GenBlog: Family History Through the Alphabet

Family-History-Through-the-Alphabet

For 26 weeks I will take you on a family history journey through the alphabet, one letter at a time. I have decided that each post will be educational in nature, focusing on topics related to resources, methodology, tools, etc. Although the challenge is complete, there are still some people who are finishing up and Alona, the host, is encouraging others to participate anyway. Additional information on the challenge, can be found at Take the ‘Family History Through the Alphabet’ Challenge.

If you are on Facebook, you are probably familiar with the Like button. You can “like” someone’s status update, a link they share, or photos they’ve uploaded. Even better than that, you can “like” various Facebook pages created by companies, organizations, and people.

In terms of genealogy, this could include pages related to your favorite software, pages for genealogical and historical societies, or pages created for various genealogy-related events. There are even pages for a variety of genealogy topics, such as community pages created by FamilySearch related to a specific state/country where people can “gather” to help each other out.

"Liking” a Facebook page is basically like “friending” or “following” friends, family, colleagues, or associates on Facebook. When you like a page, their status updates and such will appear in your feed, just like your friends’ statuses.

Why might you want to “like” various genealogy-related pages on Facebook? Here are a few reasons:

Keep up-to-date on your favorite societies, products, and events.
Meet new people who share your love of genealogy.
Get help or help others.
Show your support.

Here are some examples of updates I saw in my feed:

An event posted by the Indiana Genealogical Society.
A new photo album related to lighthouses, posted by the Stonington Historical Society.
News about a documentary project that Maureen Taylor is working on, posted by Family Tree Magazine.

There are plenty of companies and societies on Facebook that have an active presence and share relevant and timely information. I started to collect bookmarks for any society I found with an active Facebook page in my Diigo bookmarks, which you can find here (it also includes societies using other forms of social media such as blogs).

Here are a few of my favorite genealogy-related Facebook pages: