I don’t have much connection to Georgia, so this week I thought I’d share something that’s a little new to me and talk about the Georgia Genealogical Society. It’s not that I’d never heard of this society, it’s just that until recently, I didn’t know what they were up to.
The Georgia Genealogical Society (GGS) seems to be one of a few state genealogical societies that is jumping into the 21st century and embracing new technologies and finding innovative ways to reach their members and provide valuable services. About a month ago I discovered that like Southern California Genealogical Society, Utah Genealogical Association, and Illinois State Genealogical Society, GGS is offering monthly webinars as a form of education for the members and the genealogy community as a whole. This is a great way to reach out to members who live beyond the borders of Georgia. The GGS webinars are free to the public when they are broadcast live and GGS members have access to the recordings through the members-only section of the GGS website. Visit the GGS webinar calendar to see what’s planned for 2013.
And while I was on the GGS website to see what webinars they were offering, I also noticed that they have a members-only section that contains a variety of resources including Index to Georgia’s Federal Naturalization Records to 1950 (Excluding Military Petitions) and digital copies of the first 20 years of their quarterly journal, as well as some other resources.
They’ve even embraced social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to broaden their outreach to the genealogical community and a new generation of genealogists. And of course, just like most state societies, GGS provides members with a quarterly journal, as well as a quarterly newsletter. Their newsletter is digital and appears to be available to non-members as well (just click cancel when the login pops up).
It’s nice to see a state society thinking outside the box and finding was to provide valuable services to its members!
Side Note: Okay, so I wasn’t going to write about my crazy Rottman family for this post because I already covered them in the Pennsylvania post two weeks ago and will be covering them in this week’s Surname Saturday post. But, on a whim, after completing this post, I decided to head over and see what was new at FamilySearch for the state of Georgia. And while the Georgia, Births and Christenings, 1754-1960 database wasn’t exactly new, it was new to me, so I figured I’d give it a go since one of the children was supposedly born in Henry Co. Georgia. And boy did I find something. You can read about here.
Genealogy By the States is a theme created by Jim Sanders over at the Hidden Genealogy Nuggets blog.
Those webinars are also available to members, after they have been aired, through the members only section of the web site, along with all the handout material.