A few weeks ago, the 4th annual ‘Roots Tech’ conference was held.  It was the largest gathering of its kind in North America and if you include the 622 remote broadcast locations, it became the largest gathering of its kind in the world.  The sponsoring websites FamilySearch.org and rootstech.org  hosted the conference. They are dedicated to the use of technology for the detective work we call family history.

Picture courtesy Linhishyr newgrounds.com

Over 200 classes were offered at the conference.  Many of them were recorded and can be accessed through the internet.  I’ve watched a few of the presentations and recommend the following:

“Top 10 Things I Learned About My Family From My Couch” by Tammy Hepps from NY.

“Intro to DNA for Genealogists” by James Rader (the previous post has this link also).

I’m anxious to watch many more of the videos.  They are about 45-60 minutes in length so you might want to put them on when you have a brainless activity to perform.  Watching them in installments is also convenient.  You can see the list and access all the classes here.  (Note:  I’ve had some trouble getting this site to pull up every time so keep trying if it doesn’t cooperate the first time.)

This is all free!

In fact, in the future FamilySearch has announced that access to their partner websites such as Ancestry.com, Archives.com, findmypast and MyHeritage will be available for FREE from your own home computer for members of the LDS church.   It will begin mid-2014 and they will send an e-mail invitation to join the free-version sites.  It’s unclear if non-members will be able to have access with their own familysearch accounts.

Familysearch also announced they will begin publishing hundreds of millions of searchable obituaries online, literally.  They’ve gotten agreements for their publication and they’re looking for help to get them online.  If you’re interested in in helping with this grand project as a volunteer indexer, go to FamilySearch.org/indexing.

Isn’t online learning great?