I am Speaking About the Digital Public Library of America & HathiTrust at SOCCGS Next Week

I am excited to present next weekend at the monthly program for the South Orange County California Genealogical Society (SOCCGS) in Mission Viejo, California. My presentation focuses on two of my favorite digital repositories–DPLA and HathiTrust.

SOCCGS was the very first genealogy society I joined, back in 2003. Despite doing genealogy for years already, I did not become part of the genealogy community until joining SOCCGS. I worked closely with its leadership when I worked at the Mission Viejo Public Library. SOCCGS houses and staffs its genealogy library inside of the Mission Viejo Public Library.

To boot, SOCCGS holds their monthly programs at the Mission Viejo LDS church, which shares campus grounds with the Mission Viejo Family History Center (FHC)–the first FHC I ever used. It was here in 2003, via microfilm, that I made my first big discovery in Mexican church records.

So this presentation is sort of like a homecoming for me.

Utilizing the Digital Public Library of America and the HathiTrust Digital Library for Family History Research

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and the HathiTrust Digital Library are two relatively new resources to incorporate into your family history research. Both house and provide gateways to consortia-shared rich digitized collections that can be accessed online and on your mobile devices for free.

Well-designed navigation and collection organization, combined with advanced search and discovery features, make it easy to quickly and effectively locate materials relevant to your research focus. DPLA’s mapping and time-focused features make it possible for those not so familiar with a particular era or geographic region to gain a better understanding of the types of records available for different places and times. HathiTrust’s innovative reading features make it easy to quickly locate your ancestors in its extensive collection of public domain published family histories and historical materials.

You will walk away from this lecture with two new favorite websites for your research toolkit.

• Date & Time: Saturday, July 15, 2017 (10:00am)
• Location: LDS Church Building at 27978 Marguerite Parkway (Between Medical Center Drive and Hillcrest)

If you attend, please come up and introduce yourself!