THE SUN

Quarterly Newsletter of the Florida Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists

Friday, March 19, 2010

8 February 2008


Florida APG Gets New-Logo, KGROW Document Gains Acceptance

At the February meeting, held at the Polk County Historical and Genealogy library in Bartow, Lake County, Florida, Chapter President, Alvie Davidson presented attendees with copies of the new APG logo and the new APG Florida logo. That new logo now adorns the top of this blog/newsletter.

Alvie and Jean Kelly passed along the news about the acceptance of our KGROW document by NGS, FGS, RPAC, and IAJGS. The indication is that Kathy Hinckley, Executive Director of APG is waiting for final approval by all APG Board members, following which the document will be published in a future issue of the APG Quarterly.

Following the business meeting ( see Minutes below), Jack Butler presented "Read all About it! Finding Kin in Early Newspapers."

Minutes of the 8 February Business Meeting:

The meeting was held at the Polk County Historical and Genealogical Library, Bartow, Florida. The business meeting began at 9:00 a.m.


The new Board was introduced. Officers present: Alvie Davidson, President; Jack Butler, Vice-President. Other members attending: Jean Kelley, Dick Robinson, Gene Bremer, Donna Moughty, Gladys Paulin. Joe Spann, Librarian of the Polk County Historical and Genealogical Library, attended as a guest.

The old minutes from 2007 were reviewed by Jean Kelley, including a review of the Board actions done via email for 2007. There were no Board meetings held in 2007, except for the annual meeting in November. The last Board meeting held, other than at the 2006 and 2007 annual meetings, was October 2006. Minutes of that meeting were approved by the Board via email vote on 1 November 2007.

Alvie Davidson handed out copies of the new APG logo and chapter logo designs and there was discussion of the new APG Florida logo.

The status of the KGROW document was reviewed. Alvie announced that the KGROW document has been approved by NGS, FGS, RPAC, and IAJGS. Kathy Hinckley, Executive Director of APG is waiting for final approval by all APG Board members. It will be published in a future issue of the APG Quarterly.

New Business: Alvie explained that because of budget cuts the Polk County Historical and Genealogical Library is in serious financial difficulty, and would like our help. He introduced Joe Spann, Librarian, to explain the situation which is as follows: The Library is a department of the Polk County, Florida government, and Joe and the other library employees are county employees. With recent tax cuts and the prospect of future tax decreases, the Board of Commissioners has ranked the library as "low priority." The Library's budget of $37,000 has been cut by $50,000, with the excess $13,000 coming out of the library's reserve. Joe is asking that APG Florida Chapter write a letter of support to the Chairman of the Polk County Commissioners, stating how important the library is to the professional genealogical community.

  • Joe gave the following facts about the library:
    With over 68,400 items, it is one of the largest regional research libraries on the eastern seaboard and the library collection is one of the strongest in the US for South Carolina research.
  • It has over 10,000 patrons per year, 20% Polk County residents, 80% from outside the county email correspondence is skyrocketing with the reasonable cost of obituaries, providing 2 to 3 per day.
  • It does not accept income directly for itself, all profits go into the Polk County general fund.
  • Joe Spann, head librarian has been there 17 yrs; there are 3 other full time staff, all with tenure over 10 years.
  • Alvie suggested APG FL write a letter of support as Joe requested, and those members present agreed. Jack Butler agreed to write the draft. Alvie will contact Ann Staley, Chapter Representative, to send it to APG HQ and PAC for approval before it is sent to the Commissioners.

Future meeting places and future programs were discussed:

Alvie announced that Yolanda Lifter has resigned as program chair, and he is filling that position at present. He stated he would like to have the next meeting on May 3rd at the State Library in Tallahassee, and Deanna Ramsey will be asked to give a technology presentation. Jack Butler will co-ordinate with the library, and Deanna.

Alvie then asked for suggestions for future meetings. Jean Kelley suggested that it could be beneficial if we could coordinate our meetings in conjunction with local genealogical society's conferences around the state. For example, the Tallahassee Genealogical Society is having Megan Smolenyak in for a conference on March 3. If it had been known ahead of time, we could have had today's meeting next month in Tallahassee. Donna Moughty began looking up state wide conferences on the internet to see what was already announced, little was yet posted on the FSGS website. Gladys suggested it was too much to have a meeting in Oct and the annual meeting in Nov. Jean suggested perhaps combining the August and October meetings into one in September. Donna mentioned this was when the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa) has an annual conference.

Discussion ended.
Meeting ended.

The program portion of the meeting was held upstairs in the 2nd floor meeting room. Members present were: Alvie Davidson, Jack Butler, Gladys Paulin, Gene Bremer, Jean Kelley, Donna Moughty , Karen and Mitch Brown Dick Robinson. Guests were Juanita Friendenberg, Tampa; Doug Barnett and wife, Satellite Beach, and Joe Spann, Bartow.

Jack Butler gave a presentation titled "Read All About It" "Finding Kin in Early Newspapers.

After the program we had lunch together at Perkins restaurant.