It is time to hunker down and stay in the house. Yes, I know it is summer time, but I live in Tucson. Today, the temperature is 110 – yes, 110! Tucsonans view summer the way most of the rest of the country views winter. One needs indoor hobbies for summertime. Luckily, genealogy fits the bill.

However, being a good genealogist means learning new research skills, discovering new (mostly free) resources and developing technological skills to keep up in today’s world. Yes, there are summer institutes, a few conferences and online courses. I’m not denying that there are some top notch educational opportunities out there, but I’m retired, so paid experiences have to be special for me to part with money for the event, hotel, travel, meals and vendors.

That also has nothing to do with the quality of free products available on line. There are fantastic resources available on line for free. Here are some of the websites I plan to visit this summer to enhance my genealogical skills:

1. Legacy Family Tree Webinars – Legacy presents multiple webinars every month. There are seven scheduled in July alone and I will be tuning in to most of them. Two of my favorite speakers/bloggers, Thomas MacEntee and Judy G. Russell are scheduled for July 8 and 10, respectively.

Legacy’s archived webinars are only accessible by subscription, but the live webinars are free. Just register and mark your calendar.

2. Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems is also a subscription site, but she includes a few free options, like Google Earth for Genealogy. I have watched this before, but don’t use Google Earth too frequently and I forget the steps. She also has a link to her free Genealogy Gems podcasts, to which listeners can subscribe (free) on iTunes. The link is on her home page.

3. The Florida State Genealogical Society has once-a-month poolside chat webinars scheduled. They are also free. June’s speaker was Judy G. Russell (yes, I attended online). Diahann Southard will present Using DNA To Explore Our Origins, Part 2 in July. The August speaker, KC Reid’s topic is Where You Are Depends on when You Are: Resources for Finding your American Ancestors in Time and Space.

4. The New England Historic Genealogical Society presents free webinars and maintains a number of archived webinars also available for free viewing.

5. Last, but certainly not least, is FamilySearch. Their Learning Center contains links to hundreds of archived videos and courses, covering everything from getting started in this highly addicting hobby to RootsTech 2015 presentations.

Whether you live in a stay-in-the-house-in-the-summer kind of place or just have some free time and would like to hone your genealogy skills, there are many opportunities to learn from top-notch speakers and none of them cost a penny.

If you have a favorite resource that I haven’t mentioned, please leave a comment. Being a retired teacher, I believe that there is no such thing as too much education!

When New Year’s resolutions are made, everyone should include a resolution to educate him or herself in some way. Education is defined in many ways – it could be a gardening class, it could be online learning, it could be a vacation to someplace you’ve never been. It could also be genealogically related and, if it is, Family History Fairs are a great way to add to one’s researching skills.

The Tucson East Stake Center held their annual Family History Fair yesterday. Tucson is not a very big place – not even close to the size of the metropolitan Phoenix area – but the talented volunteers presented five session choices for five hour blocks, totaling 25 sessions. In addition to the regular sessions, there were also five youth sessions.

What topics were offered? A little of everything. There was a session first thing in the morning for beginners, followed by an entire beginners’ strand. There were several sessions on the FamilySearch Family Tree, including how to get started and how to enter sources.

I was pleased to see an hour devoted to the FamilySearch Wiki. That wiki is a fabulous resource regardless of where you are researching. There are tons of live links to maps, records and further information related to the main topic. Anyone who hasn’t searched the wiki is missing out on a lot of information. A friend attended the session and said she learned so much about FamilySearch resources and how to access them.

There were sessions on getting more out of Google and Google Earth Magic. Friends who attended the Google sessions (not Google Earth) said they were excellent, too. I went to Google Earth Magic and, since I am only a beginner using Google Earth, I learn something new (or relearn something I’ve forgotten) with each session I attend.

Separate sessions were held on Immigration and Naturalization, well planned complements that had good reviews.  I had meant to listen to the  DNA and Family History presentation, but Scandinavian research won out (which was very well covered considering there was only one hour devoted to four countries.) However, there was an excellent, easy to understand five page handout accessible for the DNA and Family History presentation, which I downloaded and saved.

I now have RootsMagic and a subscription to MyHeritage.com so I attended the MyHeritage session to learn to navigate the website more efficiently. The room was packed full and, while lots of good information was shared about the website and its partnerships with FamilySearch and RootsMagic, this session was a little too basic for me. However, it was well received by the many beginners there. MyHeritage will undoubtedly gain some new subscribers because of this presentation.

Two sessions covered searching Ancestry Trees and efficiently using Ancestry Searches. I heard only positive comments about these sessions from attendees, too.

There were also special interest sessions covering German Research presented by a couple who travel there yearly and are well versed in genealogical research. There was even a session on Using Evernote, which I also attended. I am as much of a beginner with Evernote as I am with Google Earth so I not only learned some new tips, there was a great handout, downloadable with lots of live links.

The first session began at 8:30, there was a lunch on our own break for an hour and ten minutes. The last session ended at 3:10.

All in all, everyone had a great time. I attended with three friends and, in spite of the fact that in terms of genealogy expertise, we range from beginner to advanced, we all learned something new and had thoroughly enjoyed the day.

A bonus came with this Family History Fair as it not only had session handouts for this fair, it even included links on line for all the handouts at the 2013 and 2014 Family History Fairs that they hosted.

Oh, I knew I forgot to mention one thing – how much did it cost? It was FREE!

If you have never attended an LDS Family History Fair and/or don’t know where your local Family History Center is located, you can find out more here.