Southern California: 'Vital records and alternatives,' March 24

Gena Philibert-Ortega will present "Vital Records and their Alternatives" on Thursday, March 24, in Tarzana, California.

Gena is the speaker at a luncheon event of The Don Jose de Ortega Chapter National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), which begins at 10.30am at the Braemar Country Club, 4001 Reseda Blvd.., Tarzana.

FamilyLink's genealogy community communications director, Gena is also the WorldVitalRecords newsletter editor and manages GenealogyWise. She is vice-president of the Association of Professional Genealogists' Southern California chapter, and is also a regional director of the California State Genealogy Alliance.

For more information, click here.

WorldVitalRecords: Free access through Dec. 28

'Tis the season for giving ... and receiving ... and searching!

WorldVitalRecords is offering free access to its database (see below) through December 28, so you'd better get cracking now. This is really free access - no credit card details are required as similar deals frequently do.

Take a look and see what you can find to boost your family tree!

Click here for more information. Annual World Collection access via subscription is now $69.96 - a 30% saving from the normal price.

The World Collection includes:

• Unlimited access to all records from the UK, Ireland, Canada and more
• Access to more than 1.4 billion worldwide names
• Unlimited access to all U.S. Record collections
• Access to more than 900 million U.S. names
• Collections include vital records, newspapers, digitized books, immigration records and more
• New content added every month
• Unique databases from our partners that include eYearbooks, Newspaper Archives, Genealogical.com, and many others...

Take a focused look and you might be surprised at what you find.

NewspaperArchive.com: Now access it for less

If you are a member of GenealogyWise - part of World Vital Records - you can receive a 40% discount from the regular annual cost of a NewspaperArchive.com subscription.

Billed as the world's largest online newspaper archive, it claims more than 95 million pages, from 1759-present. Find historical articles, obituaries, social announcements, historic advertisements and much more.

Tracing the Tribe has been very successful using NewspaperArchive.com in my search for relatives, and was able to construct a very detailed picture of our TOLLIN family in Chester, Pennsylvania, as well as fascinating articles about members of our DARDASHTI family. There were items among those billions of pages that I would never have discovered as easily.

Access all the resources and tools for the special price of $71.88 ($5.99/month), instead of $119.88 ($9.99/month).

The site also has a semi-annual subscription that breaks down to $11.99/month, as well as a monthly-only rate of $17.88 (which might be useful for a specific project or paper).

Memberships offer all the bells and whistles, including search tools to help members find exactly what you are looking for. You'll have the ability to view, save and print what you find. In addition, you can organize your discoveries and share them. Other free features include:

-- E-mail alerts for archive updates and learn when new articles that match your search criteria come online.

-- The Daily Perspective is an e-newsletter that connects the headlines of today with history via past articles.

-- Beyond The Headlines is a feature that demonstrates the history behind a current news story or event.

For more information, visit World Vital Records or go directly to NewspaperArchive.com to take a look around.

FamilyLink.com: Chief Genealogy Officer sought

What's your dream job?

If you say chief genealogy officer for a major website, you might be in luck.

About 14 hours ago, FamilyLink.com (AKA World Vital Records) CEO Paul Allen used Twitter to tweet that he's "Starting job description for "chief genealogy officer" who will help manage GenSeek--directory of all the world's genealogy sources."

According to ThinkGenealogy.com's Mark Tucker, Allen also confirmed speculation that GenSeek is a partnership between FamilyLink.com and FamilySearch to update the Family History Library catalog with Web 2.0 features, bringing it into the 21st century and beyond. New features will include community provided catalog entries and digitized sources. According to sources, this will be released in the next few months and the job opportunity might be out there before that time - so start work on your resume now.

Know anyone else who is a CGO? Well, there's Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak who became Ancestry.com's Chief Family Historian in January 2007.

Mark is wondering who might take on this new post. Any ideas?

WorldVitalRecords: Jewish genealogy

WorldVitalRecords.com has included Tracing the Tribe and Jewish genealogy in its newest newsletter here.

Thank you, WorldVitalRecords, for this pointer. Please note that the site includes databases for researchers of Jewish ancestry: Jewish Cemeteries, JewishData and the Heritage Florida Jewish News. See below for details.

Beginning Jewish Genealogy

How do you start a search for Jewish ancestors? As with any genealogy search, the best place to begin is to start with the individuals you know, and the information you currently have. Next, you will want to talk to family members who may be able to fill in some of the blanks. From there you’ll want to expand the search by searching original and derivative sources like census records, vital records, naturalization records, etc. For Jewish ancestors, you will want to try some additional ideas including: join your local Jewish Genealogical Society, attend a Jewish conference, and consult with other individuals who are performing Jewish research.

A great resource for Jewish Genealogy is the Tracing The Tribe blog (http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com). Tracing The Tribe is filled with resources, tools, and insights on Jewish genealogy. The blog is written by Schelly Talalay Dardashti who adds a nice personal touch to her work. ...

Read more at the link above.

WorldVitalRecords.com offers several Jewish databases:

1. Jewish Cemeteries: The Old Jewish Cemeteries, Charleston, South Carolina (1762-1903); 5,209 records

The Old Jewish Cemeteries at Charleston, South Carolina. A Transcript of the Inscriptions on Their Tombstones. 1762 - 1903. With an Introduction and Full Index by Dr. Barnett A. Elzas. Rabbi of K. K. Beth Elohim. (1903). Charleston, SC: The Daggett Print. Co. From the Quintin Publications Collection.

Although the data on Jewish cemeteries at JewishGen and IAJGS was not referenced in the WVR newsletter, there are additional free resources at both sites. For the IAJGS International Cemetery Project's South Carolina resource page, click here. For the JewishGen Jewish Online World Burial Registry, click here. Thanks to Jan Meisels Allen who indicated that my original note here might be a big confusing, and therefore I have elaborated.

2. JewishData: 352,709 Birth, Marriage and Death Records

Jewish Data.com claims to be the word's largest online database (more than a half-million records) of Jewish cemetery images and immigration documents with images from hundreds of entire Jewish cemeteries from many locations in the US, Canada, Germany, and Israel, which are in searchable indexes. It also includes thousands of Declaration of Intention documents rare books, and other records, such as yearbook pages.

A search here located 13 TOLLIN (TALALAY) relatives of the West Springfield, Massachusetts branch, date of death and cemetery name, including the earliest immigrant ancestor (1898) to the US - Max/Mendl - who died in 1958. Additionally, two of the Newark, New Jersey branch (Uncle Sam and his wife Bessie) were listed in Beth Abraham on South Orange Avenue.

3. Heritage Florida Jewish News (Fern Park, Florida): 1,072,275 records

This is from the SmallTownPapers® Collection, a searchable digital archive back to 1846; 1967-2007 are now online, and SmallTownPapers is currently producing 20-million pages of small-town content from across the US.