2017 SLIG Courses Announced

SLIG announced fourteen courses to be held at the 22^nd annual Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy:

Advanced Genealogical Methods, Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS

The Family History Law Library, Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL, and Richard G. Sayre, CG, CGL, FUGA

Taking Your Research to the Next Level, Paula Stuart-Warren, CG, FUGA, FMGS

Diving Deeper into New England, D. Joshua Taylor, MA, MLS

Virginia from the Colonial Period to the Civil War: Her Records, Her People, Her Laws, Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FVGS

Research in Washington, DC, Without Leaving Home, Pamela Boyer Sayre, CG, CGL, FUGA

Utilizing a Full Array of Sources for Researching Your Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic Ancestors, Elaine Hasleton, AG, and Jeffrey M. Svare, AG

Settlers in the New World and Immigrants to a New Nation: Researching Ancestors from Overseas, John Philip Colletta, PhD, FUGA

DNA Boot Camp: Practical Application, CeCe Moore

Refining Internet and Digital Skills for Genealogy, Cyndi Ingle

Adding Social History to Your Genealogy, Gena Philibert-Ortega, MA, MAR

You be the Judge: A Practicum Using Standards to Evaluate Genealogical Work, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG

The Coaching lab: Forensic Genealogy From Inquiry to Affidavit, Catherine B. W. Desmarais, CG, and Amber Goodpaster Tauscher

Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum, Angela McGhie

SLIG also announced its first-ever virtual institute course, the Virtual Advanced Evidence Analysis Practicum to be offered September-October 2016.  The course will offer five case studies as a challenge for students to solve, and then discuss, meeting once per week. Registration will be open first to participants of SLIG 2016.

The program will be held 22-27 January 2017 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.  Registration will open July 9, 2016 at 9:00 am MDT.  Detailed course information will be available in May at slig.ugagenealogy.org.

UGA Awards

Each year UGA presents several awards at the SLIG completion banquet.  The organization reached out to board members as well as past Fellows of UGA and Silver Tray award winners for nominations to be considered.  The awards were presented by Bret Petersen, UGA President.

Bret Petersen presents the FUGA
award to Thom Edlund

Thomas K. Edlund, a specialist in East European area studies, languages and record sources, was presented with the UGA Fellow award.  Thom entered the profession of genealogy at the Family History Library following a career with the USA Intelligence and Security Command.  As the first Slavic bibliographer, he created and codified collection development and catalogued standards for nine countries. He was a founding member of the FamilySearch Issues Group, created to investigate and actualize the corporatizing of FamilySearch.  He also conducted private research, specializing in Balkan, Russo-German, and Jewish research. 

Thom presently works at Brigham Young University, where he has developed and instructed curricula for Latin source documents, Slavic source documents, advanced Latin paleography, Church Slavonic, Slavic paleography, and micro-regional/local history research methodology.  He serves as department chair for Cataloging and Metadata at the Harold B. Lee Library and represents the university as the East European Areas Studies Librarian.

Thom is president of the Foundation for East European Family History Studies (FEEFHS), where he has actively served in various roles for over twenty years, including ten years as the FEEFHS Journal editor.  He has most recently affected change in the FEEFHS organizational structure toward support of a more substantial role in education, indexing, and record discovery projects.

Thom is an active speaker, having made over 250 conference presentations.  He also acts as a representative for family history in multiple organizations outside the genealogy industry. We welcome Thom to the FUGA family.

Dick Eastman accepts the Silver
Tray award on the anniversary of
the first release of his newsletter

Richard (Dick) Eastman could have stayed home and opened the bubbly to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first edition of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.  Instead, he celebrated with UGA board members, SLIG committee members, coordinators, instructors, and students at the 21^st annual SLIG banquet.

At that banquet, Bret Petersen, UGA President, presented Dick with the Silver Tray Award.  The award is given annually for scholarly contributions to the field of genealogy, traditionally demonstrated through publication efforts. That the banquet was on the 15^th of January, exactly twenty years from the date of his first release, was almost too good to be true, and Dick flew in just for the special occasion.

Dick has been involved in genealogy for more than 30 years.  He also worked in the computer industry in software, hardware, and management positions, for more than 40 years.  The two interests merged continually throughout his career, starting with the use of a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards back in the 1970s.

Long before the invention of the World Wide Web, Dick started a Genealogy Forum on CompuServe, the leading commercial online service of the day.  In 1995, he decided to start a small weekly e-newsletter.  It began on January 15, 1996 with about 100 recipients and has since grown into a daily electronic publication, now read by 75,000 people around the world. 

Janet Hovorka receives an
Award of Merit from Bret Petersen

Janet Hovorka, past-president of UGA, received the President’s Award of Merit.  Janet served as vice president of UGA in 2009, and as president from 2010 to 2013.  Under her leadership, UGA developed new committee initiatives, long term planning, and doubled membership.  During her two-term tenure, Janet worked with various committees, including education, publicity, publications, exhibits, chapters, historical, award, website, and volunteer resources.

Janet also served on the SLIG committee and as the vendor liaison for the UGA South Davis Conference for five years, oversaw the UGA Sandy conference for two years, the joint UGA/ICAPGen conference in 2013, and helped provide oversight for UGA’s partnership role in the National Genealogical Society Conference held in Salt Lake City in 2010.  

Janet holds a master’s degree in library and information science, is an instructor in the genealogy certificate program at Salt Lake Community College, lectures on various topics across the country and internationally, is an author, and is owner of Family ChartMasters.

21st Annual Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy

Students from 45 states and four countries joined us in Salt Lake City for the 21^st annual Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) held January 10-15, 2016 at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center.  

Presented by the Utah Genealogical Association, the institute established new benchmarks with thirteen courses offered and 361 students attending. Over thirty of the nation’s top genealogists provided in-depth instruction on topics from advanced methodology to genetic genealogy.

Inquisitive group in the
Swing Across the South course

Special Events:  Anchoring the event were Rev. Dr. David McDonald, CG with uplifting plenary insights, “Thinking Genealogically,” and Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL, with a memorable banquet keynote, “Suffer the Little Children.” 

The International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen) sponsored a new event, “SLIG Night at the FHL.”  Hosted by the Family History Library, the event provided classes, labs, and one-on-one consultations in specific areas of research.  

Lee Warthen instructs students at the
University of Utah Law Library

The University of Utah Law Library hosted Judy Russell's advanced law course on an afternoon field trip, while the Family History Library hosted course labs and consultation stations.

New this year:  the institute introduced “SLIG Central” with Maia's bookstore; a morning refreshment break; information tables from BCG, ICAPGen, UGA, and VisitSalt Lake; a video interview corner; an ancestor map/database; and new SLIG Swag. The area quickly became the networking center for the week as students posted photos, reviewed credentialing materials, and discussed course homework assignments over lunch. 

Participants networking at SLIG Central

Scholarship Fund:  Martha Mercer of Maia’s Books made the first official donation to the new SLIG Scholarship Fund.  While SLIG will continue to award the annual Jimmy B. Parker scholarship, the fund was set up to provide additional opportunities for deserving students to attend SLIG in the future.

Sponsors/Prizes:  Several organizations and vendors provided door prizes and support to this year's Institute.  We will mention them further in a later post, along with some of the contest winners.

Memorabilia:  Finally, SLIG presented each participant at the banquet with a SLIG2016 pin and announced the 2017 courses, which we will cover in a subsequent post. 

Colloquium:  The second annual SLIG Colloquium was held Saturday following the Institute.  It brought over 70 leaders from the genealogy industry together for a moderated discussion on the importance of genealogical standards and their place in the larger genealogy world.  A summary will be presented in the next issue of Crossroads.