IAJGS 2017 - International Assoc of Jewish Genealogy Annual Conference -

This was my 2nd time attending the IAJGS conference, my first time as a presenter. My Facebook for Collaborative Family History Research  was well attended. One attendee asked me why I did not use Facebook groups for storing my albums. I wish I knew about them when I started with Facebook back in 2008. 

Some highlights from IAJGS sessions I attended:

Tammy Hepp's session, Cousin Bait, described ways to lure & respond to family with social media. I have been successful with this, since this blog & my YouTube channel were both instrumental in allowing unknown cousins to find me: Erwan Grandais found my video of TonTon.  Tammy found photos of her family on Flicker, with Google. I googled "Bienstock family" and discovered https://www.genealogytoday.com/surname/finder.mv?Surname=Bienstock.  Another Google search format to try: "site:website.com keyword ". 

Linda Levy presented on Jewish Joint Distribution Committee;  archives.JDC.org  holds 80,000 index cards for 1945 Displaced Persons camps.  1914-74 is searchable online. I learned that the Dominican Republic accepted 700 Jewish refugees during the Shoah.  Alaska Airlines was responsible for airlifting of 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel, in Operation Magic Carpet. Operation Salomon, May 1991, rescued 14,500 Ethiopian Jews.

In How to Preserve your Research – Merle Kastner described how anecdotes and photos bring dry historical details to life. She creates spiral-bound family tree books, to give as gifts at family reunions, baby namings, unveilings.  I took  Emily Garber's advice from her talk on BLOGs & submitted my blog to her genealogy blog list on extrayad.blogspot.com . Now my blog is listed on geneabloggerstribe.com .

In Keys to Involving Students, Jeff Schrager discussed how he motivates teenagers in a 3-week Genealogy program. He uses storytelling to connect events & to tie genealogy to any subject – inherited disease, history, writing. Because genealogy has a start, but no end he teaches students context and focus. The earlier they start the more ancestors are alive to interview.