Cincinnati, Ohio (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Over the past few days, I have put my research on hold in order to spend my few free moments preparing for the annual Ohio Genealogical Society conference that I will be attending next Thursday through Saturday in Cincinnati, Ohio. This will be my first genealogy conference. I'm excited, but a little nervous at the same time. I've been researching my and my husband's families for a couple of years now, but I know I am still very much a newbie in the world of genealogy and family history research. I'm a pretty fast learner, so I'm not too worried about 'getting lost' in any of the sessions or anything, but I am hoping there are other non-professional 'hobbyists' there too so I won't feel to out of place next to the professionals. I'm also nervous because I won't see my husband or kids for three days, which will be a nice break for me, but it's something that is out of the ordinary for me, so, of course, I worry. :-)
The conference this year is in Cincinnati, which is great because I am already very familiar with the city. (We lived in northern Kentucky for nearly five years and during that time I got to know the city very well.) The conference organizers have arranged for the Main Branch of the Cincinnati Public Library to stay open after hours on Thursday so that conference attendees may do some evening genealogy research. Today, I've been going through the library's online catalog and printing out holding information for books and microfilms that I may like to look at. I've also been spending some time looking through the conference's schedule and syllabus (notes for each presentation), and deciding which sessions I will attend. Because the conference is in Cincinnati this year, there is a pretty heavy focus on German genealogy and heritage. My husband has a lot of German ancestors, so I will hopefully learn a lot about how to learn about those lines, but I'm also a little bummed that there doesn't seem to be much to aid me in tracing my Italian, Croatian, and Polish ancestors who settled in Cleveland. They have the conference in a different part of the state each year, so I'm sure at some point I will have a chance to attend one of their conferences that will help me more with that aspect of my research.
So, hopefully I will be able to write a blog post or two while I am at the conference, just to summarize what I've learned and to talk about the experience overall. Stay tuned!
The conference this year is in Cincinnati, which is great because I am already very familiar with the city. (We lived in northern Kentucky for nearly five years and during that time I got to know the city very well.) The conference organizers have arranged for the Main Branch of the Cincinnati Public Library to stay open after hours on Thursday so that conference attendees may do some evening genealogy research. Today, I've been going through the library's online catalog and printing out holding information for books and microfilms that I may like to look at. I've also been spending some time looking through the conference's schedule and syllabus (notes for each presentation), and deciding which sessions I will attend. Because the conference is in Cincinnati this year, there is a pretty heavy focus on German genealogy and heritage. My husband has a lot of German ancestors, so I will hopefully learn a lot about how to learn about those lines, but I'm also a little bummed that there doesn't seem to be much to aid me in tracing my Italian, Croatian, and Polish ancestors who settled in Cleveland. They have the conference in a different part of the state each year, so I'm sure at some point I will have a chance to attend one of their conferences that will help me more with that aspect of my research.
So, hopefully I will be able to write a blog post or two while I am at the conference, just to summarize what I've learned and to talk about the experience overall. Stay tuned!
