Colleen Robledo Greene, MLIS

This presentation demonstrates methods and tools for tackling two common predicaments when researching families of Mexican origin. First, distinguishing between people with the same names, living in the same place, at the same. And second, determining which compound given names and compound surnames to record in your source citations, online trees, and family narratives.

Familiarity with church and civil jurisdictions helps us make better sense of records we find for our Mexican ancestors, helps us know where to look for records that pertain to a particular place and time, and helps us trace evolving jurisdictional borders through time. Knowing where and how to find historical and background information about different Mexican localities helps you dig deeper into the lives of your ancestors. Learn about essential reference tools and strategies that will help you identify and learn more about the localities in which your ancestors lived and worked.

The HathiTrust Digital Library has undergone some big design changes since Colleen’s 2020 webinar. Find out how to navigate these changes while taking a tour of more invaluable types of genealogical sources you can find there.

You’ve recorded that video or audio interview, now what? This presentations builds on the best practices covered in Colleen’s part one webinar. We will explore ideas and tools for trimming out mistakes or sensitive content, and for adding a title screen and ending credits screen before sharing with others. We will also look at ways to enhance your recordings by weaving in relevant supporting visual imagery like photos, maps, and historical documents. Finally we will review options for generating full text transcriptions of your interviews.

This 20th century Mexican and Mexican-American case study showcases and weaves together different types of records available online, as well as those that need to be viewed at or requested from physical archives, and family interviews. It demonstrates the essential role that understanding historical context and customs plays in analyzing sources and building out a more comprehensive family history.

Family history interviews are invaluable sources for our genealogy research that can also be converted into meaningful keepsake gifts for family. Explore tips and free or inexpensive tools to use with your smartphone, tablet, or laptop to capture family interviews in-person or from afar via Zoom. Learn best practices for planning and directing your interviews.

Historical records and social history paint a rich picture of the lives of our Mexican ancestors who were in the U.S. after the mid-19th century. A new border, new laws, a violent revolution, two world wars, and changing economic and political conditions significantly impacted your Mexican ancestors who came to or were born in the United States. Sharing a border, and sharing a long common history in certain regions of the U.S. has presented situations unique to those of Mexican descent compared to other immigrant and ethnic groups.

We pour a lot of time, money, and soul into our family history research. So, we want to make sure we are tracing the right people and families in the right place at any given time, and that we glean all possible information and clues from the records. This presentation reviews social and cultural customs, and tools for learning about jurisdictions and key terminology. It is suitable for those still new to Mexican genealogy as well as more experienced researchers.

Canva is a freemium model cloud-based graphic design app that allows even the most design-challenged genealogist to create attractive digital and print products. Colleen uses it frequently to create visuals for my blogs, social media posts, videos and reports, and for family celebrations. We will walk through navigating around the browser interface and features, review the various design libraries, and demonstrate some of her regular design use cases. We will also discuss free personal Canva, premium Canva Pro, and Canva’s Nonprofits program for your society.

Did your Mexican ancestors immigrate to the United States in the 20th century? This period of history witnessed significant waves of Mexican immigration to the U.S., both permanent and temporary. The types of immigration records introduced or refined during this era, provide a wealth of information.

Mexico implemented federal registration of births, marriages, and deaths in the 1860s. These records are packed with genealogical information about your ancestors. This presentation will help you make the most of understanding and analyzing these records.

Spanish colonial and Mexican Catholic parish registers are rich in genealogical information. This session will discuss the laws, customs, and significance of these particular Catholic records that essentially "bookend" the life of your ancestors; as well as where to find and how to analyze them.

Do you use Zotero as your research management system? This next-step video tutorial will explain and demonstrate three ways that Zotero can be used to craft, organize, and export your source citations and reference lists.

Learn how to use Snagit's Scrolling Capture and Panoramic Capture features to generate and annotate screenshots of those hard-to-fit web pages and documents.

Keeping track of and organizing our research materials can be overwhelming. Genealogists use a wide variety of sources and reference tools to discover and dig deeper into our family history: historical records, books and periodicals, photos, maps, videos, articles and web pages, reports, databases, digital archives, etc. Zotero is...

This lecture provides an overview of the key record collections available online to research your Mexican and Mexican-American ancestors.

These records are often described as the best family history records in the world due to the wealth of genealogical information typically included in these records. Learn how to find and analyze Mexico civil and church registration collections to build out your Mexican family history. Even a non-Spanish speaker can…

This robust digital repository, underutilized by many genealogists, is packed with digitized publications from academic and research institutions that are relevant to your family history. This lecture walks you through HathiTrust’s discovery and access tools, showcases U.S. and international collections that are particularly relevant to genealogists, and demonstrates search strategies…

Snagit is my go-to tool for capturing screenshots and converting those into compelling visual aids to enhance my family history narratives and genealogy instruction materials. It is particularly useful for creating annotated images and privatizing sensitive visual information before sharing or publishing. We will walk through navigating around the desktop…