By Jim Cross, BCGS Circulation Manager

I was able to attend the full day of events at the Maryland State Archives building on Rowe Boulevard in Annapolis, Saturday, 7 Nov, with check-in beginning around 9 am and the conference ending about 4 pm. It was quite a genealogy friendly time with tables set up in the research room for about twenty genealogical societies. Ken and Elaine Zimmerman were at the table representing our Baltimore County Genealogical Society.

There were two general genealogy lectures: “Beginning Genealogy” by Debra A Hoffman (a recent guest speaker at BCGS) and “From Family Research to Lasting Treasures” by Lyndra Pratt Marshall. The two lectures and three workshops were given in both the morning and afternoon, so the most one was able to attend was four of the five. I attended the lecture by Ms Marshall whose basic premise was – now that you’ve done all this research, why not introduce it to your family? She described a number of ways that she has been able to bring her family together with reunions, tee shirts, newsletters, oral interviews, and pictures of family members from child to adult. Neat ways to bring a breath of life to our research!

Michael G. McCormick, Director, Reference Services, ran a workshop titled “Introduction to Archives Catalogs”. He did an online walk through of the MSA website showing how to find various collections, indexes, books, etc. His suggestion is to search the site from home and find references before you travel to the Archives.

The second workshop was “Introduction to MDLandRec” and was given by Rachel Frazier. Using examples she walked through how to do a title search, how to do workarounds when you hit a roadblock, and what to do when you only have an address. There were several helpful handouts to reinforce her explanations.

The third workshop was “Simple Preservation Techniques for Caring for Family Treasures”. This talk taught hands on methods to clean documents with a product called Wishab (an eraser to remove dirt), and using a couple pieces of plastic to aid the removal of old rusty paperclips (a problem I have encountered). They discussed acid free paper and plastic and provided a handout with tips and archival quality suppliers. Finally, time was spent giving instruction on handling and preserving old photographs.

There were food trucks on site for a variety of lunch cuisines. Another feature was drawings in each lecture/workshop for door prizes and at the end drawings for prizes ranging from Ancestry DNA kits to the main prize of a one year subscription to Ancestry’s International World Explorer. The workshops in particular provided needed learning opportunities for a tremendous resource that serious researchers need to be familiar with, the Maryland State Archives. I recommend that our members consider putting attending the MSA Family History Festival on your calendar for next year.