Well the first day of the National Genealogical Conference in Richmond Virginia is drawing to a close. It has been a very busy day. It actually started on Tuesday night with a Bloggers Dinner hosted by FamilySearch. I will write about that in another blog post. After dinner was the Dessert Social with the Association of Professional Genealogists. Both events were a time to meet up with old friends and meet some new ones. I have noticed there are a lot of first timers at this conference which is great news.
This morning was a very early start as I had to catch the 6:30 shuttle to the convention centre for the Findmypast Breakfast. I will write about this in another post. After that it was the Opening Session where NGS presented several awards and the speaker was Sandra Gioia Treadway who is the Librarian of Virginia and State Archivist. Her topic was “The Evolving Library: Planning and Adapting to Meet the Needs of Twenty-first Century Researchers.” She talked about how the library and archives building was new in 1997 but now it does not fit the needs of present day researchers because technology has changed so quickly. They are planning to renovate and have a new library and archives in 2021.
The Exhibit Hall opened after the Opening Session and it was jam packed with people, and continued to be throughout most of the day. I did manage to visit a fair number of the Exhibitors I had highlighted in my NGS app. Still have a few more to visit and a few to revisit to find out more about their products.
The luncheon I chose to attend today was the Virginia Genealogical Society Luncheon. The speaker was Conley L. Edwards who retired as Librarian of Virginia and State Archivist in 2009. He shared stories of the many genealogists and researchers he saw come through the doors of the library and archives.
My first lecture after lunch was “Why Can’t I Find It in the ILS (Library Catalog)? Techniques Used by Librarians” presented by Patricia Moseley Van Skaik. It was very interesting and I learned a few more tricks to using the library catalogs.
The last lecture of the day was “Mining the Destination Data” by David E. Rencher and as per usual he did not disappoint. It was informative and humorous. How to take the exhaustive search and use it to help get your ancestors back to the old country.
My first lecture is 8 am tomorrow morning and it is another full day.
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