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| Angel Delight |
Olympia teemed with genealogists...
many of them professional - offering research expertise to those tracing family histories. Enthusiasts crowded the vast hall and it hummed with purposeful pilgrimage. As you can see, I had fallen into a raspberry Angel Delight.I am impressed by how clued up these people are. Among the stalls offering research facilities there were sophisticated marketing niche stalls. Some offered bespoke kit for people who are archiving family history documents - sleeves, made of clever polythene which won't damage photographs or leach their chemicals out, for example. Some offered ... well I'm not sure how to describe them but they were quite computer-y looking and one was selling a handheld scanner the size of an iPhone that would enable you to come away from an archive visit with digitally scanned images of all the old documents you needed to prove your ancestor was Rob Roy or whatever.
Since then I've been struck by the interconnectedness of this network. Their websites are smart, they have Facebook pages and blogs and are on Twitter. The hashtag #wdytyalive was zinging with lively tweets.
So I was wondering which group is the more digital media enhanced - writers or genealogists?
One writer who leaps to mind as an icon for the coming age of digitisation of all we hold dear (goodbye, dusty tomes!) is Kate Pullinger. Her blog is essential reading for any writer who is happy to face the future digitally brave.
