Zion Genealogical Society of Lake County (Illinois, USA)

Start time: 7:05 PM

Attendance: 9 present, 4 on zoom. Guests: 4 on Zoom

PROGRAM

Vicki Mattson introduced our speaker, Michelle Wilson, who spoke on "Creating a Coffee Table Style Family History Book"

Three coffee table books were distributed to those attending to see the formats used for the stories; including documents, photos, and images. Michelle presented an overview of steps needed to create the Coffee Table Family History Book:

• Prepare your manuscript and layout in a digital format such as Word, PowerPoint, Publisher.
• Your format must support export to PDF.
• Setup the manuscript dimensions to match the required dimensions for the book size selected.
• When completed, export to PDF and upload to a Print-On-Demand (POD) company.
• Once completed, download the processed PDF from the POD company to review, especially edges, transparency, and unusual fonts.
• Make corrections on your proof copy, upload and order your book.

Our speaker went into detail relating to writing workshops, layout tools, photo processing, image enhancement tools.

The Print on Demand site that Michelle uses, Lulu.com, has "Book Creation Guide" feature. Two of the biggest companies are: Ingram Spark, and Kindle Direct Publishing.

Several of the PowerPoint features were discussed.

Among the Collecting Repositories to place copies of your book:

• Newberry Library
• Family History Library)
• Allen County Public Library
• Local Historical or Genealogy Society.

Upon completion of her presentation, the meeting was open to questions after which Vickie Mattson thanked Michelle for a very interesting program.

BUSINESS MEETING

Treasurer Report
Teresa Hatten, treasurer, reported our balance as of 3/31/24: $ 3,522.61. The March expenses were $547.76

Genealogy Room
Joanne Layne announced that Nancy Scott has donated a laptop to use with Family Tree Maker. We now have a copy machine, donated by Joanne Layne to use in the room as well.

The resource material in the room is in need of being re-cataloged to make it more user friendly. Carlton Smith, Joanne Layne are working with the library to accomplish this.

Converting our website to WordPress
Our host, Blue Host, uses WordPress. Therefore, we will need to convert our files from Dream Weaver to WordPress. Looking for someone that might be able to help us with the conversion, as well as someone to maintain it once converted.

June Workshop
June 17th, 2024 General Meeting will be an in-person workshop titled "38 Genealogy Records You Must Find in Person"

Beginner Workshop
Myra Coddens reported the Beginner Genealogy Workshop was held last Saturday and there were 5 participants. The next workshop is scheduled for May 18th, 2024 from 1-2 PM.

Meeting ended at 8:45 PM

Respectively submitted,
Joan Bomkamp
ZGS Secretary

Updated May 16, 2024