Quebec’s National Genealogy Week began yesterday, and it continues until November 25, with dozens of organizations across the province holding more than 70 events and activities. Most of the activities are open houses, with a couple of presentations and book launches.
This is the sixth year the Quebec federation of genealogy societies, the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (FQSG), has organized Semaine nationale de la généalogie.
This year’s theme is J’exprime ma passion! — literally meaning, I express my passion — created to encourage genealogists to show their passion and explain what motivates people to explore their family history. The partners are the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, FamilySearch, and Normandin Restaurant.
Once again, not a single English-speaking genealogical society is participating, which is unfortunate for the Anglophone community. Then again, there are probably only two or three English-speaking societies in the province at the most, and it appears only one of them is a member of the federation.
Time to leave the 1980s
If the federation continues with National Genealogy Week next year, and it should, it needs to encourage organizations, such as genealogical and historical societies, libraries and archives, to mark the week with activities more in tune with the 21st century.
Right now, the activities are similar to what people likely held in the 1980s. Open houses, presentations, and book launches are good events, but these activities need to be supplemented with more modern-day initiatives to help shake off the image of genealogy being a hobby for old folks.
Next year, the FQSG needs to encourage societies and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec to include their local community, and reach beyond.
Societies and the Quebec Archives could expand their reach by holding webinars and making their members only database public for a couple of days or even the entire week.
National Genealogy Week should be the time for organizations to announce a new database, a new digitization project, and discounts on membership fees. The FQSG should ask the Drouin Genealogical Institute and Ancestry to participate with a discount on subscriptions to their websites.
Quebec societies, like genealogical societies around the world, need to engage more people in family history, and the National Genealogy Week can help them do that, provided they organize the right type of events and activities.
It’s time for the FQSG and societies to start looking at how the big genealogy companies promote their products and to use National Genealogy Week even more as the promotion platform.
In the meantime, you can complete the FQSG’s short survey, in French, about your interest in genealogy.
Well said Gail !
J’espère que quelqu’un à BAnQ lira votre texte de blog.
Merci, Denyse. C’est le temps pour la Fédération, BAnQ, et des sociétés généalogiques de profiter de cette semaine. Right now, everyone is just going through the motions, but not doing anything with significant impact, beyond a limited audience of genealogists.
I completely agree with you. There’s so much more that can be done to engage people. I’m limited in what I can do for my local library as our resources are limited – my Family History month event was a “How to use Ancestry Library Edition” presentation – it was well-attended and in the live demo following my powerpoint, we found records for a couple of attendees. Is this the kind of thing you’re thinking of?
Yes! Although challenging, I would also like the federation to explore ways to show the value of family history research and archival records — online and on site — to the community at large.
Yes – that makes sense. Hopefully someone will pass this column on to the Federation.
To me it seems the term “National Genealogy Week”, if it applies only to Francophones in Quebec, is misleadingly named. For such a limited group, the word “National” should be eliminated from the name of the event. Perhaps “Quebec” would be more appropriate.
In French, “national” has a different meaning than it does in English. At least, that is what my professors at Université Laval in Quebec City told me many moons ago. In French, “national” refers more to the sense of a nation of people, such as First Nations. A similar example is the June 24 holiday in Quebec, which is called the “Fête nationale.” At work, we Anglophones used to explain that we could not translate “Fête nationale” as “National holiday,” but as “Provincial holiday.”
Gail, thank you for this timely post. While our local society doesn’t need to struggle with the added challenge of addressing a bilingual component (at least not officially), we (here in California) have also been puzzling over that question: how to move our approach towards one befitting the 21st century.
In the next year, I hope to experiment more with partnerships–not just partnerships with genealogical organizations or businesses, but partnerships to expand our horizons by working with other organizations whose mission is complementary to ours. Thus, heritage associations, historical associations, groups interested in preserving their ethnic traditions and passing them down to their children all become potential partners with us.
While many seek to escalate their involvement with increased technological components, I believe we also need to explore ways to get people together over our common interests. Perhaps I’m seeking the antithesis to Bowling Alone and perhaps there is no way to buck the tide toward increasing solitude in the realm of family history. But something inside me says there is still that twinkle of “my eyes light up” when people get to talk about what they’ve discovered about their roots.
I’m hoping we can enter into a collective dialog on how we can tap into that inherent need to share our stories with each other. Surely, through the strength of crowdsourcing, we can come up with solutions that will not only benefit Quebec’s National Genealogy Week program, but ideas which we can import to our own local situations as well.
I like the way you think, Jacqui.
Thanks Gail for bringing Quebec’s National Genealogy Week to people’s attention in Quebec. I belong to about 4 Quebec genealogical societies (3 of them French) as well as 3 Quebec subscription websites. When I talk to many of my anglophone friends about genealogy, their eyes tend to glaze over, while all my francophone friends (or their family members) have traced their ancestors back to France. Most anglophones in Quebec don’t realize their communities offer a wealth of genealogical and historical information in their local societies or libraries, and even if the records are in French so many volunteers are ready to help them. For some reason, we tend not to be very good at marketing or publicizing our societies. And yes, a lot of people think our genealogical societies are rather stuffy and boring. (I just have to ask what my teenage grandkids think – then I really get an earful). I really hope the new Quebec Genealogical eSociety that will be launched next year, will blow away the cobwebs from the genealogy of the past and bring us into the future for years to come. A completely virtual and bilingual society offering webinars, message forums, online chats, access to over 250 Quebec resource links as well as posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I’ll take it upon myself to chat with the Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (FQSG) next year to ensure we have some anglophone initiatives as well as some 21st century initiatives!
I can see the Quebec Genealogical eSociety being an important player in next year’s genealogy week.