I finally logged on to www.findagrave.com and think it has a lot of potential for library programming. I heard Stephen Abram mention the site at the Digital Natives Conference in July and again when he presented at the Idaho Library Association conference. He talked about how some libraries are bringing together teens and seniors to document local history through sites like Find a Grave and other “virtual genealogical tourism” sites. I’m not up-to-date on what other sites that might include, but would like to learn more about this so please comment if you have info. I heard that genealogy is a growing hobby among all ages (third in the country behind coin and stamp collecting).

On Find a Grave, thousands of contributors submit new listings, updates, corrections, photographs of gravestones and virtual flowers every hour. The site has over 200,000 contributors. My family is into Silver City, Idaho history so we were able to search for Owyhee County cemeteries and find pioneer/relative info. We plan on taking the kids to some of these cemeteries to add more gravestones and obituary information to the web site. It may sound a little strange, but by using these types of social networking tools, I think it will be a fun way to involve teens in a cool project.