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Byron D. Holdiman

Currently serving as the Digital Preservationist for the Adventure of the American Mind project at California University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Greensburg Family History Center. Previously Byron has served as a Library Consultant at PALINET, a membership library organization for the Mid-Atlantic States and the Director of Product Development of GenQuest, Inc., a genealogy reference CD-ROM company. He received his MA in Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida. During his graduate studies, he held two Graduate Assistantships. The first year was in the Special Collections Department of the USF Library as a Graduate Library Assistant and the second year was with the School of Library and Information Science teaching several sections of Introduction to the Internet.

Also during graduate studies, he completed an internship with the Special Collections Department of the Largo Public Library in Largo, Florida in organizing, filing, and indexing donated genealogy manuscript collections.

Byron received a BA in Genealogy/Family History from Brigham Young University. During his undergraduate studies, he was a lab assistant for the Family History Computer Lab which included assisting with the Beginning Genealogy classes for 2.5 years. He also completed and passed the exam for becoming an Accredited Genealogist for the Midwestern United States.

Presently active in the area of genealogy and computers, He is also the founder and supervisor of Elijah-L, a genealogy related mailing list used mainly by volunteers at Family History Centers around the world. Byron is in the process of maintaining the Genealogy Libraries on the WWW page for Librarians Serving Genealogists. Along with directing the Greensburg Family History Center, he has also volunteered at Family History Centers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; Tampa, Florida; and Provo, Utah.

Byron has presented workshops and presentations at PALINET (1998 to 2004), Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (June 2001), Mt. Aloysuis College Library (January 2001), Pittsburgh Stake Family History Symposium (Oct 2000), Waynesburg College Elderhostel (July 2000), Delaware Division of Libraries (May 2000), Metropolitan New York Library Council (April 2000), Central Jersey Library Consortium (February 2000), Medical Library Association, Pittsburgh Chapter (October 1999), Aliquippa Public Library Pennsylvania Humanities Grant Symposium (September 1999), Catskill/Ramapo Library System (August 1999), Maryland Library Association Conference (May 1999), Pennsylvania School Library Association Conference (April 1999), and Pittsburgh Genealogy Symposium (October 1998).

Along with interests in genealogy, librarianship, and computers, Byron is married to Nona (VanDenBerghe) Holdiman and is the father of four children: Tatianna, Daniel, Johannes, and Hayden. Byron Holdiman can be contacted at his email address, byron_holdiman@yahoo.com.