About that toolbar…

One of the things I really love about genealogy are the people I get to spend time with, both online and in real life. For the most part, the genealogists I know, both professional and hobbyist, are just the nicest people, and most are happy to help out in a second, whether its answering research strategy questions, or sharing family information from their own research. Genuinely good-hearted and generous folks.

I like to include myself in that generalization. I volunteer at the local public library and at the local Family History Center one day a week each. It seems that just about every week I am able to fulfill a couple requests for “Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness” (http://raogk.org) and occasionally even some from BooksWeOwn (at rootsweb). I feed stray animals and I swerve to avoid turtles in the road. Whatever I can do to help.

I do a lot of research online. Not exclusively, mind you, but libraries & courthouses don’t tend to be open at 10pm, and its not a good time to be tramping around cemeteries. And you probably know that as you find more and more great websites for research, your “links” toolbar starts to get really cramped, and your “favorites” or bookmarks start getting more and more complicated. Then try sharing them all when someone asks!

The answer was to put together a toolbar for all those great genealogy website links. Initially it was just for my own personal use, but I’ve found that instead of e-mailing individual links to friends here and there its just easier to give out the download info for the toolbar. Its all free anyway – free for me to make, free for anyone to download and use. Just a good deal all around.

You can download it free at http://RelativelyCurious.OurToolbar.com/ .
If you don’t like it you can uninstall it. Or if you want you can just turn it off and on whenever you want to use it, or not have it show.

Personally, the parts that I use the most are the US State Favorites, under the “Free Sites” tab, and the links to my mail & social networks under the “Connect” tab. I continually add sites and gadgets to it as I find things that I “need” on a regular basis, and I’d be happy to include websites that anyone else thinks would be important to include. You can leave me a note here, or I think you can even send me a message through the toolbar itself (under the “Hi” tab).

So thats the story on my toolbar.