Genealogy Events Online

As the Corona Virus pandemic shuts down so much across the globe and most of us are staying pretty close to home, more and more genealogy events that would have been held locally are now going online.  That means there are more and more talks, seminars, conferences and training sessions held around the world that we can attend online from the comfort and safety of home.  While for me attending online cannot beat personally attending these events - the chatting, the networking, the sharing ideas with other attendees - it does give me the chance to virtually participate in events I never could have traveled to in person.

Its really worth your time to look around at what is available.  Gould Genealogy has a list of online genealogy events on their homepage.  The Virtual Genealogical Association is completely online and offers a number of talks and presentations each month.  FamilySearch continues to offer a range of online classes and tutorials.  Legacy Family Tree is offering several webinars free each month.  And there are many more.

A number of research facilities are offering special or free access.  The UK National Archives has announced in April that it was offering free access to its digital records for as long as it remains closed to the public during the Coronavirus pandemic.  How much longer that access will remain free is unknown, but it has certainly been a boon to many who have been researching from home in the past few months. 
Ancestry recently announced that home access the Ancestry Library Edition for patrons of subscribing libraries will continue until 31 July.  The Family History Show made the move to host their annual conference online to replace the family history events closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.  The Family History Show Online took place in late June.  There are many more, from single talks to genealogy society meetings to major conferences, that have made the move to online in order to keep functioning.

Virtual tours of many cultural institutions have sprung up as well.  The British Museum is allowing virtual visitors to search the collection online to view specific objects or find out more about individual galleries. 
The Hermitage Museum announced they were preparing a large quantity of broadcasts to view on their YouTube and Instagram channels. So far they are only in Russian, but in the near future they plan to begin broadcasting in other languages too – English, Italian and more.  The Smithsonian Open Access applies to digital assets that are created, stored, or maintained by the Smithsonian. This might include text, still images, sound recordings, research datasets, 3D models, collections data, and more.

As the pandemic changes the way we live, genealogy has changed with it, and the way we research, learn and interact with fellow genealogists changes too.  For those who often miss out on conferences because of the cost of travel and demands of work and family, the increase of online participation may even prove an advantage in many ways.

So keep an eye on what is available online and check out some of the talks, seminars and conferences that are out there.  Happy researching.