Paying it forward with travel photos

Many of our holidays are not geneajourneys but, because of my interest in dead people and cemeteries, I often take photos of cemeteries we pass. When we are cruising some of the organised tours on offer take us to historic cemeteries, I take many images including some headstone pictures during these visits.

Headstone in Broken Hill

I find these images so useful to illustrate my blog and social media posts but recently I have found another use for my pictures that may help other genies and researchers.

Monument in Old Drift Cemetery, Zambia 

Ever since a presentation by Marion Burk Wood at the last THE Genealogy Show event I have taken a renewed interest in FindaGrave. As my photo collection is indexed with lots of keywords I can easily access images of cemeteries and headstones using those terms. 

It has given me great pleasure to add to FindaGrave headstone images not related to my close family from cemeteries in Australia, France, Ireland, The Phillipines, UK, US and Zambia and I have yet more to add. Hopefully some of the relatives of these people will benefit from seeing images of their loved ones final resting places.

Headstone from Tyne Cot, Belgium

I've also been able to add general photos of several cemeteries to the Cemetery Entries on FindaGrave.

Perhaps you have been doing this already but I only recently thought of it. It's another way we genies can "Pay it Forward" for all the value we have received from the work of other volunteers.

Trove Tuesday - Doing my bit as a VolunTrove

As I believe in "paying it forward" I have been a VolunTrove since 2009. Around February this year the Trove  team coined this phrase for those volunteers in the Trove community who undertake what they call #TroveHomework ie participating in activities that add value to our amazing national resource, Trove . As well as those who correct text in the newspaper zone of Trove  VolunTroves  can make virtual collections by tagging items and creating lists on various topics.

Although I have been correcting text for over ten years I have not made the enormous contribution of those Hall o' fame  text correctors who have each corrected millions of lines of text. My contribution is but a drop in the ocean...but the ocean is made up of many drops!

I am classed as an "elderly at risk person" for the current Covid-19 Pandemic so I am practising Social Isolation  by self isolating at home.  This means that I have a lot of time on my hands. Of course, as I am a genealogy tragic, I will always have something to amuse myself.

Earlier this month I opened my Trove User Profile to check on my text correction status. 

My text correction tally is not too impressive. I have managed between 0 and  552 corrected lines per month since 2009 until February 2020. Nothing to gloat about!

I have made a commitment to be a good VolunTrove during my isolation and commit to correcting more lines per month. To date March 2020 has been my best month yet; as of this morning I have corrected 753 lines of text in March. That places me at position 2930 in the Hall o' fame table. I aim to improve on that.

I am concentrating on correcting articles relating to persons in my family tree. However, when I am in a Family Notices section, I correct some of the entries neighbouring those of my ancestors. I am also tagging entries with ancestors' names and creating lists for descendants of my first ancestors to arrive in Australia eg Descendants of Elizabeth Phipps. 

Please consider joining me as an active VolunTrove during your period of isolation.