Plagiarism Accusations

 Plagiarism and copyright infringement are a serious issue for those of us publishing our work online.  

Ancestry Insider has done some fact-checking on some recent issues. Please read and form your own opinion.

Continue reading More Accusations of Plagiarism Leveled at Barry Ewell

Woohoo! Just Ordered Proof Copy of my Van Valkenburg Vollick Book

Yesterday I ordered the proof copy of my new book on the Van Valkenburg-Vollick family. This book has been a dream for many years. I've been researching the Vollick (aka Follick) families for over 15 years in hopes of compiling a book one day. 

Isaac Van Valkenburg aka Vollick fought with Butler's Rangers during the American Revolution. He and his wife Anna Maria (Mary) Warner settled in Upper Canada in 1782. Isaac's Land Petitions, Affidavits of witnesses regarding his Loyalty to the British Crown, letters about Mary's ordeal after American Patriots burned her home and sent the family fleeing north to Canada in 1779, and other records are found in this book. 

Stories of Isaac's ancestors back to the first settlement of New Amsterdam (present day New York City) and Albany in the 1620s and Mary's ancestors back to the 1709 Palatine immigration from Germany to New York are included. 

Proof Copy Cover Van Valkenburg - Vollick book

This is Volume 1 of From Van Valkenburg to Vollick and is the story of Isaac Vollick the Loyalist and his sons and daughters. Volume 2 is almost ready for publication (it's about Isaac Vollick's son Cornelius Vollick and descendants of that branh), and Volume 3 has been started (it's on Isaac's son Storm Follick and descendants of that branch). Isaac had 5 daughters so there will be many more volumes to come.

2015 Goals & Dreams

2014 is over. It was a pretty good year other than my health and mobility issues. I have a lot of genealogy ideas, plans, hopes and dreams for 2015. As I mentioned in my previous blog post New Year's Genealogy Resolutions for 2014 - Did I Achieve Them? this year I'm focusing on one goal - to write more genealogy books. 

One of my Facebook friends mentioned that she doesn't like the word goals so she calls hers "Things I hope to accomplish" That's not quite strong enough for me (it's the "hope to" part I don't care for personally) but I thought I'd list a few things I'm going to try my darndest to accomplish this year. 

My One Main Goal for 2015

Write more genealogy books. Specifically I plan to finish my murder mystery novel set in Salt Lake City (it's almost done, I'm on my 20th edit!), finish my book on Genealogy Activities for Children, and finish up the half-dozen eBooks I have in the works sitting on the back burner. 

Things I'm Pretty Determined to Do in 2015

I am determined to learn how to design my own covers for my paperback books without using the online cover creators. I want more control over fonts, placement of images, etc

Things I Am Going to Work Very Hard to Complete But Realistically Might Not Get Done

I'd love to finish the last volumes of my Peer Family in North America series. Descendants have been asking for them for a few years now.

I want to find a program that will allow me to easily set up a website I bought years ago for my Lost Faces photo albums. They are currently on a section of my main website but I want them on their own site, where I can freely share them with other genealogists and descendants. I do not want to do that site manually as I have over 3,000 photos and it's overwhelming to begin. So far I've not found a program that will create what I want.

Things I Dream Will Magically Happen

I will wake up one morning and all my digital photos will be labelled, tagged and organized

I wish someone would redesign my website Olive Tree Genealogy and surprise me with it. It desperately needs a makeover as I created it in 1996 - some 19 years ago!! It needs a facelift badly.

Summary 

I'm pretty sure I won't get all the above items done. But isn't it fun to plan and set goals? What do you hope to accomplish in 2015?

Credits: Image by noppasinw on freedigitalphotos.net

New Year's Genealogy Resolutions - Successes and Failures

It's that time. Yep - time for my Genealogy New Year's Resolutions.

Last year I decided I was making too many genealogy resolutions and not even coming close to meeting them, so I set three (3) resolutions to meet in 2012. 

Wow. Only three and I still didn't meet those goals. Let's take a look at what my resolutions were for 2012 and how I think I did with each one.

1. Focus on my genealogical strengths (researching and fact-finding) and continue to build and improve on those 

[How did I do? SUCCESS  I continue to try to improve on those skills, and have added a new one - analysis of facts found]

2. Improve on my organization of genealogical records, but not worry or stress over not entering it all in minute detail in my genealogy program

  [How did I do? PARTIAL SUCCESS I downsized my office and physically moved it to a new location in my home. I am proud of all the purging I did which helped me in my organization but I have not yet reached my goal of being so organized I can immediately lay my hands on anything I want to find]

3. Set deadlines. Make one day per week the day I work on Project A and a second day of the week the day to work on Project B. No more worrying if I jump from project to project! Allow myself to jump around as much as I want but work towards deadlines for completion of Projects A, B, C etc.  I need variety but I also need the deadline to provide structure and a timeline for completion of my multitude of genealogy projects  

[How did I do? FAIL. I can't seem to settle into a consistent work routine. I jump around from project to project. I lose interest in Project A once it's reached a certain point and then I drift off to Project B, leaving Project A in the lurch for months at a time. By the time I get back to Project A I have to spend hours, if not days, figuring out what my thought processes were!]

So - only one success out of three resolutions. That's discouraging. So it's time to take a good look at what is most important in my genealogy career and hobby.

2013 New Year's Genealogy Resolutions

I need to complete my projects and complete them in a timely fashion so that's going to be my goal for 2013. That's right - only one goal this year.

My goal is going to sound simple - complete all my unfinished projects! It's going to be tough as I have several books on the go, and more promised but not started.

Number one: I completed a genealogical mystery novel after two years of hard work. After 7 edits, I sent it to my beta readers and they returned their manuscripts this summer with suggestions for improvement. Based on comments I only need to rework the first two chapters and it's done! That's going to be number one on my list in 2013.

Number two will be the book I started a year ago on Children's Genealogy Games & Activities. It is so close to completion that I am ashamed of myself for not finishing it months ago.

Number three is a Family Genealogy book I intended to give to my new sister-in-law at her wedding to my brother.  I hate to say how long it's been sitting in Shutterfly, almost ready to publish. And now her sister wants to purchase two copies of it, sight unseen. That should be motivation for me to complete it!

Number four is the next volume of my book on the Peer Family of North America. I have done all the research and need only to compile it into the various volumes then self-publish them.

Those are my four most important projects that need finishing. It may not sound like much but it seems a bit overwhelming at times. Wish me luck! I hope that by concentrating on one goal I can complete all these unfinished works. I used to be very good at completing projects and staying on track but these days I seem to be less motivated and more scattered.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for me, please do leave them in a comment here on the blog post.

Bibliography or Footnotes?

Marian Pierre-Louis wrote an interesting blog post Bibliographies are So Not Boring on her Roots and Rambles blog. I confess it made me think about Bibliographies in an entirely new way.

For I am a Footnote geek. Yes, I love footnotes. I'm guessing that I'm in the 3% of the population who actually reads them! I skim Bibliographies and often skip them entirely.

But which is best - Footnotes or Bibliographies?

For the purpose of comparing Footnotes to Bibliographies, let's look at the definitions provided at the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Bibliography: the works or a list of the works referred to in a text or consulted by the author in its production


Footnote: a note of reference, explanation, or comment usually placed below the text on a printed page

When writing a scholarly article or book, authors often use footnotes which contain exact citations of the sources used for each specific statement.

The genealogy articles that I've had published in the New York Biographical and Genealogical Record are footnoted. That is what the NYGBR insists on. Each footnote must follow an exact standard method of writing footnotes and it is very exacting.

My genealogy-history books are always footnoted. Occassionaly I provide a bibliography but it never replaces footnotes. So I'm a bit of a footnote snob! The first thing I look for in a scholarly book is footnotes. Preferably several on each page.

Numbered footnotes can either be placed at the end of each page, or inserted without a number in the body of the text. I prefer at the end as I find it distracting and often confusing to keep reading an interjected footnote. For me it's like having someone interrupting a conversation I'm enjoying. I'd rather read the footnotes when I finish the page or the sentence or the paragraph. That way the writing is more cohesive.

I confess to having skipped over Bibliographies in the past. But Marian's article has me thinking and I can see the value in adding a Bibliography to my future books and articles. It seems to me that the footnote does it's thing by citing the source used for that specific piece of evidence or statement made by the author. And that's what I want to see!

But I now realize that the footnote is only part of the final product. As an author, I consult many reference books in my research. I probably did not cite them in my footnotes as they were more of a generic research and not related to any specific fact. For example I always research the history of the location or time period which I am writing about. If I don't create a Bibliography, the reader will never know what books or articles I found and consulted which may be of great interest to him or her.

My conclusion is that as an author I need to use both footnotes and Bibliographies in order to present as complete and scholarly a book or article as possible. One without the other is like apple pie without ice cream.....
 

Creating Family Photo & Document Books

My latest project is to create Family Photo & Document Books for my children. With that in mind, I've been trying out various programs to help me organize and display my photos and documents.

So far I've not had much luck and am not really happy with anything I've used.

I detest WORD for anything other than word processing (writing stories). Trying to insert dozens of scanned images, whether they are photographs or documents, is tedious and fraught with problems. Images jump. They overlap, they won't stay where I put them.

I do have a program I really like called PICTURE IT! But it's very old. It's limited in its capabilities and there are no upgrades. In fact it's been discontinued for many years. And it tends to crash. I can only create 25 pages at a time and I can only print one page at a time. If I create the max (50) and choose PRINT ALL, it's guaranteed to crash. It's also very tedious to insert photos. But I like how I can easily crop and shuffle photos or documents around and how fast it is to add text. If I could find something similar I'd be thrilled!

Next thing I tried was a PDF converter/creator called Professional PDF Converter 6. I paid $129.00 plus 13% tax for it. What a waste of money! The two things I must have is the ability to create headers and footers and add page numbers. Converter 6 is supposed to do this. The help file shows two nice little icons for just that. But my program does not have those 2 icons! A search of the website revealed that this is a flaw in every Converter 6 program and that it was reported and acknowledged in 2009. They still have not fixed it and there is no way to insert headers, footers or page numbers. I might as well have had a bonfire with my money.

Reluctantly I turned to Picasa 3. Don't get me wrong, I like Picasa (although I prefer the ealier versions). But for what I want, it's pretty useless. I was forced to choose the pics I wanted for a page, then create a collage, then add text. It looked good printed, but I have hundreds of photos and documents to add and I can only create one collage page at a time. I can't add pages and keep inserting scanned images. I've spent the morning creating nice collages but it's taking forever and I can't get consistent font sizes since it's all eye-balling it and adjusting the little text box to the size you want.

Even though I've chosen a specific font size, adjusting the text box makes the font bigger or smaller, depending on your adjustment. So it's not what I need either.

Any ideas for me? My wants are:

Consistent font sizes.
Headers
Footers
Page numbering
Ease of adding images and text (captions)

Am I asking too much?

Top 10 reasons to publish your research

"At some point, we always plan to publish our findings, whether it’s just within immediate family members or to the world at large." Source: August 5, Boston Genealogy Examiner Robin C. Mason

Robin takes us through 10 reasons to publish our genealogy research. I'd like to add 2 more reasons -

1. Knowing that you will publish your research forces you to be organized and keep your documents organized

2. Knowing you will publish your genealogy research forces you to notate your sources consistently and in a universally accepted method

Now read Robin's article