ISBGFH British Institute 2021 - Tracing Your Irish Family History

News of a big event for me this year, which I hope you might come along to!

Last year I was supposed to be travelling to Salt Lake City to deliver a week long lecture programme on Irish genealogy, as part of the annual British Institute run by the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History. The event, due to be held in October, would have comprised of twenty hours of taught content across ten sessions (2 x 2 hour sessions per day), and I would have come back to Scotland with a glorious tan and a great new accent. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the full event for 2020 had to be dramatically scaled back to a smaller online programme, which was a great deal of fun but condensed to a delivery of four 90 minute long topics.

Well it's now 2021, and Covid still has a grip on us all, but I am delighted to say that whilst I am still unable to get over to Utah, this year the ISBGFH's British Institute will be run at full length, with yours truly delivering on 20 hours of Irish content entirely online, in a programme series entitled Tracing Your Irish Family History, from 11-15 October 2021. In addition, there are further options to listen to 20 hours of content from Paul Milner on English genealogy, and similar from Bruce Durie on Scotland, and Darris Williams on Wales.

Here's the official event description from the site (https://www.isbgfh.com/BRITISH-INSTITUTE):

WELCOME

The International Society for British Genealogy and Family History (ISBGFH) welcomes you to the virtual British Institute (BI). This year’s institute focuses on Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales.  The British Institute is open to ISBGFH members and non-members alike.

We all recognize that COVID-19 changed businesses. Genealogy is no exception.  If we want to continue and grow, we need to change, modify, and adapt.  Our instructors plan to offer you tools to help you do just that.

To cause the least disruption, the BI is using the virtual setting via ZOOM and coming to you in four courses–five days each in Mid-October. During this time, we will gather to learn, share, and enjoy the history of our ancestry!

While we encourage you to take advantage of all four courses, we are offering different options to fit your schedule and interests. Attend one course LIVE each week (11-15 October, and 18-22 October) or all four by accessing the recordings.

MEMBERSHIP

If you are not a member of ISBGFH, you may wish to consider joining. A yearly membership is only $25 USD, and the benefits of membership include our British Connections quarterly plus full access through the website to the British Connections archive dating back to 2000. If that isn't enough - you also get access to recordings of our Winter Webinar Series including handouts.

For the grand membership benefit, you qualify for discounts to our British Institute. Since COVID has shut down in-person events in Salt Lake City, BI has gone virtual and each course will be recorded for those who are registered. Each Institute course also has a robust syllabus that is a great source of information and references for you to view and review.

We highly recommend that if you choose to become a member of ISBGFH, that you purchase your membership and wait until you receive your confirmation email with log in information before registering to attend BI. This guarantees receiving membership discounts.  


And here's a description of the basic event structure:

 

I'm still pulling together the full programme, but to give an idea of what was originally planned (which I won't deviate too far from!), I gave a live talk session early last year offering the proposed overview for the 2020 event, which should give you an idea of some of the content that will be available. You can watch this below (or at https://youtu.be/yFK90UrmZMk):

There will be some minor tweaks to my original plans to allow for more online research (rather than at the Family History Library in SLC, which was the original plan) whilst we carry on through the pandemic.

Registration is now open at https://www.isbgfh.com/event-4293293 - the event should be great craic (a lot of fun), as I like to be serious in what I do, but not always in how I do it!

I hope to maybe see you there!

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.