Saturday Night Fun What Sort of a Genealogist Am I.

Thomas MacEntee wrote Careers in Genealogy -- a 2012 Update three years ago.  Jill Ball referred to it this week in her post,  What Sort of Genealogist Am I?  

1)  For SNGF this week, please answer the question - What Sort of Genealogist Am I? - using Thomas's categories (or make up one or more of your own).  Provide some career background if you want.

2)  Share your answers with us in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post,

Well I started in 1990 with a family reunion, where one of my dad's first cousin was a volunteer at a Family History Center and had done some research on our Hansen family back into Denmark, so after the reunion my sister and I took a beginning genealogy class at our community college. I joined Prodigy soon after that and worked up to being a mem-rep (Member Representative) before Prodigy folded due to Y2K.

So which of Thomas MacEntee's "genealogy career" categories do I fit into?

1)  Researcher.  In 1998 I applied for the research job at Eastern Washington Genealogical Society and still hold that volunteer position. About 2004 I was asked by the Spokane County Auditor to volunteer doing research for the county auditors office. That mostly ended in 2012 when most of the records went online, but a few are still not online so I do get there once in a while.

2)  Author.  Well, maybe.  After Prodigy closed a group of Prodigy genealogists moved to RootsWeb and had a message board there, chats and a monthly genealogical article. I was the only mem rep to continue and so I wrote that article. That ended a few months ago. The editor of our genealogical society was always asking for articles, and I wrote several for our Bulletin and still do one once in a while. I also write the genealogy article for the Clan Forsyth Newsletter. I am also a blogger with two of my own blogs and part of the team for the EWGS and Washington State Genealogical Society blogs.


 
3)  Educator.  Probably not, unless someone learns from one of my articles.

 
4)  Curator.  Nope

5)  Librarian.   In 1993 I volunteered in the library as a gene helper, as part of #1 above I still do a lot of research at the library. In 2000 the library started cutting hours due to budget cuts and so I started going to the library board meetings, been to more than any of the current library board members. I did apply three time to be a library board member and was never selected, so I just go to the meetings and as the only member of the public I get to give my opinion at the meetings.

6)  Analyst. I have Google Analytic s for the 4 blogs I write for so get to see statistics on who comes to each of the blogs.

7)  Marketer.  Nope.

8)  Retailer.   Nope.

9) Indexer  Started indexing for the Washington State Digital Archives in 2004, and continue to do that today. Sure changed from when I started. Then they sent a paper copy of the record to be indexed, and we sent the index back on a floppy disk, today we use a split screen, record on left and fields to fill in on right. Family Search started using volunteers after visiting the Digital Archives and seeing what volunteers have done for our Digital Archives.