An important part of our role here in the NCGenWeb Project is to help you with information and resources for your genealogy and family history research.  While we focus on providing records, we also answer questions to help you along the way.  We even help those just beginning to learn more about genealogy.

Thus, the latest news from the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University and the State Library of North Carolina is surely going to be of great interest to many  — they have recently announced an online course for genealogy called RootsMOOC!

The RootsMOOC course uses a MOOC approach (or Masssive Open Online Course) to learning. This means that many people can sign-up to take the course and the information for each week can be done at your own pace, on your own time.  Coursera is an example of a well-known provider of MOOC courses, so I’m excited to see this approach used for genealogy education.  RootsMOOC is free and begins March 23rd and ends June 1.  You’ll definitely want to sign-up now so that you receive all needed notifications as the start date nears.

The description of the course from the State Library of North Carolina’s website indicates:

RootsMOOC is a friendly introduction to family history research in the United States using commonly available sources. The expert researchers at the State Library of North Carolina will help you learn about the most useful sources, tools, and techniques for getting your research off the ground and properly organized. By the time you’re finished with this course, you’ll have a good start on your own genealogy research and you will know how and where to keep digging.

Topics covered will include techniques for getting started, understanding the US Census, working with state and local resources, and online sources and strategies.  Watch the video below for an introduction to the course from Kyle Denlinger, librarian at Wake Forest University:

Learn more about RootsMOOC on the course website. I have signed up for the course and I hope to see many of our NCGenWeb researchers signed up too.  If you do sign-up, please do let me know – perhaps we can have our own NCGenWeb cohort group 🙂

Disclosure: RootsMOOC was made possible in part by funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  I, in my professional career, am partly funded by a grant from the IMLS. Just wanted to disclose this for absolute transparency. — Taneya