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Strategy: Research Occupational RecordsBy Pat Smart and AI2024.06.19 There are many ways to further your research in Family History. The following is one of those strategies. Researching Occupational Records Occupational records are documents that describe a person’s job or profession. These can include employment records, guild memberships, apprenticeships, and etc. Occupational records can be a valuable means of research because they offer a glimpse into the lives of ancestors’ beyond basic birth, marriage, and death records. Where to Find Occupational Records There are many locations occupational records can be found. The following is a list of some of them. You […]

Father’s Lead By D.E. Lee © 1997 A Father is a man of strength, who keeps a family safe, He leads the children of his house, the way, he tries to pave, To show to them the course to go, to guide them as he can, To be examples of the right, and honorable ways of man, He grinds, exerts and works so hard, to win his daily bread, And then comes home to show his love, to the one to whom he wed, And when the things in life are hard, not everything goes right, He provides a haven […]

Clip art by http://ucevanston.org Mother’s anxious waiting Heart By D. E. Lee Through the trials and storms of life,          there’s something you can be sure, It’s Mother’s anxious, waiting heart,          no distance can find cure, For Mother is the one we see,          when first we come to be, And Mother is the one we call,          whenever we have need, And in whatever success we gain,          it’s Mother who we praise, Because we know that without her,          there are few other ways. Seekerz LLC © 2020-2024

YouTube AnnouncementBy Dale E. Lee2024.05.01 Seekerz LLC is happy to announce that we are now on YouTube. Our Channel is Seekerz LLC and the direct link to it is www.youtube.com/@SeekerzLLC. The video “Seekerz Roadmap to Family History” has been uploaded to YouTube and is now available. The video is the course outline for Seekerz Intro to Family History and is available to view for free. The course offers twelve simplified lessons that take the reader from zero to proficiency, regardless of prior experience. It does not assume the use of particular websites or utilities. It guides the reader step-by-step through […]

Digitizing Camcorder VideosBy Dale E. Lee2024.04.24 This week we’ll discuss digitizing camcorder videos. Hi8, Video8, and Digital8 are all stored on magnetic tape. However, just like any other media, it has a shelf life. Magnetic tapes loose data over time and it’s a good idea to convert it to digital format as soon as practical. A good rule of thumb is to copy your data onto the newest media available every 10 years or so. Magnetically recorded medias tend to loose the magnetic charges over time. Even flash drives should be replaced after 10 years. Camcorders can link their electronic […]

Digitizing BooksBy Dale E. Lee2024.04.17 In the past, I’ve talked about several different digitizing machines. Each machine has it’s pros and cons and each media it is digitizing has its own particular challenges. This week I’ll discuss digitizing books. Books have a unique set of challenges. I recently used a book digitizer which had a collapsible arm that reached out about a foot above a black scanning surface. The scanning surface was black in order to reduce glare and show contrast from the picture that was being taken. The scanner displayed a continuous video feed to a computer of what […]

What Can I Digitize?By Dale E. Lee2024.04.10 If you are curious about all the different types of old media it is possible to convert to digital format, this article is for you. I have visited the Mesa Family History Library several times during the past little while, after realizing they had a lot of equipment I could use to digitize my old records. Having grown up in an era of rapid innovation in picture and voice recording, I found I have many different types of recordings on old media. This presents a problem because each type of media, whether VHS, […]

8mm and Super8 DigitizerBy Dale E. Lee2024.04.02 Many people know that it is possible to digitize photos, but did you know that you can also digitize 8mm and Super 8 film? You can, and I did, at least the Super 8 film. I was, and you may be, concerned about preserving these films, as by now they may be very old and brittle. Even though I tried to be very careful when threading the film into the digitizer and through no fault of the digitizer itself, I broke the film a couple of times in different places. I do not […]

Slide DigitizerBy Dale E. Lee2024.03.27 In prior weeks I’ve discussed some of the equipment that is available to help you digitize your pictures and sound recordings. Over time pictures have taken many different formats: photos, slides, negatives, super-8, camcorder, and etc. So digitizing them can be a challenge unless you have a machine that will digitize the format you used to store the picture. Once the picture or sound recording has been digitized into a common computer format, it will be much simpler to convert to a different format in the future. The conversion can normally be done using software, […]

Fast Scanning of PhotosBy Dale E. Lee2024.03.20 Last week I talked about scanning Photo Negatives. This week I’ll discuss scanning photos themselves. Most people probably know about scanning photos and documents using flat bed scanners. Flat bed scanners allow you to place the photos on the photo bed and align them with the sides of the bed, so they’ll appear straight when the final digital picture appears. However, there is another way to scan photos, that of using a scanner with a hopper. I recently used one of these faster scanners at the Family History Library in Mesa, Arizona. There […]