Proverbial brick walls are the bane of all researchers. Tear down the brick wall, and you often still have stumbling blocks. Patience helps, but often the best solution to breaking through brick walls is finding someone to help. Legacy Family Tree helps genealogists build their research skills and find encouragement through a series of webinars hosted on their website. One great example of a webinar designed to help genealogist it Ten Brick Wall Tips for Beginners, presented by Marian Pierre-Louis.
In her webinar, Marian presents tips for getting past typical research brick walls. These 10 tips can help genealogists look at their research challenges in new ways and find the encouragement needed to get their research back on track. Marians tips are so useful, one person commented, “A fabulous webinar. Although I am an intermediate genealogist, I believe I can Learn from any presentation, and this was no exception.” See more viewer comments later in this review.
Web seminars, or “Webinars,” have quickly become one of the most popular ways for professionals and companies to share information with large groups of individuals from across the country, or even around the world, without the high cost of travel. Webinars are just like seminars. A large group of “attendees” can come and watch a presentation at a given time. Webinars are nice, since they are usually recorded and can be watched again at a later time. The only real downside to webinars is the video stream can be slow for some people. Depending in large part on the viewer’s own personal Internet connection speed, video may or may not play well. The age of a person’s computer may also contribute to slow playback. To counter these playback problems, some individuals and companies offer the option to buy their webinars on CD. CD’s offer the opportunity to play these webinars on almost any computer at anytime, without the worry of connection issues.
Ten Brick Wall Tips for Beginners runs 1 hour 30 minutes, and the presentation CD includes a link to a eight-page handout. An active Internet connection is needed to download the handout.
About Marian Pierre-Louis (from her websites):
“Marian Pierre-Louis is a House Historian and Genealogical Lecturer who specializes in southern New England research. She frequently speaks at conferences, societies and libraries on New England topics ranging from house history research, African American research and a broad range of genealogical topics.
Marian has a broad range of genealogical experience. Her area of expertise focuses on Southern New England which includes the states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Particular research interests include early (1700-1850) African Americans in New England.”
Viewer comments about this presentation:
- Absolutely one of the best. The information was clear, concise and extremely useful.
- Absolutely the best webinar I have attended! I have tried using the “old research logs” etc – with mixed results. But we need new conceptual sheets for today’s researching; and Marian has given us those. Many THANKS.
- As always, Marian was excellent – both in content and presentation. As a professional genealogist I always use research plans for my client work but, even though I am very familiar with them, I learned several handy tips from this webinar. Thank you, Marian, and thank you Geoff, once again, for your excellent series of webinars.
- Every genealogist should watch this webinar, it’s one of THE most informative webinars I’ve seen. I’ve known I needed to implement a research plan but never known exactly how to go about it. Now with such great instruction, I’m finally going to be able to be more organized and efficient in my researching. Thank you Marian!
- Excellent presentation. Thorough conceptual base, and showed us that we will want to individualize it for the way we research. Thanks for the motivation to control my research!
- Excellent webinar! Fit my needs perfectly. Now I’m ready to tackle those brick walls.
- Extremely informative! Has completely changed my definition of how to search. Thank you for hosting this webinar.
- I really enjoyed learning about the importance of having a Research Plan. I practice a rather haphazard way of ancestering. Marian’s method does put one in control.It is so organized and I’m sure less stressful in the long run.
- I think it was most helpful — I only wish I had this information 20 years ago!! I would have saved so much time and footwork!
Get your own copy of Ten Brick Wall Tips for Beginners from Family Roots Publishing; Price: $12.69. Enjoy the presentation again and again on your own computer.