Proposal for a couple of teams for Project Denmark

Question

Recently, I've been learning quite a bit about what some other projects have been doing, including many projects which use teams to help get their members involved in working together.  So many of them seem like excellent ideas that we need to make some choices on where to start.

One idea that is working well in a number of other projects is an introductory team that teaches members how to use sources of particular interest to the project.  The England Project seems to have started this with their Orphan Trail team.

Most project seem to do this by having a new member on the team work through searching for specific sources to go with a profile that has been orphaned (has no profile manager). A more experienced member of the project serves as a mentor during the process.  After finding the sources, the new member writes at least a basic biography for the profile using the sources found.

To do this, we would need at least three things:

1) someone to coordinate the work of the team

2) some instructional materials on how to use major research tools for Denmark, and 

3) some people willing to serve as mentors.

As a first step in looking at the feasibility of this idea, I created some categories to hold orphaned profiles that looked to me to have enough information in them to be good candidates for finding associated

i) church records - Category: Denmark PIT - Church Records

ii) census records - Category: Denmark PIT - Census.

PIT in these category names stands for Profile Improvement Team so that once new members are familiar with how to use the major sources, they could volunteer to work on improving some profiles (including their own families) in areas like adding sources, adding categories (especially sogne categories and maintenance categories indicating what additional work is needed), and adding biographies.

I'm guessing we could find already developed materials that introduce new users to searching for Danish Church Records and Danish Census records.

So what we would need the most to get this started is an idea of who would be interested in helping mentor new researchers and who would be interested in going through the learning process and then working on improving some profiles.  And don't forget, we will also need a volunteer to shepherd this new team.

So who is interested?

Mary Jensen

Project Denmark coordinator

Comments

If this works out, I have dreams of one day adding a section to this team on helping people learn to research the link that jumps the border - how to research emigration from Denmark to another country.  I know we have a lot of people who know their ancestors are Danish but don't have the information yet to connect their family to their ancestors in Denmark.

Answer 1

What about ancestors from sweden and norway who moved to denmark?

Could you perhaps have a team to look into the swdeish and other scandinavian records?

My uncle was the son of Danish immigrants except that his dad was Danish and his mom was from Sweden!!

This is just a suggestion - not an immediate need, but still - my 2 pennies worth!! LOL

Comments

It would depend upon whether there were mentors with knowledge to mentor others in that area.  There is a Sweden Project, so perhaps you could find someone in that project with the necessary Sweden knowledge to work on such a path with you.

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Robynne, the best you can do is to ask in the G2G forum and tag your question with Sweden. Then you will get the attention of all those who follow that tag, even those that might not be part of Sweden Project. 

In the meantime you might find something helpful in the category for Swedish Genealogy Resources, 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Sweden_Genealogy_Resources 

The Swedish National Archive is now free to use for all and that is one of the sub-categories of said category above.

Maggie Andersson, co-leader Sweden Project

Answer 2

I'm interested.

Most of my ancestors are from Denmark. I have a lot of experience looking through Danish references. I'm no expert however, and would love to learn more while getting work done.

Thanks!

Comments

Susan,

You don't need to be an expert to mentor someone who is new to Danish resources.  In fact, from my own experience I'd say that sometimes one who isn't an expert is a better teacher as they tend to be less inclined to flood the new person with too much information too soon and are more likely to understand the things that confuse the new person.

I'd encourage all of us who have spent time browsing through Danish resources to find our own ancestors to volunteer both to mentor one new person and to improve one orphan profile.  All those ones add up.

Mary

Answer 3

Hello, I'm English but with some Danish roots through my mother that I've been looking into. I don't think I'm particularly expert on anything, but happy to help if I can.

Kai

Comments

Thank you Kai.  We don't need to be experts to help others.  That's one of the wonderful things about WikiTree.

Mary Jensen

Answer 4

I have been working for the last several years on our tree in Wiki.  My husband is Danish,  I am American.  I lived in Denmark for 10 years.  Think I am close to hundred  Danes I have added to the tree.  Would love to help others.  I just broke the 1700 barrier in Denmark.  I have discovered a great system to track down ancestors and bust thru some walls in Denmark.

Comments

Jamie,

Thank you for your response.  I have not been particularly successful in recruiting other people to help get the work of Project Denmark off and running.  There seems to be quite a bit of interest in people working on their own lines and learning about how to research in Denmark, but not a lot of organizational interest.  Knowledgeable members and interested Wikitreers are very good about helping with requests for aid posted to G2G, but there is not a lot of organization.

I think it might generate both some interest and discussion if you would start a new G2G thread describing your "great system to track down ancestors and bust thru some walls in Denmark."  I think a lot of us would be interested in some ideas on how to bust through some of our Danish walls.

Mary Jensen

Coordinator of Project Denmark