Get Ready for Our Annual Holiday Party/Pot-luck Next Week

Friday, December 6th at 12:00 p.m. (noon) is our Annual Holiday Party and Pot-luck at the Mount Clemens Public Library. It is a joint meeting of the Macomb County Genealogy Group Friday group and the Let's Talk...Genealogy Wednesday group.

Bring a dish (home-made or store-bought) to share and come have some fun. (Remember this meeting starts at noon rather than our usual 1 p.m. start time.)

Please email Ann at the MCGG email if you plan on attending so we know approximately how many tables to set up. But if you don't know until the last moment, come anyway.

This year, just for fun, we are going to have a White Elephant Auction.  Look around your house and if you find something that you don't want (but someone else might) & wrap it up and bring it.

See you soon at the Mt. Clemens Public Library!

LE

Follow up - BookScan Station to be Purchased by Mt Clemens Public Library

Hi Everyone!

If you were not at the November 1st MCGG Friday meeting or if you have not visited our FaceBook page lately, then let me announce to you that the Mount Clemens Public Library will purchase the BookScan Station. Thanks to some generous donations to the library's Local History and Genealogy Room.

Bob McG...'s photo of his BookScan Station test.

Currently, the station is still in demo-mode which means you need to bring in your own USB drive to save your image/document files. (We'll announce when the station is changed to fully-functioning which will give you additional options to save your files using email and Google drive.)

Last week, MCGG member Bob McG... (our techie guy) was testing the station just hours after our first post about the station. He decided to see how it did scanning a framed certificate without taking the certificate out of the frame.

Bob McG...'s untouched scan of a framed certificate.

Bob noted that "the scan needed slight color adjustment prior to the final cropped picture I sent you.  I added 10 degrees to color temperature, and increased light tones by 7 on the tone curve in Lightroom 5.  Someone with PSE [PhotoShop Elements] could do the same corrections."

Bob McG...'s retouched scan of a framed certificate.

The scanning station is very easy to use and this new resource is available whenever the library is open. We will have some tips for using the BookScan Station in a future post.

See you soon at the Mt. Clemens Public Library.

LE

Follow Up to Friday's MCGG Meeting on the Roseville Family History Center

We hope you were able to make it to our November 1st Friday meeting. We had a great turnout.

David Lambert, a co-director of the Roseville Family History Center, described the resources of the Roseville FHC and gave an overview of the FamilySearch website ran by the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ (LDS/Mormon).

In the presentation David talked about several pay-sites that patrons of the Roseville FHC can access for free while at the FHC. These are sometimes referred to as portal access sites.

Today, Dick Eastman's Blog, Eastman's Online Genealogy Blog, had an announcement that new parish records were recently added to TheGenealogist website. TheGenealogist is one of the pay-sites available through the FHC's portal access.

You can see what types of records are available at TheGenealogist without having a subscription. (You can not do a search though.) On TheGenealogist homepage, scroll down until you see the "Why Subscribe?" column on the left side. Click on the arrow next to "Parish and non-conformist records" and it will take you to another page. Once there you can click on the county in the right-hand column to see what parishes are included so far. You can also click on the other subject categories and then the county to see what areas and time periods are included in those categories.

So if you have ancestors in the United Kingdom and TheGenealogist website covers the area you need, you might want to visit the Roseville FHC and investigate this website.

LE