by Diane L. Richard, NCGS Journal Editor, journaleditor@ncgenealogy.org
1. Thank you to the several volunteers who stepped up to help with my inaugural issue as journal editor. I couldnt have done it without you. Go NCGS Journal team!
2. Do you want to join the NCGS Journal team? Most of what you need to know you can find on the NCGS website by selecting the Publications tab at the top of the page. The NCGS Journal Transcription Projects page (which can be found under the NCGS Journal option in the Publications drop-down menu) provides details about current projects. Available, in process, and recently completed projects are listed. You can volunteer by using the online volunteer form as instructed or send an e-mail to journaleditor@ncgenealogy.org. Just five or ten minutes of your time might unlock the door to someones family secret or remove a brick from a wall. You do not have to be an NCGS member to support the NCGS Journal team.
3. North Carolina has a rich history spanning over 100 counties (when you consider those no longer extant) and a few centuries. Documentary evidence of this history is stored in personal households, local/county/state-level repositories located in and out of the state, and any place where records can be found. Because of that, many personal archives might hold records that can benefit fellow researchers. You may provide copies of North Carolina-relevant records from your private collection or those copied from repositories beyond the North Carolina State Archives for others to abstract/transcribe for the Journal. Or consider writing a case study about your family. Your North Carolina family and their community was part of history.
4. What would you like to see in the NCGS Journal? Have the records of certain counties been neglected? Do you want to learn more about particular types of records? Is your interest in a specific time period? What how-to-topics would you like covered? The Journal aims to cover diverse topics in each issue to help all members, whether novice or expert, whether researching North Carolina ancestry or not, or whether striving to learn about records or research strategies and techniques to become a better genealogist. This is your journal. Drop an e-mail to journaleditor@ncgenealogy.org with your thoughts on future Journal content.