John Philip Colletta, author of They Came in Ships: A Guide to Finding Your Immigrant Ancestor's Arrival Record, Finding Italian Roots: The Complete Guide for Americans, & Only a Few Bones will be the conference speaker at the October 30, 2004 Greater Omaha Genealogical Society conference. 9:00 to 4:00 Topics: Using Original and Derivative Sources: How to Evaluate Evidence; Only a Few Bones: Case studies in pulling sources together to reconstruct real life events; Military Pension & Bounty Land Records 1776 - 1912; Breaking Through Brick Walls: Use your Head. We have a new place to meet at the Paralyzed Veterans of America building that has much more room and isn't right outside road construction. We will have box lunches available for sale for those who don't want to go out to eat. We're working on getting at least one vendor into town for the event. We WILL have the popular 365+1 Genealogy Tips calendar, the handy Federal Census Helper (available nowhere else), Tshirts, buttons, and maybe a NEW single page research helper (we're working on it.) available that day. There'll be a fund-raising bake sale going on for folks to get midmorning treats with all proceeds benefiting the census collection at the W. Dale Clark Library. Because we have to pay Dr. Colletta and all his expenses for this trip, this IS a pay-to-attend workshop, but it promises to be a very wonderful day filled with lots of useful information. You can email me or _Genclass@aol.com_ (mailto:Genclass@aol.com) for a description of the classes, find out fees, address, or to obtain a flier which should be available by the end of the week. However, we are excited & wanted you all to mark your calendar. We're talking about making pre-ordered copies of the syllabus available for purchase for those that CAN'T make it into town or have to work that day (we know that sometimes life intrudes into our favorite activity.) This is a maybe--so if you're interested, let us know now so that we can decide whether it is worth our time to plan on doing it. We're also discussing a possible special deal for groups from other genealogy societies who don't want to join G.O.G.S. to qualify for the member discount...so if you think a bunch of you might want to carpool into Omaha, let us know you're interested in that as well. Karen PS There is a conference planned for spring 2005 as well, so that the member discount obtained from joining for this conference would apply then as well.