Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

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Are We Losing Our Memory? or The Museum of Obsolete Technology

Writing in LOST Magazine, Alexander Stille says that we are running out of time at the National Archives. Information stored in mechanical and electronic format is in danger of being lost forever.

The National Archives' Department of Special Media Preservation is a kind of museum of obsolete technology where Archives technicians try to tease information out of modern media that have long vanished from circulation. But the laboratory is more than a curious rag-and-bone shop of technologies past; in many ways, it offers a cautionary vision of the future. The problem of technological obsolescence — of fading words and images locked in odd-looking, out-of-date gizmos — is an even bigger problem for the computer age than for the new media produced in the first half of the 20th century.

Inmates use LDS Family History Centers to Find Their Pasts and Help Others

The Deseret News has an interesting article about several hundred inmates doing genealogical work in Family History Centers run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints inside the Utah State Prison.

There are four family-history centers in the prison, with about 600 inmates doing work on their own genealogies or performing extractions — the indexing of names of long-dead individuals from land records, census forms, birth, death and marriage certificates for a database run by the LDS Church's Family History Library.

(+) Casefile Clues by Michael John Neill: Undeeding the Farm

The following article was written by and is copyright by Michael John Neill.

The message to the mailing list indicated an ancestor had owned considerable property and that there was a large estate or guardianship filed after the ancestor died. The poster wanted a “local” to do a lookup in the county records and find the files. I was going to the courthouse within in the week, and the lookup would take no more than a few minutes. Armed with an approximate date of death for the ancestor, I looked for the records. I used a year range from ten years before the estimated date of death until twenty years after the death date. There was no estate record for the property-owning ancestor. There was no guardianship case filed under the names of any of his children. All reasonable spelling variants were searched. I reported this back to the original message poster. They insisted there “”had” to be a record and that the ancestor “had” to have owned property and that I "had" to be wrong. And it was possible that I was.

Souped-Up Scanner Reads Books Aloud

Plustek scanners have long been favored by genealogists and others who frequently scan books. Many Plustek scanners have a specially designed edge and lamp that allows "zero edge" scanning (or book edge scanning design). This means the scanning module can scan right up to the edge of the scanner where the book spine is placed. The book can therefore be scanned with the pages completely flat on the glass to avoid the book spine shadow and distorted lines of text that occur when books are scanned on a traditional flatbed scanner.

Now Plustek has created something new: a scanner that reads to you. Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button, and away you go: you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice, as she reads aloud to you. You still have to turn the pages, but you'll never have to strain your eyes again.

The scanner also produces MP3s or WAV files that you can save and listen to at a later time. Oh yes, it also saves images and even performs OCR (optical character recognition) of the text being scanned.

Internet Explorer 8 Now Available

Microsoft has released the newest version of the company's web browser for Windows: Internet Explorer version 8. After years of losing market share to Firefox and other rivals, Microsoft is hoping to convince Windows users to return to Internet Explorer. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer still leads in market share at around 67%, which is a drop from four years ago when it held 91% of the market.

Most of the new features in Internet Explorer 8 (from the improved phishing protection to features like web clippings or private browsing) have already been available for some time in other popular browsers such as Firefox and Safari. One notable exception is the implementation of "Accelerators." According to Microsoft:

A New Look for the Newsletter

I have experimented a bit with style sheets and have given the newsletter's web pages a "new look." I think I like it better than the old one but would appreciate feedback. What is your opinion of the new look versus the old? Thanks!

Beware the "Grandparent Scam"

Police are warning the public to be vigilant against the “Grandparent Scam,” also called the “Emergency Scam.” This scam has been around for years but seems to have become more popular in the past year or so.

The typical scenario for this fraud is a grandparent receives a phone call from a con-artist claiming to be one of his or her grandchildren. The caller says they are in some kind of trouble – usually a car accident, trying to return from a foreign country, or they need funds to pay bail – and need money immediately. The caller specifically asks the victim to not contact other relatives because the caller doesn't want to “get in trouble” with other family members. Wanting to help their grandchild, the victim sends money electronically, usually through a form of money transfer.

(+) Organize Your Inbox

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Are you overwhelmed with incoming e-mail? Do you receive messages from family and friends, mixed in amongst messages from genealogy mailing lists, updates from web sites, and discussion forums? And then there's spam. Do you feel that you are never caught up with your e-mail?

I know the problem! I typically receive 1,000 or so e-mail messages per day. Probably 800 or so of those are spam messages, so I have a really aggressive spam filter that takes care of  most of them; I rarely even see the junk mail. However, that still leaves 200 or so legitimate messages per day that I do want to see. Perhaps 25 to 50 of those incoming messages are from individuals, high priority message that I want to read immediately. The others are from various mailing lists, web sites, and other automated messages sent by computers.

This week I thought I would describe the methods that I use to sort and file the messages before I even see them.

Ancestry.com Adds Huge New Content Addition for More Recent Years

The following was written by Gary Gibb and published on the Ancestry.com Blog:

We are launching huge new content additions over the next few weeks.  We are excited because it helps provide records from 1935 to today.  We have great census and vital records from 1930 and before but more recent records are difficult to acquire.  These new records are being provided in 4 major releases.

Louisiana Ancestors moves and becomes Cajuns, Creoles, Pirates and Planters

The following announcement was written by Damon Veach:

Louisiana Ancestors, the longest-running genealogy column in the United States and written by Damon Veach, has ended its affiliation with newspapers and is now an ONLINE and FREE weekly column and presented under its original name when it was started many years ago.  Cajuns, Creoles, Pirates and Planters was too long for most newspaper headings, so the shorter Louisiana Ancestors became the name.  It is now found at claitors.com, and efforts to promote genealogy and historic preservation projects throughout the state will continue uninterrupted.

Watch RootsTelevision.com on your TV!

It is nice that Roots Television recently added the "full screen" feature. Now the web site tells how to watch "television on your TV set." What a concept! (OK, so I am joking a bit. But it does seem ironic that television has now gone full circle: from television to the Internet and now back to television again.)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Newspaper Goes Web-only

Another One Bites the Dust. Or perhaps that is "Bytes the Dust."

We are watching history in the making. Unfortunately, it is a sad thing to see. Another major city newspaper will print its final edition. This time, it is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer which ends its long run in the print media. In its announcement, the newspaper stated:

New Web Site Features All Things Irish

A new Web site has arrived offering, among other things, Irish-American news and a list of the 10 worst Irish accents on film (Sean Connery tops it, and along with Julia Roberts, appears twice).

The man behind the site, IrishCentral.com, is Niall O'Dowd, the New York-based Irish publisher who puts out the weekly Irish Voice, Irish America magazine and the newspaper Home and Away. The new site includes genealogy information, top tourist spots in Ireland, breaking news and breaking fluff. Its target audience is the Irish diaspora, which numbers 36.5 million in the United States, more than eight times the population of Ireland.

The Wyoming Newspaper Project: 900,000 Newspaper Pages Online

Newspapers are the single most important printed record of human activity. Historians, genealogists, and other scholars rely on them to provide a first-hand and sometimes the only account of local news. The Wyoming Newspaper Project will make all the newspapers printed in Wyoming between 1849 and 1922 accessible in an easily searchable format, over the internet, for free.

Video Interview: Paul Taylor of Arcalife.com

I recently had a chance to talk with Paul Taylor, founder of Arcalife, a web-based service that allows genealogists to save, store, and share their research data, from documents and images, to audio and video. The service is brand-new and Paul described the many features available.

The Roots Television crew kindly recorded our conversation and has now made it available at: http://www.rootstelevision.com/players/player_conferences3.php?bctid=15381429001&bclid=14621417001.

PAHR Legislation

Texas State Archivist Chris La Plante, Secretary of the Society of State Archivists, asks that this be forwarded to as many genealogical list serves as possible and to contact your representatives.

Now's the time to step up for PAHR.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D, NY) and Congressman John McHugh (R, NY) have just sent a "dear colleague" letter to the members of the House of Representatives inviting them to sign on as original sponsors for the "Preserving the American Historical Records" bill.

Video: Explore Nova Scotia Genealogy at the Black Cultural Centre of Nova Scotia

The Black Cultural Centre of Nova Scotia near Halifax is a museum dedicated to the history of immigrants of African and Caribbean descent in this East Coast Canada destination.

You can see a brief video describing the Cultural Centre at http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2710732/7900304.

SeekingMichigan.org Puts Historical Records Online

The following announcement was written by the Library of Michigan and the Archives of Michigan:

'Seeking Michigan' Web site employs today's technology to deliver Michigan's history to information seekers

The Department of History, Arts and Libraries today announced the launch of the Seeking Michigan Web site (www.seekingmichigan.org), a growing collection of unique historical information that - through digitized source documents, maps, films, images, oral histories and artifacts - creatively tells the stories of Michigan's families, homes, businesses, communities and landscapes.

Death or Canada (Fleeing the Famine)

50 million people in North America claim Irish ancestry. Many of their ancestors arrived in Canada during the famine years. Now a powerful new film shows what life was like for these people.

Death or Canada is an IFTA-nominated two-part Canadian-Irish docudrama which was broadcast in Ireland in November/December 2008 and has now been shown on Canada's History Television. The film, narrated by Brian Dennehy, follows the Protestant Willis family from Limerick to flee to Canada in the Spring of 1847 at the height of Great Famine. This dramatic story is interspersed with commentary from historians and other experts.