Two more courses completed

I’ve just finished up the coursework and exams for two more National Institute for Genealogical Studies courses. They were “Social Media for the Wise Genealogist” and “Australia: Births, Deaths and Marriages”.

I signed up for the social media course when it was offered for free. I picked up a bit from the course, not a huge amount, but then I am fairly well immersed in various kinds of social media for genealogy already. It would be a good course to give an overview to someone starting out in genealogy, or in social media, an idea of the range of opportunities there are for online interaction and what you might gain from it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend all of the sites and services discussed in the course as the best in their class, but then there’s a lot of personal preference in that.

The Australia: Births, Deaths and Marriages course is for me part of the Australian certificate – basic level, which I signed up to after winning a hefty discount voucher as a door prize. It can also be taken as a stand-alone course. The reading material for this course (prepared by Kerry Farmer) was very thorough and will be an excellent reference. While I was familiar with birth, death and marriage sources for Victoria, I had only superficial knowledge of the other States. I will definitely refer to the course notes before heading too far into research in other States and Territories, if my research leads me that way, as there is a lot of variation in how this information can be accessed between States.

I found that doing two courses at once I had no concern about whether I could complete the work in time. However, I also found that by the end I was tired of the amount of writing involved and as a result cut back on blogging, writing to other researchers, twittering – anything text based! So, my apologies to the people I have neglected. Lesson learnt. In future I will only do one course at a time.