MiniConference/Workshop
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008

PROGRAMS

Beginners Workshop
Two Hour Morning Session
Phyllis Kramer V.P. of Education, JewishGen Inc. Board Member JGSPBCI
"The Aleph Bet of Jewish Genealogy - where do you begin - the Where, How and Why".

Phyllis is an amateur genealogist, with primary interest in Eastern European Jewish research. She lives in Wilton, CT, New York City, and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. She serves on the board of JGSPBCI and conducts the monthly Brick Wall Sessions. She teaches on line genealogy classes several times a year for JewishGen.

Phyllis’s genealogical accomplishments since taking early retirement, include:

• compiling a family tree of 5400 people and locating relatives all over the world;
• creating and teaching 5 genealogy classes at Norwalk College, Savannah JCC and NYC's Museum of Jewish Heritage. Classes have included Introductory Genealogy, Genealogy on the Internet, and Genealogy at the NYC Archives. She has developed these courses for both lecture and lab environments.
• At JewishGen, Phyllis 
  • began as an active member of the support staff
  • created and teaches an on-line genealogy course to 270 students
  • created the online version of the 1891 Galician Business Directory
  • developed 15 Shtetlinks web pages for her ancestor’s shtetls
  • is a frequent contributor to the Discussion Group, and
  • accepted the position of V.P. of Education in June of 2005.

Phyllis has a B.S. from Cornell and an MBA from Fordham University. Her work experience was technical and managerial, primarily for IBM, and included Systems Engineering, Product and Business Management; her final position was Business Consultant, where she was  responsible for designing client image processing systems.

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Patricia Charpentier Writer/Instructor
"Writing Your Life"

Patricia holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Central Florida and a B. A. in journalism from Louisiana State University. She has worked as a memoirist, writing coach, editor, writing instructor, journalist and photographer.

When she was in her twenties, her mother handed her a copy of the family tree that dated back to 1648 when her ancestors came from France to settle in an area known as “Acadie,” now Nova Scotia.  She tucked the papers away in a drawer and forgot them.. 

Twenty years later,she came across the yellowed sheets held together by a rusty staple.  Looking at the names and tracing the path down to her own name, she now longed to know more about the people whose births, marriages and deaths were listed before her.  Unfortunately, by that time, all those who held pieces of her family story were long gone.  She had missed an opportunity.  Her ancestors’ stories died with them.

Since then she has devoted much time and effort to helping others avoid the mistake she made, assisting them in preserving their stories for themselves and their families. 

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Beau Sharbrough
Vice President of Content at the History Website - Footnote.com
"Jewish Research on Footnote.com"

Beau Sharbrough received a Philosophy BA from Texas A&M in 1977. His programming career began in 1980, and he is presently a product manager for MyFamily.com. He is the founder of the FGS web site, the GENTECH web site, and the Lexicon Working Group. He is a former president of GENTECH. Beau writes regularly on technical topics in family history, with an occasional overdose of humor, and maintains the RootsWorks.com web site. Beau is V.P. of Content at the History Website - Footnote.com. Beau has spoken at many conferences. His talks are always valuable and presented with great humor.

U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND FOOTNOTES.COM
Important historic documents from the U.S. National Archives are now making their way online due to an agreement with Footnote.com. Digitized copies of documents can be viewed and even annotated through what is possibly the best image viewer seen on the Web. Search results are free, but it is necessary to subscribe to view, print and save most of the actual document images.

Footnote.com has been scanning millions of historical documents, including 35 million pages of NARA [U.S. National Archives and Records Administration] records to date. More documents will be digitized and placed online each year. The documents will appeal to many different interests: genealogists, historians, and many, many others.

Founded in 1997 as iArchives, Inc., Footnote is a subscription based web site that features searchable original documents that provide users with an unaltered view of the events , places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

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Bob Davidsson Isabel Toolsie
Palm Beach County Library Government Research Service
"Genealogical Resources at the Palm Beach County Library"

Bob Davidsson is the Librarian III/Supervisor of the Palm Beach County
Library System's Government Research Service (GRS) Section. He has
worked for the Library System since 1989. He has a B.S. degree from the
University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications, and
received a M.S. degree from Florida State University's School of
Information Studies. He was awarded the Florida State Genealogical
Society's "2006 Genealogy Outstanding Achievement Award" for his
services in the field of genealogy and local history.

Isabel Toolsie is a Research Librarian II in the GRS Section and
webmaster of the Library System's "Genealogy Research" website. She has
worked for the Library System since 1990. She received a B.A. in Law and
History from the University of the West Indies in Barbados, and her M.A.
degree in Information Studies from the University of South Florida. Ms.
Toolsie was awarded the "County Administrator's Golden Palm Award" for
public service in 2006.