Gen Podcasts: Geneabloggers Radio

An occasional blog series identifying online locations of genealogical knowledge in both audio and video podcasts with an emphasis on Jewish genealogy.  

Geneabloggers Radio – Thomas MacEntee, host

Update: Thomas MacEntee put this Blog Talk Radio show on indefinite hiatus. His last episode was 13 April 2012. One may still access episodes via the Blog Talk Radio website or iTunes.

Format:  This weekly live podcast began in February 2011 with the start of season 2 of Who Do You Think You Are?  The first episodes were tied in theme to the topic of each WDYTYA broadcast.  Each week, Thomas MacEntee, summarizes family history news, entertains those on an associated chat board, and interviews knowledgeable genealogists and other experts regarding the selected topic for the evening.  The show started with a 2-hour live show format, but then was reduced to a more manageable 90 minutes. Lately, Thomas has been joined by a guest co-host. This has definitely made the show flow more smoothly.

Episodes with Jewish Genealogy content: 

Episode # 9 (1 Apr 2011) “Jewish Genealogy – How to Get Started Searching Your Roots.” This is the show immediately following the Gwyneth Paltrow WDYTYA broadcast. Thomas interviews: 

• Stanley Diamond, Executive Director of JRI-Poland about the indexing project and his involvement with the Paltrow WDYTYA episode. 
•  Schelly Talalay Dardashti of the Tracing the Tribe and My Heritage blogs, who explains the special complications of doing Jewish genealogy.  
• Dr. Steve Morse who talks about the origins of his One-Step website.  
• Elise Friedman who discusses genetic genealogy.

Episode # 49 (7 Jan 2012) “Genealogy New Year’s Resolutions for 2012” 

At about 1:07 into the show, Thomas interviews Jan Meisels Allen, Vice President of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and a member of the “Records Preservation and Access Committee” of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). She shares information on the preservation of and threats to access to vital records, especially the Social Security Death Index.

Episode # 54 (11 Feb 2012) "Genealogy and Technology in a Post-RootsTech World"

Brooke Scheier Ganz, Vice President of Gesher Galicia is interviewed starting about 1:05:00 into the show about her efforts developing LeafSeek, the search engine currently being beta tested on the Gesher Galicia database website.

The Episode #55 (18 Feb 2012) "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor: 19th Century US Immigration"
Pat Richley-Erickson (aka Dear Myrtle) serves as guest host during this episode.  Highlights:

• Marian Smith, Chief, Historic Research Branch, US Citizenship & Immigration Service. All genealogists who use immigrant manifest records should be familiar with Marian who is the main author of the excellent InfoFile "Manifest Markings: A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations" that may be found on JewishGen.
• Unfortunately, technical difficulties made it impossible for Audrey Collins, Family Historian the UK National Archives, to be on the show. The otherwise dead air (that starts about 26 minutes into the podcast) was filled by Blogtalk radio with some insipid music.  Scroll forward to about 36:30 when Myrt gets back on the air and welcomes the next guest.
• Angela Walton-Raji, genealogist, talks about African American migrations (not Jewish genealogy, but interesting, nonetheless).
• Judy G. Russell, the Legal Genealogist, talks about legislation pending in the House of Representatives that, if signed into law, will have far-reaching effects on access to the Social Security Death Index.

Special Feature: One may participate in the chat board during the live podcast on Friday nights (I am usually otherwise engaged on Fridays, so I listen to the recorded version the next day).  There have, at times, been more than 60 people on the chat board discussing the show, giving Thomas feedback and posing questions for guests.  Links mentioned in the discussion are often posted on the chat board. So, one misses those if one does not listen live. One may access the chat board by logging in with an account set up on Blog Talk Radio or via FaceBook. Every episode opens with directions for accessing the chat board.

Access: 

• via Blog Talk Radio (live or recorded) - Every Friday night in the USA (9 pm Eastern; 8 pm Central; 7 pm Mountain; 6 pm Pacific; 2 am London; 1 pm Sydney, Australia) : http://www.blogtalkradio.com/geneabloggers
• via iTunes: search for Geneabloggers. One may download individual episodes or subscribe to the show.  The most recent show is usually available immediately after the live show airs. If you subscribe, new episodes will automatically be delivered to your iTunes podcast folder. 
• Show Notes: http://www.geneabloggers.com/tag/geneabloggers-radio

LeafSeek: Share the forest . . . as well as the trees

Brooke Schreier Ganz likes to share.  And we should all be happy she does. On Friday, 3 February 2012, her LeafSeek application was awarded second place in the Developer Challenge at RootsTech 2012. LeafSeek is the engine underlying the new Gesher Galicia search page. On Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah, I listened to Brooke’s RootsTech presentation and then sat down with her for further conversation. 

Brooke Schreier Ganz at RootsTech

Brooke’s web development pedigree is impressive: she has worked at IBM, Disney Consumer Products division, and Bravo cable television. She now works part time from home so she can spend time with and care for her two little “start-ups.”

True to her nature, it was a database and its useful search engine (Jewish Roots Indexing-Poland) that first got Brooke interested in tracing her family history. Her family hails mostly from the Ukrainian portion of Galicia, as well as Poland and Moldova. Her husband’s family, which she is also tracing, has Polish, Romanian (Hungarian) and Sephardic (from the Isle of Rhodes) roots.

Gesher Galicia has been acquiring a variety of data sets including vital records, tax lists, landsmanshaften lists, industrial permit lists, and school and government yearbooks and wanted to put these 192,268 (and counting) records online in one database for Jewish genealogists’ use. Enter Brooke. While awake late at night with her baby, she’d sometimes use her iPhone to research the problem. Later, after much needed sleep, she’d work on the coding. In designing LeafSeek, Brooke sought to address the complexity of developing an effective search for multiple data sets with diversities of language, political boundaries and subdivisions, types of information, spelling, etc. all in one database. These are the issues with which all genealogists studying families from Eastern Europe have to contend. The Gesher Galicia database is proving to be fertile ground for beta testing the tool.

If you had Jewish relatives from Galicia, try a search.  One of the most valuable features on the Search Gesher Galicia website in the unlimited wildcard search in both the given name and surname fields.  There are no minimums for the number of letters required or maximums for the number of asterisks.  In your results, click on the + to expand the information in the record.  If information is provided on the current town name, click on that to see a map of its location.

Before heading to Salt Lake City I’d searched the Gesher Galicia database by entering one of my Galitzianer surnames (Liebross) in the search box and received one result. Mene Liebross of Okopy died in 1873.  The information in the result included the Family History Library (FHL) microfilm number.  How slick it that!?! I located the record on Wednesday at the FHL.

Facets on the left side of the results page allow easy sorting through results.  They include information on types and number of records, top surnames and given names, locations, years, etc. In the future expect to see the addition of hierarchical facets so that in addition to town names, one may also select parameters such as country, province, or district. 

Second Place Award for LeafSeek

Some time soon, Brooke plans to add the Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching (BMPM) system for names. She is also quite taken by the example set by Steve Morse’s One-Step website: “Steve Morse is incredible and inspiring not only for his work but also because he made his work open source – for everyone’s benefit.” Open source means that LeafSeek’s code is available free for anyone’s use.  Brooke visualizes LeafSeek as “a genealogy search engine in a box,” available to those who have need of its features.  She has plans for further features and improvements and hopes that others will use it and add to it. In fact, if you notice things that need correction or have suggestions for additional features, contact Brooke via the "contact us" button at the bottom of the Gesher Galicia webpage. She's always happy to make improvements.

I believe that LeafSeek will provide the opportunity to put databases such as JRI-Poland on steroids.  Imagine the JRI-Poland database with enhanced pattern recognition to better understand the connections among records and the people in them. Right now to do that, one would have to design and laboriously populate a spreadsheet with all the data elements found in one's JRI-Poland results. Only then, could one manipulate the data to see the patterns. LeafSeek has the potential to do much of that for us. 

So, congratulations to Brooke and thanks for sharing.