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Stellar line-up for a stellar institute

Saturday, February 24, is another you-snooze-you-lose day for genealogical education, and this is one you definitely don’t want to miss.

Registration opens at 1 p.m. Eastern time for the 2018 Genealogical Institute on Federal Records (Gen-Fed) — and if past years are any indication, every available seat in the class will be taken within minutes.

Gen-Fed offers an unparalleled opportunity to spend a week at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C., learning the ins and outs of federal records research at both Archives I in downtown Washington and Archives II in College Park, Maryland. It’ll be held Monday, July 16 through Friday, July 20, 2018, kicking off with a required evening orientation on Sunday, July 15, and adding an optional research day at the DAR Library on Saturday, July 21.

Tuition is $500.00 and includes the one-week course, day and optional evening sessions, a printed syllabus, and lunch on Monday, July 16. Hotel costs are over and above, and a block of rooms has been reserved at the Holiday Inn Capitol at 550 C Street SW at a cost of $175 (plus tax) per night. (Room sharing is the way to go to keep costs down and Gen-Fed helps with sharing arrangements.)

So… why Gen-Fed? Because it’s the one time you will ever have a chance to learn about researching at the National Archives from real experts — including NARA archivists — and then immediately put what you’re learning into action, pulling records and holding your own family’s archival treasures in your hands. Topics range from military, land, and immigration records, traditional staples of the institute, to Native and African American records, and records from all three branches of governments will be studied during the institute—legislative, executive, and judicial.

The Legal Genealogist will be there, presenting on federal court records and on the scope of NARA records available for almost all American families, and you want to be there too.

Why? Because Gen-Fed is one of the very best offerings in genealogical education that can be found. With a history extending back to 1950, with its singular focus on federal records, with its hands-on opportunities to touch and feel and handle real records for our own families, with its stellar leadership team (director Malissa Ruffner, JD, CG, and assistant director Deborah Hoffman) and a stellar line-up of instructors, this is an institute every genealogist needs to attend — and more than a few attend more than once.

So head over to the Gen-Fed website, and read the registration info on the registration page thoroughly and carefully, before 1 p.m. on Saturday. There are some things you can do in advance to be ready to move ahead in the registration process, and you definitely want to be able to move ahead: (a) space is always very limited; (b) demand is always very high; and (c) demand is likely to be even higher this year because of the rave reviews from 2017 attendees.

In other words, you-snooze-you-lose.

So… mark your calendar. Saturday. February 24, 2017. 1 p.m. Eastern standard time.

Be there, and I’ll see you in July.

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