Warm Weather, Wednesdays, and Webinars

Screenshot from "Canadian Port of Entry, Passenger Lists, and Boarder Crossing" webinar
10 July 2013

Depending upon where you live in the US, it has probably been really hot or terribly humid.  Yesterday's local weather made it a great time for me to stay inside and increase my knowledge of genealogy resources by viewing of one of the free Wednesday Webinars hosted by Legacy Family Tree Software.

The webinar I attended was on Canadian Ports of Entry, Passenger Lists, and Boarder Crossings.  It was lead by Kathryn Lake Hogan who has written the Legacy Quick Guides for all of the Canadian provinces, so it had a lot of good information.

The screenshot shown above shows how I attend a webinar.  On my desktop monitor, I join the webinar (on the left), keep the webinar dashboard open on the upper right so I can ask questions, see what others had asked, view links mentioned, etc., then open Evernote for any notes I want to take.  The webinar and Evernote slightly overlap, but it is simple to click back and forth for notetaking.  All of my webinar notes are kept in a "Webinar" folder with the webinar's title or description added.

For me, the really helpful part of this particular webinar was seeing a much more skilled researcher using the various databases related to Ports of Entry, Passenger Lists, and Board Crossings available for free on the Library and Archives of Canada web site.  I had noticed in prior visits to the Library and Archives of Canada web site that there were a number of different immigration databases but not never realized that most were due to the different types of paperwork in use during a specific time period.  Because of this, the databases related to immigration are not all searched in the same way.  Some are searched by name, others require dates or the ship's name.  Now that I know they aren't all searched in the same manner, I just try another search method if my first instinct won't provide any results.

Second, I appreciated Hogan's brief overview of Canadian immigrant and migration patterns.  It helped me see how my grandparents, Michael and Gertrude Myren, fit into the larger scheme of things.

Each Wednesday Legacy provides a different free webinar.  If you cannot view the webinar at the original air date, it is archived by Legacy for free viewing through the next week.  For a list of upcoming webinars and registration information visit the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.  Check out their list, and you will see a lot of pertinent topics as well as knowledgeable presenters.

Sitting comfortably inside with the AC running, sipping some iced tea (after all, I do live in the South), listening to thunder rumbling in the distance, and learning something new - pretty good way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.