1. October 1 is our second annual genealogy lock-in which will be held at the W. Dale Clark library in downtown Omaha. There a couple of changes from last year. The event will begin at 6:30, and doors will be closed at 6:45. If you are at the library beforehand, we suggest you have a bite of supper at one of the area restaurants (Cranes & Jimmy John's are just across the street to the south.) You may come early and work but the library will be cleared of patrons at regular closing time. Another change, there will be computers available on second floor as well as the third floor, and the timers will be on so that more people will be able to use them. Opening second floor computers about doubles the computer capacity, and since there will be time limits on the computers similar to normal business hours, more will be able to use them. The Ancestry available at the library is the World version, and there are British, Canadian and some other European records available. Ancestry recently bought the Swedish data base service GenLine, and we're waiting to see if that becomes available also (if you do use GenLine, be aware that only the headings to the research data bases is in English. The records are untranslated Swedish...but hey, I've got one of my Swedish lines into the 1500s now thanks to GenLine. If I can do it, you may be able to do it as well. The downer is that not all parishes go back that far. (Email me with Swedish Questions if you like.) There will be several librarians on duty, there will be a tour available of the facility if you are new to the Omaha genealogy department, and several members of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society will be available to try to help with genealogy programs, resource questions, research questions. There are two marvelous collections of information that are kept behind the information desk that they will be happy to get for you if the topic or people you're interested in is listed. Just ask. We've got all Omaha/So Omaha city directories, several sets of marriage microfilms from various Nebraska counties, over 8,000 books about a wide variety of states, counties, ethnicities, immigrations, etc and newsletters from about 125 different genealogy societies around the country. The lock-in will be over at 9 PM. There is no charge for this event, although we'll have a donation jar to help pay for the guard (this is outside the normal library budget which they keep cutting on the city council.) If you can help, we appreciate it. If not, the Society will fund the guard's salary. If we get enough donations after the guard salary is paid, we'll buy more stuff for the library. IF you heard Roger Minert a couple years ago at a Spring conference, you'll find that we have all of his books at the present time. If you have questions, you can email me. Second: The annual fall conference/workshop (30 Oct 2010) flyer has been uploaded to the G.O.G.S. web site: _www.gogsmembers.wordpress.com_ (http://www.gogsmembers.wordpress.com) (right hand of the page, a ways down.) If you're on the mailing list, they should hit the mail next week. Four speakers (brief synopsis, you can get more from the flyer): Lynn Farr will be discussing land records Lucille Saunders will be discussing oral histories/story telling Cyndy Salzman will discuss how to organize our records Jeff Ramsell will discuss the uses of digital cameras in genealogy research. This is one of the two major genealogy conferences that we sponsor each year. Any profits that may be made over the conference expenses will be turned into materials at the W. Dale Clark Library. (Yeah, when they cut the library budget by 7.5% this year, we got hit yet again in genealogy.) There are discounts for pre-registering, and for being a member of the Greater Omaha Genealogical Society (in fact, if you attend both conferences, it's almost like we're giving you the Society membership free because you get a $10 discount at each conference if you are a member.) You don't need to be a member to attend the conference. We always have a lot of fun. There's a bake sale, raffles, genealogy stuff and white elephants for sale. Lunch is available for a nominal fee, or you can go out to lunch. Hope to see you at both upcoming events.