Hello, friends!
I know I’ve disappeared in the past few months. I want to give an update on what I’ve been doing. Right at the same time as RootsTech in March, I happened into a new position in the genealogy world. I’m now serving as the director for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, or SLIG.
SLIG started out 30 years ago as a week-long advanced educational intensive, held in Salt Lake City with research opportunities at the Family History Library. Well, since then more things have changed than just the name of the library.
Fast forward to the present: SLIG now consists of three sessions of remote, advanced knowledge and skill building courses. Each course includes 20 separate classes. Themes vary from research skills to specific regions/countries to distinct record types. In January, the courses run for a full week, with classes from 8am-4pm each day. In the Spring and Fall we have courses that run for one day a week for multiple weeks. While the in-person experience brought human connection and access to the FamilySearch Library, the lower cost of the experience and ease of learning in your own home makes this opportunity available to so many more people.
So what do I do as the director? So far it’s been a little bit of everything. SLIG is a branch of the Utah Genealogical Association (UGA), and our organizations have just launched a new website. It’s been a lot of work getting the website up and running and ready for course registration. I mainly work with the course coordinators and their faculty, as well as the volunteer SLIG committee, to make certain that all the pieces of the institute come together. We have so many smart and capable people running the back end of this program.
The transition into this position has been so much work! I haven’t been doing much in terms of traditional genealogy. What I like about this position is that it plays to many of my other personal strengths. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know more of the leaders in the genealogy world. We hit a big milestone on Saturday when our registration system opened for Fall classes. You can check out what we have available here.
If there are topics you would love to learn about, feel free to reach out. We have a fun Scandinavian course that will be held in January. I’m one of the instructors, so you can learn from me while eating your favorite snack and wearing your sweat pants during one of the cold, gray winter weeks.
I hope to get back to research soon as my SLIG load lightens for the summer. I also hope that research is going well for all of you!
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