In the recent National Genealogical Society's (NGS) magazine there is an article which really caught my eye. It was the President's message and she suggested that if you can't get to a conference or if you want to hear a lecture, why not purchase a copy of the lecture on a CD. However, I think the price is pretty steep at $12 per CD. Reading her article reminded me of the NGS conference I attended in Providence, Rhode Island in 2000. There were many lectures I missed, because I was attending another one at the same time. So, I ordered a set of 12 cassettes for about $99 and came home with the neat package of recorded lectures I chose. It took a good year or two before I ever opened it up to listen to the first cassette. And it was probably because of a long distance road trip we were on. As my husband and I casually listened to one, the speaker mentioned my ancestor! I almost died, and when I got home, I emailed her to see if my ancestor was related to her. The lecturer was Brenda Dougall Merriman, the topic was "The World's Friendliest Border, 1766 - 1866." She replied back, and no, we weren't related, darn. What she was discussing in the lecture were some of the Canadian records, one being my ancestor's Declaration of Aliens, 1794.
The tapes and now CDs can prove to be educational as well as surprising. But what if you can't afford $12 per CD?
I was aware that the New England Historical Genealogical Library (NEHGS) houses the syllabus for each year the NGS had a national conference. I think most people would love to attend an annual conference, but due to other constraints, they just can't. Well, I can't afford $12 for each lecture, especially if I want to hear a lot of them. The other day, while at NEHGS, I did the next best thing, I copied the lecture pages in the syllabus, five lectures to read about, four from a very well known speaker. Total cost about $3.50.
I still have the syllabus to the 2000 conference lecture, mentioned above. However, if I hadn’t heard the lecture I wouldn’t have known that my ancestor, Andries Ten Eyck was mentioned. So, it pays to hear the lecture, but if you just can’t swing the $12, then try to copy some of the syllabus pages.