Or from someone pushing an online degree site?

Hi!

My name is Lauren Jackson and I wanted to provide feedback on your page, <destinationaustinfamily.blogspot.com>. I’m not sure if you’re the right person to contact, but I wanted to tell you that since I have been working on creating some new genealogy resources, your page was a great source of information.

As a thank you, I thought I would pass along this additional resource I have been using as well in case you were looking to add more to your page. I have been using material from this page, http://www.onlinesocialworkdegree.org/genealogy-resources. It has a ton of great genealogy resources that you and your users may find useful!

Thanks Again
Lauren

As you can see I’ve decided not to link to the site that Lauren is pushing.  Also, the email was from lauren@pacificnorthwestlibrarians.org.  I did a background check and 1) I can’t find any such non-profit organization with that exact name and 2) the domain name was only recently registered and hides behind a privacy shield.

So what is it with these “online degree” sites? Back on October 18, 2010 you’ll remember that Online Colleges and Universities decided to award many genealogy bloggers with a “top genealogy blog” award and GeneaBloggers busted them.

As I’ve said before, as genealogy and family history becomes more popular, almost anyone and everyone will try to hop on to this fast moving train, some for their own purposes not directly related to genealogy.

So if you get an email from Lauren, send her a link to this post and tell her, “No thanks!”

©2011, copyright Thomas MacEntee