Wiki Fun and Sealings, 17 May 2016

This morning we had an enjoyable presentation on using the Research Wiki and the Family History Library Catalog. The presenter is a Church Service Missionary, a local member who volunteers a few days each week.  He had never done a presentation before, but I really liked his style.  He told anecdotes from his life and the lives of his relatives, and let us follow along on the Wiki with real examples.

During my one-on-one time with my trainer, I learned that there is a group that is indexing and making available birth, marriage and death records from Poland.  The Poznan Project does not yet have any new information available for my lines, but I will be checking back often to see if something pops up!

I spent some time learning strategies for improving what I with the Memories section. One new capability is to change a photo to a document.  This is a good thing to know when taking a screenshot or a snip of an online document, because those images can be saved as photos. To be able to convert them to documents with the click of the mouse is quite helpful.

This afternoon there was a presentation about the Church History Library. The Library is anxious to obtain and preserve missionary journals. More recent journals are not made available online due to privacy issues, but the older ones are often scanned and posted.  That is a treasure for those who have missionary ancestors in the Church. As time goes by, more recent journals will age enough to be made available also. Maybe my missionaries will donate their journals, and in a hundred years or so perhaps some of my posterity will read about how they met and taught my family!

The last presentations of the day dealt with less happy topics, but ones which are necessary in today's world as a practical matter.  We watched two videos.  The first was on how to protect oneself in case of an active shooter incident.  The vital information is to Run, Hide, or Fight.  The second video was on harassment. Again, this is not a fun topic, but it was important information. The good news was that we got out early today!

I reread an announcement this morning about doing sealings on Tuesday afternoons, so I went to the temple to help with that. Since my sweetheart works at the St. Louis Temple at the same time, I wanted to do this at least once.  I will not know until Friday when I get my assignment whether this is something I can do on a regular basis.

I finished up my batch of red beans today, so I have some black beans soaking for tomorrow.  I think I will make basmati rice to go with them.  I have been using short grain rice, but I like the basmati better.

Tonight I expect to work on cleaning up records--with several thousand to get through that is an ongoing project!