Ours was a Merry Christmas …

we hope yours was as well.

Look­ing for­ward to 2011, I am plan­ning a sev­er­al talks: two in Raleigh, NC, at the North Car­oli­na Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety Speak­ers Forum on Feb­ru­ary 19th, and three in Charleston, SC, at the Nation­al Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety Con­fer­ence between 11–14 May.

These along with trips to Salt Lake City in Feb­ru­ary (for a Board Meet­ing of the NGS) and to the FGS Con­fer­ence in Spring­field, IL in Sep­tem­ber, promise to make it a busy geneal­o­gy year.

2011 will also bring with it anoth­er sea­son of Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er Lisa Kudrow’s “Who Do you Think You Are?”, which starts again on Feb­ru­ary 4th at 8 (7 Cen­tral). Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, the new sea­son will include Tim McGraw, Kim Cat­trall, Lionel Richie, Ash­ley Judd, Steve Busce­mi, Vanes­sa Williams, and Rosie O’Don­nell.

The show has been a mixed bless­ing for geneal­o­gists. While it has clear­ly pop­u­lar­ized fam­i­ly his­to­ry research, and shown the trans­for­ma­tive nature of genealog­i­cal rev­e­la­tion. The painstak­ing and time-con­sum­ing research required to unearth many of these rev­e­la­tions is done off cam­era, and most view­ers are sim­ply unaware how much research is involved. A sim­ple title card stat­ing that “x num­ber of hours of genealog­i­cal research went into pro­duc­ing this episode,” would pro­vide the audi­ence with nec­es­sary con­text. Many researchers have received phone calls in the days and weeks after an episode of WDYTYA? ask­ing for “my fam­i­ly tree” to be cre­at­ed either gratis, pron­to, or both.

Still, it is a com­pelling show, and my fam­i­ly and I are look­ing for­ward to the new episodes.

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