We don’t know how long the CoronaVirus will keep us at home. It may be weeks before we can have meetings at the library again. While we may not be able to enjoy our monthly meetings anytime soon, that doesn’t mean we can’t get together to share some genealogy goodness.
How do we do that? We go digital. One free and easy way to do it is with Tumblr. If you are not familiar with Tumblr, it is part blog, part scrapbook, part photo album and part social network. It’s also a great way to share your family history with your family.
Tumblr supports text, photo, video and audio posts along with links to other sites. The social side of Tumblr makes it possible for people viewing your posts to leave comments. There’s even a chat feature where you and those following your Tumblr blog can share notes and ideas.
You aren’t limited to one blog either. Here is a post from my Creekside Tales blog. I also have moved my Moultrie Creek Gazette, Genealogy Toolbox and Storytellers Studio blogs to Tumblr now.
I do have one very useful Tumblr blog. My presentation for the North Florida Genealogy Conference – which never happened – was Affordable Research. In addition to the presentation and speaker notes, I also created a Tumblr blog to share even more information on affordable research resources. Here’s one example of the resources available to us at no cost.
Something else interesting. Some of these posts link to other Tumblr blogs. For example, the DigitalNC blog. I found they had a scrapbook collecting clippings about WWII service men and women from Allegheny, NC. It includes a link to an external site where you can look at the complete scrapbook.
To take advantage of all this genealogical goodness you will need to create a Tumblr account. It’s quite easy. The first step is to point your web browser to https://tumblr.com. A screen similar to the one below appears. Click the Sign up button in the top right corner. Tumblr will walk you through the sign up process and give you a tour showing you how Tumblr works.
When you are ready. Use the search box at the top left side of the screen to search for Affordable Research. A box appears with options for following Affordable Research. Choose the one listed under BLOGS. Now you have access to the Affordable Research blog and each time a new post is added to that blog, a copy will be added to your Tumblr blog. If you don’t like a post, you can remove it from your blog.
There are a number of family historians using Tumblr to share their research with family and genea-friends. Just enter “genealogy” in the search box and you will be amazed to see how many are using Tumblr. You can easily follow other bloggers. When the person you are following publishes a new post, a copy will also appear on your blog.
I do recommend you follow the genealogytoolbox blog (https://genealogytoolbox.tumblr.com). In addition to research tips and resources, I also post Tumblr tips and ideas regularly.
Tumblr is free and easy to use. It gives our society members a way to stay connected and continue our research efforts from home.
Stay safe and keep hunting those elusive ancestors.
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