My take on the fourth in a week-long series of posts at GeneaBloggers entitled Genea-Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money).

How Do You Make Money in Genealogy? – most readers here at GeneaBloggers and at my other sites know that I am a pretty open and transparent guy when it comes to disclosing my material relationships with other genealogy vendors and organizations. Well, I am willing to spell out what I currently do in the genealogy field to try and make a buck.  I’m not going to give exact dollar figures (because you will be greatly disappointed, believe me), but I will be upfront about some current projects.  I’m hoping my colleagues might consider doing the same.

Hahahahahaha…

Seriously, though:

I have recently begun accepting clients.  I do not advertise currently and tend to be found through APG.  After speaking with a person at the the NERGC conference from BCG I am rather determined to take more clients, as I have time.  I am also looking into just assisting people in Western and Central New York for some practice (namely friends and family).  My 3-5 year goal is to make enough money doing research to pay off my and my husbands student loans prior to our retirement…

I have a couple affiliate links, that I have not made any money on yet.  Maybe someday:-)  The main goal for these is to pay for hosting fees.

I would love to start lecturing at genealogy societies and conferences, which would help to pay all of the conferences I [want to] attend.

The one thing I am now making money with is as a contracting archivist.  This combines my degree and my genealogical studies (I assist patrons searching for their family as one job task).  This is providing me with a lot of experience and opportunities.  I look forward to continuing with this far into the future.

On Thursday at NERGC I attended the Librarians’ and Teachers’ Day.  These types of events are always very useful to me both as a genealogist and as a librarian/archivist.  It also counted as 5 hours of continuing education credit.

The first session was Kathleen M. Reilly of the Berkshire Athenaeum’s Local History Department, discussing Strategies for Making Archival Records Accessible to Genealogists.

Accessibility is one of my main issues as a librarian and archivist.  As a researcher in Western New York, I understand the problems faced by low to no accessibility of records.

The Berkshire Athenaeum’s Local History Department was able to make their records easily accessible during a recent remodel.  One of my favorite changes they made were putting all vital records together, rather than by location.  Considering the constant change of towns and counties, this makes research much easier.  They also have movable stacks and put the vital records and cemetery records on the ends, so that they are always available.

The overall message was to find ways to preserve your collection while making it more available.  This includes microfilming many of their collections, in addition to some digitization.  They also photocopy items such as scrapbooks, to make them available for use.  There are also many indexing projects and finding aid creation in progress.

Throughout my time working in Archives, it has never ceased to amaze me the damage that items such as paper clips, rubber bands, staples, sealing wax and, my personal favorite, the straight pin, can do to paper.  Rips, tears, rust marks, discoloration and other problems occur due to how papers are held together.  This makes preservation difficult and can even mean being unable to read documents or parts of documents, due to the damage caused.

What can you do with your documents instead?

• Purchase archival supplies from a company such as Gaylord Brothers.  These plastic clips work the same as metal, but will not harm your documents.  Folders are also an easy way to keep documents organized.
• Put documents in archival safe page protectors, such as those recommended by Dear Myrtle in her organizational checklist.
• Read Sally J.’s Practical Archivist blog for information on proper archival practices of photographs.

I recently started my internship at the Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York.  My job was to create a website for them so that researchers know what information they hold.  You can see it here.  Now that it is nearly finished, I will assist with other projects they have.

It is amazing to hold the parish registers from the 1800s in my hands.  As a genealogist, I tend to use microfilms from the Family History Center, so to see the original, even without a connection to my family, is still thrilling.  The more I work in archives relating to genealogy and history, the more I want to do this for a living.

Our final project for my Introduction to Library and Information Professions class was to present a poster on the pros and cons of a subject of our choosing, along with creating a handout. Our poster was on NARA partnering with private firms to digitize records.