BACGG Family,
Undoubtedly, 2021 will go down in the books as “challenging”, but with your support, BACGG persevered, growing its paid membership by 57% over 2020. We humbly started just as a San Francisco Bay Area bound organization, but today 20% of our members hail from Hawaii to New York. Welcome! Thank you all for standing up and saying preserving your family history is precious, and BACGG is an important resource.
BACGG will continue to work hard in 2022 to earn your support and $25 annual membership to share, socialize and educate genealogical successes and challenges. Here are some of our member only benefits planned for the first few months of 2022 (with more to come!):
March 23 We Go Live. Barring unforeseen COVID issues, we will resume our live quarterly meetings in a 250 seat facility to accommodate social distancing at the Family History Center (FHC) in Oakland. Our keynote speaker will be David Lei, on Chinese Lion Dancing, in celebration of the Chinese New Year. Save the date: March 23, 2022. Details to come.
March 23 Hosted Potluck. A highlight of each meeting is our Potluck to laugh and learn on a 1:1 basis. At our first live meeting in celebration of the Chinese New Year of the Tiger, at the FHC, we will host a feast of fried chicken, chow mein and other goodies, in addition to members bringing a dish to make our already great potlucks, grand!
Chinese American Historical Museum Field Trip. Partnering with the Chinese Historical and Cultural Project, aka Ng Shing Gung Museum in San Jose, members will enjoy a special lecture, museum tour, and brown bag picnic.
Meeting Session with Russell Low, author of 3 Coins and the new All American Crew at the FHC.
1950 US Census – Revealed, with Grant Din. The 1950 US Census will be made available this year for appropriately 150 million Americans. Grant will look at the 1950 census, with Chinese genealogist eyes, and share with you how to research your family history.
FHC Research Resources. BACGG meetings are held at the FHC. Right after the potluck you have access to over a dozen free genealogy research databases, and photo, film and negative scanners at no charge. You can even reserve a docent to help do online research! This is the perfect genealogy trifecta – Learn, Lunch, and Library.
Member Only Lectures. Our live lectures and workshops will either be Members only, or members get preferred access to limited seating live sessions. For out of state members, we will simulcast our live sessions. Here are just a few of our 2021 sessions to review.
Chinese New Year of the Ox by Rosemary Gong
Cookbook by Jeanne Young and friends.
Family Tree by Doug Joe. Confession Program by Jeannie Young.
- West Against East – Chinese Medicine by Calvin Fong.
BACGG Website and Knowledge Pool. Our website (bacgg.org) is packed full of Chinese American community news, webinars, genealogy research and technical tips, but most of all, the ability to tap into a deep pool of Chinese Genealogists to provide guidance on your roadblocks.
Thank you for your continued membership, or attending BACGG events. To become a 2022 BACGG Member, and complete a short survey to help us keep focused on your genealogy goals, please click below and join us!
YES, I want to become a 2022 Bay Area Chinese Genealogy Group Member for $25
Best wishes to you and yours in the new year.
Ron Chan 陳光宗, Founder and Executive Director, bacgg.ron@gmail.com
Bruce Chin (陳昌浩),Gail Chong (張瑞貞), Alvin Huie, Doug Joe (周守衡),Leona Lau (劉陳彭李), Allan Low ( 劉啟信), Jeannie Young ( 江容娣), Planning Committee
We return to CA on May 25, 2022.
Hope we can join you this summer for some “live” meetings.
Warm regards,
Eliz & Joe
I HAVE 186 PAGES OF MY FATHER’S RECORDS THAT I RETRIEVED FROM THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES AT SAN FRANCISCO LOCATED IN SAN BRUNO CA. I’M FINISHED GOING THROUGH THE INFORMATION BUT DON’T KNOW THE BEST WAY TO PRESERVE THE INFORMATION (186 PAGES OF TEXT & PHOTOS). WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND? DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION PRESERVE INFORMATION FOR FUTURE GENERATION? THANKS FOR SUGGESTIONS. KATE
Hi Kate,
If the records have not already been scanned, I would do so. If you do not have a scanner, then I suggest you go to your local Mormon Temple, Family History Center, and check if they have scanners to use at that specific location. The Oakland facility where BACGG has our meetings have both flatbed and auto feed photo printers. If you do not know how to scan, then make an appointment and request that a docent be available to get you started.
Just a few tips ..
1. You can either scan as a jpeg, or pdf. My suggestion is PDF as you can combine all the individual scans, and then use Adobe Acrobat Professional or Standard to make the document searchable. That way you can search on keywords rather than have to read individual files.
2. Any documents that have photos, scan just the photo at least in 300 dpi (600 dpi of the image is small) as a jpeg. This way you can insert them into your family history document.
3. Where there are signatures, in both Chinese and English for the subject you are researching, scan just the signatures at minimum 600 dpi, so you can capture this information. The Chinese signature is especially important as then you can get the correct characters. Having the actual handwriting of your ancestor is genealogy gold.
4. I would use the auto-feed scanner to process the 186 pages. It only takes a few seconds per page so you can be done fairly quickly. Use the flatbed scanner to capture signature and Chinese characters.
5. I wrote a document on this resource page on scanning negatives and slides, take a look at this just as an FYI for future projects….https://bacgg.org/index.php/1245-2/
6. Thanks for offering your documents, but we do not have a library to achieve, however, the Family History Center may be interested. Once you have the scans, you no longer need the physical documents.
If your not already a member of BACGG, feel free to join us to tap into the vast wealth of genealogy knowledge of the group. It is only $25 a year…to be invited to member only events.
\ron
PS
There are plenty of free OCR (optical character recognition) online software tools, so you do not have to purchase software.