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This book describes the wide array of social networking services that are now available online and highlights how these services can be used by genealogists to share information, photos, and videos with family, friends, and other researchers. Each chapter guides you through a unique category of social networking services using genealogy-related examples. From blogs and wikis to Facebook and Second Life, author Drew Smith shows you how to incorporate these powerful new tools into your family history research.

Specifically, you'll find chapters devoted to the following social networking services:

• Blogs
• Collaborative editing
• Genealogy-specific social networks
• General social networking (Facebook)
• Message boards & mailing lists
• Photos & video sharing
• Podcasts
• RSS feeds
• Sharing personal libraries
• Tags
• Virtual worlds
• Wikis

Destined to become a classic, this book is about the type of social networking that has been made possible by the development of international computer networks, the availability of network access to most homes (especially broadband access), the creation of websites dedicated to particular kinds of networking (posting photos, viewing and commenting on videos, seeing what books friends have in their libraries, etc.), and the ease of participating in these sites without having to be a computer expert. More to the point, this book is intended to identify those kinds of social networking sites and services that will be of the most interest to genealogists.


THE AUTHOR
Drew Smith, MLS, is an academic librarian with the University of South Florida in Tampa. An expert in digital genealogy, with a lifelong interest in family history research, he is Director of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and President of the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa. He is also a regular contributor to Digital Genealogist magazine and is co-host of the weekly Genealogy Guys Podcast.