The Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa is extremely pleased to announce details about its 2010 Fall Seminar. The annual event will be held from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Saturday, September 18th, 2010, in Room 2708 of the Marshall Student Center on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Registration will begin at 8:15 AM. Our speaker will be Curt B. Witcher, the Senior Manager for Special Collections and the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is an internationally recognized genealogy expert, speaker, author, and researcher. Mr. Witcher's biographical information can be found below.Mr. Witcher will present a series of four lectures: Using Military Records for Genealogical Research; Using Church Records in Your Genealogical Research; Doing Effective Genealogical Research in Libraries; and Mining the Mother Lode: Using Periodical Literature for Genealogical Research.
Registration for the seminar is $35 for FGS members and $40 for non-members. If you join FGS in conjunction with registering for the seminar, you will be entitled to the Member rate of $35.00 and your membership will include the remainder of 2010 and all of 2011! You may access and print the membership application form at our web site at fgstampa.org. Simply complete the application and return it with your check for the amount of the membership and the Member conference registration rate.
There is plenty of parking adjacent to the Marshall Student Center. Attendees can purchase an all-day parking permit for $5 (Visa or MasterCard only; no cash) from permit vending machines located within the parking facilities. You may want to consider car-pooling with friends. A map of the USF Campus can be found at the FGS website in the right hand column under 2010 Fall Conference Documents. Driving directions from all over the Tampa Bay area and parking information will be posted on the FGS website soon.
There are a number of very good dining facilities offering a variety of menu options inside the Marshall Student Center and in adjacent buildings. These include sit-down and take-out facilities. There are outdoor tables adjacent to the Marshall Student Center for your enjoyment if you so choose. Lunch is on your own.
Please take the time to read Curt's biographical profile below. He is one of the luminaries of genealogy in our time, and the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa is very pleased and honored to have Curt B. Witcher as our speaker for this year's Fall Seminar.
We invite you to join us and bring all of your friends for what is guaranteed to be a superb day of genealogical presentations!
The registration form is available at http://tinyurl.com/FGS-Fall-Seminar. A map of the USF Campus is also available on our website, and detailed driving directions and parking instructions will be posted there soon.
Curt B. Witcher is the Senior Manager for Special Collections at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN, where he manages The Genealogy Center. He serves as general curator for that institution’s Rare and Fine Book Collection as well as the institutional archives, and is the Supervisor for the new Lincoln National Foundation’s Lincoln Library Collection. He received his B.A. in history and English, and his MLS in Library and Information Science, from Indiana University and has worked the Allen County Public Library for more than thirty years.
Curt is a member of the Genealogy Committee of the American Library Association, a past chair of the association’s History Section, and a participant in other genealogical and historical committees of that organization. His is currently the Vice President of Development for the Federation of Genealogical Societies. He is a former president of both the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society. He is the founding president of the Indiana Genealogical Society and has memberships in a number of historical and genealogical organizations in the state and country.
Curt participated in the 1990s in Indiana University's Continuing Education Program as an adjunct professor, teaching courses on beginning genealogical research. He is the co-editor of the 1987 through 2010 editions of the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), the largest and most comprehensive subject index to historical and genealogical periodical literature, published by the Allen County Public Library Foundation and ProQuest, Inc. He has served on the Advisory Board for Ancestry.com as well as on the FamilySearch Advisory Council of the Genealogical Society of Utah. From 2002 through 2006, Curt served on the review committee for The BYU Family Historian. He was a research consultant for both seasons of the PBS Series, Ancestors. He is currently the co-chair of the Genealogy Publications Committee of the Indiana Historical Society and a member of Indiana’s State Historical Records Advisory Board.
In addition to the more than five hundred record and methodology articles he has penned for local, state, and national genealogical periodicals, Curt authored in 2000 the book, African American Genealogy: A Bibliography and Guide to Sources. He served for eight years as the National Volunteer Data Input Coordinator for the “Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System,” building a free, online database that has basic information on the service records of 6.3 million Civil War soldiers that can be accessed at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss. Curt has chaired eight national genealogical conferences—four in Fort Wayne, two in St. Louis, and one each in Baltimore, MD and Richmond, VA.
Curt was distinguished in 1995 as a fellow of the Utah Genealogical Association (FUGA) and received the Federation of Genealogical Societies' highest honor, the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award, in 1997, and the Federation’s David Vogels Award in 1999. In 1997, he was one of the Kellogg Foundation's "Expert in Residence" scholars. He is the 2002 ALA-RUSA History Section Genealogical Publishing Company Award winner and in 2003 was honored by the Indiana Historical Society as that year’s Willard Heiss Memorial Lecturer. Curt was recognized in 2006 by being named the first fellow of the Indiana Genealogical Society. He was honored in May of 2007 with the National Genealogical Society’s P. William Filby Award for outstanding, lifetime contributions to genealogical librarianship.
