Western Australian Genealogical Society Inc.

Unlock the Past Roadshow Report

On Wednesday 10th November the Unlock the Past History & Genealogy Roadshow was held at the Perth Function Centre, Lathlain Park.

What a wonderful day it was - if you didn't go you certainly missed out on some fantastic sessions. We were lucky to have 3 international speakers at the one event in Perth - this doesn't happen very often.

Elaine Collins, from Findmypast in the UK gave a lot of tips on how to search successfully on Findmypast and talked about some of the new records that are coming.  Rosemary Kopittke from Queensland also talked about the Findmypast Australian Site.

  Left  Elaine Collins 

Louise St Denis, from the  National Institute for Genealogical Studies in Canada, spoke on researching online. During her presentations 2 lucky WAGS members (Rob Gates and Ian Scott)  received online course vouchers to the value of $800 each.                                                                                 

Dan Lynch, a Professional Genealogist and author from America, did four presentations that centred on using Google in your research. Dan has written the book, Google Your Family Tree.  Dan gave many examples on how to use Google for family history research in simple and easy to understand language.

   Dan Lynch with WAGS President, Liana Fitzpatrick

Shauna Hicks (NSW), Marjorie Bly (NAA), Lise Summers (SRO), Tricia Fairweather and Leonie Hayes (SLWA), Mike Murray (Time Trackers) and Karen Tregenza (WAGS) were the other speakers. It was difficult to pick which presentation to go to as all the topics were excellent. Rather than describe the day in detail have a look at Shauna Hick's day 2 Roadshow report

Between the talks you had the opportunity to look at the displays and speak to the various presenters. All the presenters were very approachable and willingly answered questions. The WAGS display was very popular and we had 30 new members join (20 single and 5 joint) on the day. The bookshop was also very busy with sales.

 Some people travelled a great distance to attend and they all said it was well worth the long trip. Spotted at the Roadshow were a group of ladies from  Geraldton Family History Society (GFHS) and a couple from Kalgoorlie, who became WAGS members at the Roadshow. 

Members from GFHS

I certainly picked up many good tips during the day, especially from Dan Lynch. I went to all four of his presentations! One of his tips was to look at the images on google. Have you ever used them? Search in Google Images, type a name you are researching followed by ~genealogy then you can scroll through the photos quickly to see which ones are old photos or certificates. Try it! I have and it is amazing what you can find. Do you know about searching using filetype:ged? No! Then you need to look at Dan's book - it is in the WAGS library and for sale at the WAGS bookshop.