Copyright © 2013, Cathi Becker Wiest Desmarais, used with permission.
The 50th Anniversary Lectures take place yesterday and today in the auditorium of the LDS Church Museum Library on West Temple in Salt Lake City, just north of the Family History Library. For several years now, before the BCG Board's Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, board members and associates present lectures to the staff of the Family History Library to give back to them in recognition of their support of genealogists worldwide. This is the first time these annual lectures have been made open to the public.
Thursday saw a BCG Certification Seminar, three lectures, and the Keynote Speech.
F. Warren Bittner, CGSM, and BCG President Elissa Scalise Powell, CGSM, CGLSM, presented the BCG Certification Seminar. They discussed the application process, from the preliminary application form to the final portfolio submission. Did you know you can download the BCG Application Guide for free here? The BCG website includes skillbuilding materials and descriptions of the application and judging process. From the How to Become Certified Page, you can navigate to a recorded version of an earlier presentation of this seminar here.
Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CGSM, had the after-lunch spot for her lecture, "It Takes a Human: Genealogists and Writing." Based in Chicago, she led us through several issues tackled by the Chicago Manual of Style. Jeanne also presented practical steps in writing, editing, and proofreading. She has shared with us her handout It Takes a Human Syllabus - May 2013.
Laura Murphy DeGrazia, CGSM, gave us pointers on analyzing sources in her lecture, "Should You Believe Your Eyes? Sizing Up Sources and Information." She started with images of several records, asking if they were correct. No, every image had got its red X. Laura coached us to look askance at records until we have correlations.
Barbara Jean Mathews, CGSM, closed the late afternoon with her presentation, "Write While You Research: Let the Joy of Researching Infect Your Writing." Barbara provided some practical steps to take in order to write your reports or genealogical narratives while you are in the library researching.
The Keynote Address was delivered that evening by Thomas W. Jones, CGSM, CGLSM, who tackled the topic "Kinship Determination." He discussed the three Rs of proving kinship, Research, Reasoning, and 'Riting. He pointed out that "no source is perfectly trustworthy," and that "ancestral identification is rarely perfectly certain." Tom offered rich examples of research and reasoning processes. For the writing section, Tom went over the structures of genealogical, lineage, and pedigree narratives.
Updated 11 Oct 2013, 10:51 a.m., with addition of Bloom syllabus.