JCGL News
Website Menu Update
1st Change: The website menu on patron computers at JCGL has been changed to reflect changes in the Family Search website. A few months back Family Search announced the release of New Family Search to the public. New Family Search has millions of names in family trees submitted by LDS members and others. In early May, these family trees were combined with the historical records collection and all now reside on the main Family Search website. In addition, the Family Search interface has been reconfigured to encourage the user to add photos and stories about family members and to enable users to share this information on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. You can view a video on You Tube about the latest controversial changes in the Family Search website, at the following url:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK-h4nM3YDE&feature=player_embedded. Some have complained that introducing the social media aspect has made it much more difficult to find sought-for records on the website. One suggestion is to bookmark the record search portion of the website to make the task a little easier. You might consider doing this on your home computer.
2nd Change: Cyndi’s List has been added back in to replace the link to New Family Search. If you are not familiar with Cyndi’s List, here’s an opportunity for you to look at the extensive collection of links Cyndi provides for genealogists. If you cannot find what you are looking for on the sites listed on the Website Menu, you may be able to find it on one of the links Cyndi provides.
Continuing Renovations of the JCGL building
Carolyn Beron, Public Relations Director, submitted the following information to explain all the sawdust flying at JCGL:
Jackson County Genealogy Library’s ongoing building projects are close to completion.
After Charleen Brown and Nell Mathern designed the wall units and with donated plywood from Martin Toscano and Albert and Carolyn Beron, the storage cabinet project for the east wall of the Reading Room was started, and the outside patio storage room was demolished and rebuilt.
Al Beron and Tom Sayre have worked almost daily to measure, cut, and install the new cabinets. The center of the wall cabinets was designed to hold a wonderful, soon to be announced collection of very special donated quilts from the Jacksonville Museum Quilters. Al and Carolyn Beron donated the hardware, stain, lumber, molding, drywall and paint to help complete this project.
The cabinets are not quite complete yet. The display lights and locks still need to be purchased and installed, and the drawers need to be built. Outside, the siding on the storage room needs to be finished and painted. Rogue Pacific Lumber kindly donated the plastic wrap to insulate the outside of the room before the siding is installed. However, we will soon have a home for our office supplies, including supplies for computer printers and photocopiers, future genealogy project materials, including items to be indexed, donated books to be reviewed by the Book Committee, Society records, which we are required by law to keep for a certain number of years and ongoing genealogy project materials. The storage cabinets and quilt display are shown below. The quilt’s subject is Table Rock and its flowers.
Quilt Cabinet and Storage Area
The inside of the patio storage room has been insulated, dry-walled and painted. An outside door will be installed soon. This dry storage room will be used for table and chair storage or larger items like our patio furniture in the winter.
The new interior glass doors to the Meeting Room and the Reading Room were donated by Jack and Andrea Patterson. Al Beron with Tom Sayre’s help installed the doors and is putting trim around them. Marie Fulbright has graciously agreed to paint them when they are complete.
Charleen and Warren Brown have built and donated large frames to hold the names of the generous donors throughout the years who have contributed to building our society and library. Warren built and donated additional bookcases to match the others, to replace the older white bookcases and is building more bookcases to line the north hall for the ever-growing library collection.
Upcoming Genealogy Shows on TV
A Christopher Guest mockumentary, Family Tree, pokes fun at genealogists, e.g., wandering through cemeteries, finding lost cousins. The series began airing on HBO on May 12th and will also be shown on BBC at a later date. Who Do You Think You Are (WDYTYA) on TLC will resume later in 2013 and will cover Kelly Clarkson, Chelsea Handler, Christina Applegate, and other celebrities. Finding Your Roots on PBS will also cover celebrities, and will not begin until 2014. The “average Joe and Josephine” will get attention in the Genealogy Roadshow. An Irish import, this series will air on PBS and will be shot in US cities. To learn more, read Megan Smolenyak’s article on Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-smolenyak-smolenyak/hbo-family-tree-genealogy_b_3196423.html
MyHeritage
MyHeritage recently announced that it now offers indexed images of all census years (1790-1940). If you have a subscription to MyHeritage historical records and have your tree posted online with them they will do SmartSearch for you, matching people in your tree not only to the census records but also to other historical records in their collection. SmartSearch also matches people in your family tree with people in other family trees on their site. Their collection of international family trees is extensive and features many people in Europe and Asia as well as in the US. SmartSearch can match faces across trees –be certain to post photos of your family — and can also match records (across historical records and submitted trees). SmartSearch can save you lots of time. Go to http://www.myheritage.com to learn more about this innovative site. MyHeritage explains their new Record Detective system in a video posted on Dick Eastman’s blog, http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2013/05/myheritage-launches-record-detective-to-accelerate-family-history-discoveries.html#more. MyHeritage is not available on patron computers, partly because it is more appropriately used with an individual, personal account.
RVGS News
Join the 5/60 Club:
Contributed by Barbara MacMillen, RVGS Finance Director
Have you seen members wearing bright green buttons with “5/60 Club Member” and wondered what it was? The 5/60 Club is a fund to which members contribute $5 a month, or $60 a year, to help pay our new mortgage payment. Money donated to this fund go into a special restricted account and are used only to meet the mortgage payment of $1675 each month. The mortgage payment is part of our operating costs. Buying the new building has added to our expenses; this fund was set up to help offset the additional monthly costs. If every member contributes $5 monthly, the fund would have more than enough to make the payment, plus make an additional payment toward the principle. So far about 11% of our members participate, which surely helps and is appreciated. We encourage you to contribute to this fund and grow the participation percentage! And you too will get one of those green buttons.
Members who have contributed March 18 to April 30:
Cara Davis-Jacobson
Roger & Nancy Roberts
Carl Shauger
Linda Carr
Roy Kimball
Sheila Kimball
Julia Hoskins
Barbara Hanel
Carol Wolf
Stacy Dawkins
Kevin Airrington
Margaret Shrader
Barbara Hanel
Martha Erickson
Norbert Leiberg
Annual Fund Drive:
Contributed by Barbara MacMillen, RVGS Finance Director
Annual Fund letters were sent out in April and thanks to those of you who have responded generously; we are at 45% of our goal of $30,000. So if you haven’t returned your annual fund envelope, we hope you will consider a tax-deductible donation that will be applied to our operating expenses. These funds help pay our mortgage, utilities, insurance, subscription websites, keep computers, printers, and copiers working, and maintain our collection and building. If you haven’t visited the new Jackson County Genealogy Library, we encourage you to come in and see your library and look up some of those elusive ancestors. More digital records are being uploaded daily, so if you haven’t looked for someone in a while, it may be time to look again. It is members like you that keep our doors open and provide a wonderful resource to the community.
Letter from RVGS President Charleen Brown:
Open letter to Jackson County RVGS Members,
As your RVGS President, I am writing to provide you with important information about the formation of the Rogue Valley Heritage District. A group of concerned citizens and the Jackson County Heritage Association, (JCHA, RVGS is a member) have formed the Our Heritage Political Action Committee (Our Heritage PAC). The purpose of the PAC is to sponsor a ballot measure to be submitted to voters in the May 2014 election. This measure would provide funding through a county-wide property tax, limited to 5 cents per thousand of assessed valuation. The owner of a $200,000 property would pay an additional $10.00 per year. These funds would be administered through the Rogue Valley Heritage District. Jackson County would never have access to these funds.
To get the measure on the ballot, petitions of registered voter signatures will be required. Therefore, our RVGS Jackson County members will be mailed petition information in May, 2013. I urge you to watch for this and seriously consider supporting our effort. If you are a registered voter, please sign the petition, gather signatures from family or friends and return it to the PAC address or drop it at our library. Please return the petition even if you only have one or two signatures. Every signature counts and gets us closer to our goal of getting it on the ballot in 2014. If you aren’t a registered voter, consider registering to support this endeavor. Registration forms will be available at our library or there is a form in the front of DEX, page 49. If successful, RVGS as well as the other members of Jackson County Heritage Association will receive funding for their itemized operating expenses (RVGS $25,000) beginning in 2015. This additional annual support will help guarantee that we can keep our dues low and still provide the services members have come to expect.
Sincerely,
Charleen Brown
RVGS President.
To learn more about Our Heritage Pac, click on this link, Our Heritage Matters.
