Saturday, May 26, 2012

Plans and Realities at the FHC

Yes, I know that every shift at the Family History Center can be a new adventure. For Thursday I planned to give a lesson on Doing More With Your Scanner. I planned to use http://scantips.com/

I arrived at the FHC an hour before class time. I discovered that the multi-function printer/scanner/copier was setup for the wrong network. All of our printing is normally done on an old HP Laserjet, at a fraction of the cost of the Dell inkjet. So when the network was changed, the multi-function device was not updated. A quick Google check indicated that updating it required uninstalling the software and re-installing it. While looking for the software CD, I found a USB cable I could use to connect the multi-function device directly to one of the computers. I was now able to scan and do OCR, and I had 5 minutes to spare before class time.

We had just two patrons, and they had other priorities, so we decided to help them. Lois wanted to know how to create books from her PAF database. She had created books full of photos on some of her family lines, and was looking for an easier way. This topic was fresh in my mind because I had given online training on that very topic just the previous day! So I proceeded to show her how to generate Ancestor (Ahnentafel) books and Descendancy (Modified Register) books including the default photos. She didn't know how to link photos to records in PAF so I showed her. She was amazed at how PAF could create a whole book in just a few minutes instead of months of time.

Her daughter Carol had a different question. "I have this new Mac laptop. How do I get my mother's genealogy on it?"

I asked what genealogy software she had, and she didn't have any yet. I suggested that she try the free Personal Ancestry Writer II software for MacOS-X. A Google search for [la nopalera software] found it at http://www.lanopalera.net/Genealogy/AboutPAWriter.html  Carol installed it on her Mac Book while I helped Lois export a gedcom file. We plugged the flash drive into the Mac, and Carol found how to import the gedcom into PAWII. She was impressed that in a minute or two she had her mother's whole family tree on her Mac.

So things did not go as planned, but a good time was had by all!

1 comment:

  1. I just came across your blog by searching something else on Google :) I have had those days where every thing in your mind is organized and then you have to hit plan B and it ends up working out even better!! Looking forward to checking out all your posts and learning some new tricks of the trade!

    ReplyDelete