Social Networking for Genealogists

by Drew Smith

This book describes the wide array of social networking services that are now available online and highlights how these services can be used by genealogists to share information, photos, and videos with family, friends, and other researchers. Each chapter guides you through a unique category of social networking services using genealogy-related examples. From blogs and wikis to Facebook and Second Life, author Drew Smith shows you how to incorporate these powerful new tools into your family history research.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference

129 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2009

About the author

There are several authors using this name.
Library of Congress Authorities: Smith, Drew (Andrew Martin), 1956-

Drew Smith has been a librarian in the Academic Services department at the University of South Florida (USF) Tampa Library since 2007.

Drew was born outside Newark, New Jersey (where his father was from) and grew up in upstate South Carolina (where his mother was from). As a child, he developed an interest in genealogy, and he began to engage in serious family history research in 1992 after the death of his favorite aunt.

Genealogical Publishing Company published his first genealogy book, Social Networking for Genealogists. His second book, co-authored with George G. Morgan, is Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques, published in 2013 by McGraw-Hill. His most recent book is Organize Your Genealogy: Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher, published in 2016 by Family Tree Books.

In 1996, Drew founded the mailing list GENEALIB for genealogy librarians, and continues to administer it for more than 1,100 subscribers.

Drew regularly speaks at conferences and meetings of national, state, and local genealogy societies, especially on topics linking genealogy and technology. Together with George G. Morgan, Drew has been the co-host of The Genealogy Guys Podcast since September 2005.

Reviews

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite having the worst cover art imaginable, this book covered the various aspects of social networking quite well. The author explained well how genealogists can best utilize social networking tools. The chapters covered a wide array of topics about social networking including message boards, blogs, wikis, file sharing, Facebook. Although most of the coverage was quite good, there were a couple of important aspects of social networking for genealogists that the author almost completely overlooked. Although the author discussed genealogy-based groups on Facebook, he completely neglected to mention genealogy-based applications on Facebook. This is a particularly negligent oversight considering that some of the most popular Facebook applications are based on building and sharing family trees. In his chapter about genealogy-specific social networking Smith focused entirely on Geni.com, which is certainly the most popular of the genealogy-specific social networking sites. However, none of the less-popular sites received any recognition whatsoever.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly straight forward description of online venues that can assist in doind family history. It assumes that you know how to access the internet, and say, check your email, but that you don't know much else.

The information on RSS, tags, blogs, photo and video sharing, and podcasts held nothing new for me, but I was surprised that I did not know anything about wikis.

Sure, I thought it was a funny coincidence that the bus at Honolulu International Airport was also called a wiki-wiki, but I didn't know online wikis were named after the silly bus! lol

I learned that there is a wiki dedicated to genealogy (eogen.com), AND that you can create a wiki for yourself using free wiki platforms, similar to blogs being free to create.

It also never occurred to me to use social bookmarking sites to search for things. And the whole collaborative editing via google docs was a new idea to me.

Bottom line, despite NO INDEX (and it was written by a LIBRARIAN), handy little guide.

[Linda Hartlaub · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drew Smith has a lot of good ideas for furthering your genealogy research using social networking. It's unfortunate that the internet changes so rapidly that it renders a book like this out-of-date almost before it's published. Sites like dynastree.com are now My Heritage, Google Reader no longer exists, some of the cited blogs are no longer maintained.

There is an excellent discussion of tags and their function. If you don't understand them, this chapter is worth reading!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an ok book. Not much to comment on.

[My Bookish Delights · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 129 page reference book that covers the different aspects of using the social media available to broaden your genealogical horizons, such as mailing lists, blogs, and social networking sites. It is a simple read with screen prints showing you steps in each chapter, although it doesn't go into too much depth on any one category. At the end of each chapter, it gives suggestions to get you started in the area that chapter covered. It was written in an interesting and easy to understand way, and even though I was already familiar with most of the social media topics covered, I was able to find a couple of new ones and some that I hadn't even considered using for genealogy. It is an excellent resource for beginners in the social media realm and worth flipping through for the more experienced.

[Kim. E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first began genealogy, I had two choices: either travel to the county to reseach (have to admit I still love going into those dusty story places in the courthouWes),or go to the local libraries if they have a genealogy section. As computers became more important to our lives records were digitized, blogs published, companies such as Ancestry developed, and so on. This book was the first one I read to educate me on all the ways social media Could help. Good start.

[Gwnhwyfer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good introduction to various social networking sites specifically (and sometimes not so specifically) for genealogists. If you're an absolute newbie, this is the book for you. If you know what you're doing, skip it.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bogs, podcasts, message boards, photo & video sharing, RSS feeds, tags, virtual worlds, wikis, collaborative editing, & genealogy specific social networks! Very informative & quick read!

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!!!!!