! As a reminder, I search from the main catalog page at https://catalog.archives.gov/ so that I can benefit from the links to the search terms...
read moreAI: Meta Prompting
If you have attended one of my AI presentations, then you know how important it is to develop prompt engineering skills to get the most out of Large Language Models (LLMs). The good news is that we do not always have to create the perfect prompt on our own! There is a harsh term used in my field, GIGO, which stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. When it comes to AIs, this applies to the fact that the LLM response (output) will only be as good as our prompts (input). A simple explanation of meta prompting is to have one...
read moreBook Review: Genealogy in Reverse
Have you ever wanted to look at the playbook that someone who specializes in finding living descendants has created? Have you wondered what resources a researcher would employ online and in the real world? Have you wanted to use such a playbook in your own reverse genealogy efforts? Within its 54 pages, Genealogy in Reverse: Finding the Living lets you have your own copy of concise notes written by Ms. Passey. She does this professionally and her impressive credentials include working as a subcontractor in the important genealogical work...
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