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New system needs advance prep

If you’re one of the many who can’t arrange your schedule to attend any of the “summer camps for genealogists” — the week-long institutes in June and July offered by the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) in Georgia or the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) — you may be looking longingly at the winter version: the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) in January.

And the 2019 offerings are truly stellar, expanding to 15 courses in the regular SLIG program from January 13-18, 2019, and another five courses aimed at genealogical professionals — and professional wannabes — from January 21-25, 2019, both at the Salt Lake Hilton.

With that many options, there really is something for everybody.

Registration for 2019 courses opens Saturday, July 7th, at 9 a.m. Mountain time for the regular SLIG courses and at 2 p.m. Mountain time for the five professional-level SLIG Academy courses. Some of those courses — including, of course, the one you want — are bound to fill up in minutes.

With that in mind, here’s the rub. There’s a new registration system in use this year, and to use it, you’re going to need to set up a new “SLIG Registration” account set up in advance. Don’t wait until you’re ready to register on Saturday — if you do, the course you want may fill up while you’re still filling out forms.

SLIG 2019

The instructions on how to create this account can be found here on the SLIG/UGA blog, and there are other posts about login issues and changing your password if you need them.

But The Legal Genealogist can’t stress this enough: Don’t wait to register for this account until you’re ready to register for SLIG on Saturday!! If you do, the course you want may fill up while you’re still filling out forms. Read the SLIG Registration FAQ and be ready when registration opens for the course you want.

You can find a detailed description of all of the SLIG courses online at the Utah Genealogical Association website where the registration link will magically appear on Saturday. For the regular courses, the descriptions can be found here; for the SLIG Academy, the link is here. But when I say “something for everybody,” I mean it.

It won’t surprise you to know that one I personally recommend is called The Family History Law Library. Rick Sayre and I coordinate this course and we cover the basic legal concepts and legal research approaches for genealogists with a special emphasis on the resources available just down the street at the Family History Library. Warren Bittner and David Rencher join in, with their expertise on German and Irish law, and Claire Bettag on notarial records by remote, so we cover the waterfront: common law and civil law. We’d love to see you in class!

And there’s much more to choose from. Just to whet your appetite, here’s the 2019 course list:

Beside, Through, and Beyond the Golden Door: Immigrants to the United States After 1890
Coordinator: Rich Venezia

Metes & Bounds Land Platting
Coordinator: Gerald H. Smith, CG

Bridging the Gap: New England to the Midwest, 1780-1840
Coordinator: D. Joshua Taylor, MA, MLS

Researching New York: Resources and Strategies
Coordinator: Karen Mauer Jones, CG, FGBS

Advanced Southern Research and Resources
Coordinator: J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

1619-2019: Four Hundred Years of African American Genealogy
Coordinator: LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, JD, LLM, CG

Native American Research
Coordinator: Rick Fogarty

Gothic Script and Fraktur: Reading Records of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, and the Czech Republic, plus German-American Church Books and Newspapers
Coordinator: F. Warren Bittner, CG

Introduction to Genetic Genealogy
Coordinator: Paul Woodbury, MEd

A Practical Approach: Establishing Genealogical Proof with DNA
Coordinator: Karen Stanbary, MA, LCSW, CG

Researching Like A Professional
Coordinator: Michael G. Hait, CG, CGL

Burned Counties and More: Overcoming Destroyed, Missing or Non-Extant Records; Sources and Techniques/Methods
Coordinator: Kelvin L. Meyers

Advanced Genealogical Methods
Coordinator: Thomas W. Jones, PhD, CG, CGL, FASG, FUGA, FNGS

Writing a Quality Family Narrative
Coordinator: John Philip Colletta, PhD, FUGA

• And, just to repeat, The Family History Law Library
Coordinators: Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL, and Richard G. Sayre, CG, CGL, FUGA

Some of these courses will fill in a matter of moments. So you want to be ready to go at 9 a.m. Mountain time (11 a.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Central, 8 a.m. Pacific) to be sure you’ll get just the course you want.

For the professional SLIG Academy, the course offerings are:

The Art of Writing Client Reports
Coordinator: Angela Packer McGhie, CG

You’re Invited: Public Speaking from Concept to Delivery
Coordinator: D. Joshua Taylor, MA, MLS

Building and Nurturing a Successful Genealogy Business
Coordinator: Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG

DNA and the 21st-Century Professional
Coordinator: Angie Bush, MS

Developing and Managing an Effective Institute Course
Coordinator: J. Mark Lowe, CG, FUGA

Registration opens for these courses at 2 p.m. Mountain time (4 p.m. Eastern, 3 p.m. Central, 1 p.m. Pacific).

Registration is $575 ($525 for members of the Utah Genealogical Association and, yes, you can join and get the member discount but you’ll need to do that in advance too). Those attending the first regular SLIG session also get another $50 discount on a SLIG Academy course if they go on to another course in the second week. Room reservations at the Salt Lake Hilton should be handled through the UGA website to get a group discount. Special event registration will be handled later, independent of class registrations.

But remember first and foremost, you need to create that new registration account before registration opens. Don’t miss out because you’re still filling out forms.

See you in Salt Lake City!