May 2012 Meeting Rewind: Google Gems with Lisa Louise Cooke

If you missed our meeting earlier this month, you missed a couple of great presentations by Google expert Lisa Louise Cooke!

In Lisa's Research Class Google Earth for Genealogy, she discussed identifying old photos, plotting, and virtually visiting an ancestor's homestead, and incorporating historic maps and videos. Google Earth has the power to geographically document your ancestors' lives, and lends itself very well to collaboration with other researchers. And best of all, it's FREE!

Lisa Louise Cooke discusses the genealogy gems found in Google.

Lisa's main program was titled Google: A Goldmine of Genealogy Gems, in which she covered the basics of getting a free Google account, creating your own "Genealogy Dashboard" with iGoogle, adding gadgets, and the using the Tabs feature for better organization.

This blogger was already using iGoogle as her homepage, but learned so much from Lisa about how to make it more useful! Setting up tabs for special projects - even short-term projects - is a terrific idea, and one that I was not using. Also, there are so many genealogy gadgets out there; visit the Gadgets Directory and search "genealogy" to find them for your iGoogle homepage. And don't forget to add the San Luis Obispo County Genealogy Society Blog to iGoogle so you can keep up with the latest SLOCGS news!

More information about Lisa Louise Cooke can be found on her web site at http://genealogygems.tv. You can also catch Lisa in person next month at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in Burbank.

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Congratulations to the following officers who were elected at the May business meeting: President, Leslyn Keith; Vice President, Administration & Development, Barbara McCallum; Education Chairman, Sheila Davis; and Recording Secretary, Anne Brown. Many thanks to our outgoing officers for their exceptional service, particularly President Bob Christian, who was unexpectedly called on to "step up to the plate." Thanks to all of you for your commitment to SLOCGS!

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