The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
The following was written by Wendy Archer, Chairman of the Oxfordshire Family History Society and is republished here with her permission:
...Oxfordshire Studies and Oxfordshire Record Office are to merge later this year in modified premises at St Luke's Church, Cowley. There are proposed staff cuts which mean the service offered would be a much restricted one compared with previously.
Oxfordshire County Council has set up the format of e-petitions as part of its ongoing commitment to listening to and responding to the views of the public. An e-petition has been instigated by Malcolm Graham (Oxfordshire Local History Association) with relation to the proposed staff cuts.
Family history enthusiasts researching in England will certainly relish the nine English record collections updated this week online at FamilySearch.org. The new English records come from Norfolk, Cheshire, and Warwick. Other new collections or updates include Brazil Catholic church records, Canada deaths, Italy civil registration, county marriages from New York, the New Jersey 1885 state census, and Switzerland church records.
See the table below for additional details about the latest collection updates.
The following announcement was written by Real-Time Collaboration, Inc.:
Historically genealogists have been limited in their collaboration efforts by widespread incompatibility between programs and websites. As of February 9, 2011 Ohana Software LLC and Real-Time Collaboration Inc. have joined forces in a leap towards bringing together the web pedigrees and the thousands of desktop pedigrees found around the world.
According to an article in Renee Zamora's Genealogy Blog, patrons at English-speaking family history centers around the world will have access to the library edition of services from FamilySearch and Ancestry.com. This applies only to full family history centers, not to affiliated libraries and the family history centers operated by other organizations. The local center must use the Family History Center (FHC) Portal software.
Members of the genealogy press were invited on a tour today of the LDS Church's warehouse in Salt Lake City that processes orders for microfilm and for other supplies as well. If you visit any of the 4,600+ local Family History Centers and order microfilms for rent, your order is sent electronically to this building. The films are then pulled from the shelf, boxed, and sent to your local Family History Center for your use. This is NOT the place where the microfilms are produced or copied. Instead, it is the warehousing and shipping center. Only copies are kept at this location. All newly-copied microfilms are produced elsewhere, then sent to this warehouse for storage. Upon receipt of an order, the microfilms are boxed and shipped to your local Family History Center.
The RootsTech Conference doesn't start until tomorrow, but tonight I received some information from the organizers. One fact that struck me is the attendance. More than 2,000 pople registered in advance to attend and the organizers expect more walk-in registrations each day the conference is in operation.
2,000 attendees would be a great number for any genealogy conference in the U.S. However, this is even more impressive for a conference being held for the first time.
Computers keep getting smaller and smaller. That's no surprise as the trend towards smaller devices has been going on for years. However, Hewlett-Packard has now announced an even smaller device that might be questionable as to how useful it will be. This thing will display your family tree but I am not sure my aging eyes can see the information.
The new HP smartphone has a 2.8-inch display screen. That's smaller than a credit card. It will display 320×400 pixels, roughly the same as several other cell phones that are not full computers.
The following announcement was written by Ancestry.co.uk:
Ancestry.co.uk, the UK’s favourite family history website , has launched online the largest online collection of more than 20 million records, which document both the early European settlers to New Zealand as well as many of the country’s indigenous Māori tribes.
The new records will be especially useful to the two million Brits with ancestors who immigrated to New Zealand and who can now uncover their 'kiwi' roots.
The RootsTech conference starts on Thursday in Salt Lake City. If you have ever clicked a mouse in the pursuit of your ancestors, RootsTech is for you. It is a conference designed to help you discover new and emerging technologies that will improve and simplify your activities. You can read more about RootsTech at http://rootstech.familysearch.org/
If you cannot attend in person, I will invite you to read the articles that I post from RootsTech. I hope to write about some of the new technologies that are presented at the conference. Looking at the agenda, I find it impossible to get to everything as there are numerous simultaneous presentations and exhibits. However, I will describe the ones that I find.
The following announcement was written by Family Tree University:
Whether you’re a genealogy newbie or a veteran, tracing African-American ancestry can be a challenge. Family Tree University’s “Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers,” a four-week online course, will enrich any curious historian’s journey in tracing their family roots.
A newsletter reader wrote with a question that is asked often. I have paraphrased her questions a bit for readability purposes:
Using the hints function of Ancestry.com's Ancestry Family Trees it's possible to copy information from other public trees, but I've noticed there's no way to pinpoint the original source of undocumented data to ask how they came about their conclusion.
If you are attending the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City, I would like to invite you attend a panel discussion on Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 4:15. The topic is: "Is the future of genealogy in the Cloud, on your phone or on the desktop?" I will be one of the panelists and am looking forward to this session.
The moderator will be Robert Armstrong, Senior VP Marketing at OneGreatFamily.com. Panelists will include:
Alan Eaton – President and CEO, OneGreatFamily.com Dave Berdan - Founder and Owner - Legacy FamilyTree Brian Moncur - CTO – MobileTree or Curtis Tirrell – CEO – AppTime Dick Eastman - Industry Blogger and author of the Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
This session is for audience members of all skill levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced.
In 1942, when computers were human and women were underestimated, a group of female mathematicians helped win a war and usher in the modern computer age. Sixty-five years later their story has finally been told.
On Sunday, December 7, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and changed the lives of many people forever. With Pearl Harbor suddenly drawing the US in to WWII, the Army launched a frantic national search for women mathematicians. The story of these women was classified at the time and has been kept secret ever since. Now a new documentary raises the veil of secrecy and describes their work. Scheduling is now underway for a year-long tour of the documentary Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII.
This is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Last week I wrote about "How Many Ancestors Do You Have?" That article is available at http://goo.gl/fCu7w. In that article I counted the number of ancestors by performing a very obvious mathematical progression: two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so forth. In the past twenty generations, you have a mathematical chance of having more than one million ancestors. Thirty generations produces more than a billion ancestors, and forty generations results in more than one trillion.
The article is correct from a mathematical viewpoint but deliberately ignored one obvious fact: there have never been that many humans on the face of the earth since the dawn of evolution! In fact, several newsletter readers posted excellent comments about this at the end of the article at http://goo.gl/fCu7w. The reality is that it is impossible to have one trillion unique ancestors, regardless of the mathematics involved.
Several newsletter readers have written recently to ask, "What is the best scanner?" As a single individual, I don't have the financial resources or the hours available to obtain one of each of the dozens of available scanners and then run side-by-side comparisons. However, one organization does have such resources: PCMAG.com
You can find an excellent collection of articles comparing nearly all of the general-purpose desktop scanners and multi-function printers/scanners available today at PCMAG's web site at http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,2806,7497,00.asp
Are you planning to purchase a new car? Are you also planning to grab all your tape cassettes and listen to them in your new wheels? If so, there's bad news for you. Cassette tapes are now history.
Remember when nearly every car in America had a cassette player? It wasn't all that long ago, but now it is history. The New York Times reports (at http://goo.gl/FpjRK) the 2010 Lexus SC 430 was the last model to offer a cassette deck as an option.
The following announcement was written by the National Institute for Genealogical Studies:
(Toronto, February 7, 2011) Louise St. Denis, Managing Director of the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, has announced that the Institute has acquired the website, GenealogyWise www.genealogywise.com. The Genealogy Community Director of GenealogyWise, Gena Philibert Ortega, has also officially joined the Institute. She can be reached at genwise@genealogicalstudies.com.
"I would say that GenealogyWise is a great fit with the National Institute's goals. GenealogyWise is a place to connect with new found cousins, share resources, and learn more about genealogy. As part of the National Institute, GenealogyWise members will benefit from the opportunities that the National Institute provides," said Gena.
Over recent years, the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) has moved towards aggregating its online collections and high-tech resources under an initiative called the National Digital Heritage Archive (NDHA). The NDHA built its own Web tools and designed clean interfaces to make users' experience easy and intuitive. NDHA also partnered with Ex Libris and Sun (now part of Oracle) to develop an OAIS compliant repository.
A Lauderdale County Circuit Court record book, covering the years 1843-50, has been digitized for viewing via the Internet. It contains a record of court proceedings through the years, including the case of Irish-born Ellen M. Weakley becoming a United States citizen, and future governor Edward A. O'Neal being sued for not paying a debt.
I had a unique opportunity today. I was invited to participate in a teleconference with Rosie O'Donnell. The primary topic of conversation was her upcoming appearance on Who Do You Think You Are that will be broadcast on NBC on February 18. I don't know the exact number of people in the teleconference but am guessing it was about a dozen or so with several genealogy authors in attendance along with reporters from the media.
Below are my notes taken in a hurry. I don't type fast enough to make word-for-word transcriptions but I believe these notes are close to what was said. Questions are shown, followed by Rosie's comments that appear in quotations.
You have been out of television spotlight for a bit. Why did you decide to participate in Who Do You Think You Are?
"I watched the show and was impressed. Since I knew Lisa Kudrow and I also was interested in my mother's family about whom I know so little."
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