Kelowna District Genealogy Conference Day 1 - Fri, 28 Sep 2018

It was a good day at #kdgs2018 here in Kelowna, B.C. The venue during the day was the beautiful Kelowna district library downtown.

The second floor of the library contains two full rows of shelves that are the reference materials belonging to the Kelowna District Genealogical Society. I’m sure there are others, but this is the first library that I’ve heard of that is allowing its local genealogical society to have its home in the library. Conference organizer Claire Smith-Burns explained to me how they worked hard to get this cooperation and the results seem amazing, with the resources of the library and the genealogical society working together for the benefit of both.

The library is very proud of its Innovation Library who have been working hard to make valuable genealogical materials available online to genealogists. Here, several of us are being given a tour of the services available.

I waved through the glass to Helen Smith, who along with Blaine Bettinger was giving individual help to people with DNA questions.

Then it was down to the main floor of this beautiful library…

… where I enjoyed three talks. First was Kelowna local genealogist and Eastern European expert Xenia Stanford with “Advance Your Eastern European Research with a Baker’s Dozen of Unusual Sources.”

Next I heard Cyndi Ingle: “Be Your Own Digital Archivist – Preserve Your Research”

Helen Smith ended the afternoon with “Newspapers,: Bringing Your Family History to Life”.

The room could seat about 60 and it was full for each talk. Andrea Lister was giving computer labs in another room on searching, Microsoft Word, and PowerPoint.

In the evening, we all headed over to the LDS church. We first had a meet and greet. Then we headed into the chapel. Our group filled it up. There must have been 200 of us.

Claire Smith-Burns introduced all the speakers in alphabetical order, and each of us listed off our top four surnames and places we are researching. Here’s Geoff Doherty providing his interesting ancestors.

And Dave Obee amusing us with his ancestor’s adventures.

Blaine Bettinger closed if off with his keynote address entitled “The Stories behind the segments.”

Looking forward to day 2 tomorrow.