New facebook group for Clare genealogy

[cmdanhauer]

I joined the Clare Genealogy Facebook Group awhile back and am really enjoying it. I would definitely recommend trying out the Group, especially if you are already a Facebook user. There are 470 members currently with posts being made 24/7 given that the membership is worldwide. It’s a very engaged and engaging group. Given the limited records in Ireland, networking with fellow researchers is all the more important. I recently broke through two brickwalls with the help of researchers in this Group.
As to the “Closed” nature of the group, I actually prefer that format on Facebook. If a Group is “Open”, the posts you add show up on all your other “Friends’” walls like any other post. With a Closed Group, this doesn’t happen. The Group isn’t exclusive at all as you can easily request to join. I was actually added within a few hours.
While Facebook posts disappear into the history, you do have the ability to search historical posts using keywords. There is also a Filing system with Research Resources and other info that people want to share which I have found very helpful. The Clare Library site was one of the new resources I found. There is also a growing Surname listing with researcher email addresses.

[Paddy Casey]

See http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.4208v1.pdf and http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... us-disease which suggests that Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017. If this should come to pass I wonder what happens to genealogical data posted there.