The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
I attended a day-long genealogy seminar held at the New York Public Library yesterday. That's the place on Fifth Avenue with the lions standing guard out front. Sponsored by the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, Ruth A. Carr, David Kleiman, and I offered five different presentations about various technology-oriented topics. You can read more about the presentations at http://newyorkfamilyhistory.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=235
(If you click on the small thumbnail image, you can view a larger picture that shows the lions.)
The audience seemed to enjoy the day and I must say that I was thrilled to be giving talks in such a historic place. I would like to say "Thank you" to Lauren A. Maehrlein, Director of Education at the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, and to McKelden Smith, President of the the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, for the invitation to speak at such a great event.
The Date Calculator is MacOS X application for many date and time calculations useful to genealogists. Quoting from the program's description:
You can enter any date and convert it between Gregorian, Julian, Hebrew, and French Republic calendars and find its day of the week. You can enter two dates and find the time span between them. You can do various other date and time calculations and conversions such as adding time to a date, subtracting time from a date, or adding and subtracting times.
Ancestry.com has announced the features to be available in Family Tree Maker 2012 for Windows with the product expected to ship this week. New featires include:
TreeSync — lets you easily synchronize your tree in Family Tree Maker with an online Ancestry.com tree.
Access and update your tree anywhere. Continue your research wherever you are whether it’s through your computer, Ancestry.com, even your iPhone or iPad.
Easily share your tree with your family, and even work on it together. Your family and friends can view the online version of your tree without any software or a subscription. They just login with their name and email and they can always see the latest version of your tree, and can even work on adding to it if you’d like them to.
Collaborate with the largest, most active family history community in the world. You can keep your online tree private or make it public so that others researching your family can always find the latest version of your research. You may connect with others who have insight on your ancestors or even rare photos to share with you. And you may even find relatives you didn’t know you had.
The following announcement was written by findmypast.ie:
findmypast.ie has announced the launch of one of the first online forums solely dedicated to those researching their Irish family history. The forum is an online community for the Irish diaspora to discuss everything from researching Irish family history and Irish geography, to success stories and what it means to be Irish. Free to all registered users, it represents the findmypast family's first foray into community based chat.
Recognising the inherent difficulties involved in looking for Irish ancestors, the forum gives amateur and professional family historians alike the opportunity to ask their questions to like-minded researchers across the globe. This will enable members to benefit from the experience gained from those who have previously hit brick walls in their research and overcome them.
The New York Times has published a brief biography of Tim Sullivan, the president and C.E.O. of Ancestry.com, based in Provo, Utah. Tim describes his education and his earlier career accomplishments. You can read the bio at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/jobs/25boss.html?_r=1
NOTE: The New York Times frequently leaves articles available to everyone for a few days, then moves the articles behind a "pay wall" as part of the company's archives. The article is visible to everyone at no charge as I write these words but that may change in the future.
The bureaucrats are at it again. A few state officials in Virginia wish to restrict access to vitral records held by the Virginia Department of Health. The proposal is to close the birth records for 100 years, with marriage and death records closed for 50 years. After these time periods, the records are supposed to be turned over to the Library of Virginia (LVA), though the Virginia Department of Health has tried to delay this.
The Records Preservation and Access Committee, a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Genealogical Society, and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, is strongly opposed to this action. Writing for that committee, Peter E. Broadbent, Jr., former President of the Virginia Genealogical Society, has published a Memorandum to the Genealogical Community that describes the problems and provides suggested courses of action. You can read a PDF file of the "Memorandum to the Genealogical Community" at http://goo.gl/NREby
UPDATE: Clicking on the link below now produces a new message, "This job is no longer available."
ProGenealogists.com is a subsidiary of Ancestry.com consisting of professional genealogists who specialize in genealogy and family history research. Its customers include media groups, corporations, law firms, and the general public. Now the company is recruiting a senior-level executive.
The Research Director will be responsible for all genealogical research at ProGenealogists, the official Ancestry.com research firm. The organization seeks an experienced and innovative individual who has a strong passion for genealogical research to communicate with the public while providing support to staff and clients in a corporate setting. The Research Director will design and refine training programs, evaluate research to insure quality, act as a consultant on difficult cases, and serve as lead research asset on the most challenging cases.
Roots into the Future: A New 23andMe Research Initiative for African Americans
23andMe is inviting 10,000 individuals to be part of a movement to power genetic research for African Americans. The $399 DNA test and membership fees are to be waived.
I have written before about Google+ (pronounced "Google Plus," the social network that is gaining lots of users. Someone described it as "like Facebook, but for grownups." Indeed, Google+ doesn't seem to have all the security problems of Facebook.
When first launched, Google+ was available only by invitation. That has now changed. Google+ is now available to anyone who has a Google account. No invitation is required.
RootsTech 2012 will be held in the huge Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah on February 2 - 4, 2012. After only one year, RootsTech has become the premier "genealogy in technology" event in the U.S. Last year's first-ever RootsTech conference attracted more than 3,000 attendees. I believe that is a record for a genealogy event in the U.S. I was at the last RootsTech and I certainly will be at the next one. Tickets for RootsTech 2012 are now on sale at a significant discount.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch Adds 16 Million New Records
New Collections for Brazil, Canada, Cote d'Ivoire, Czech Republic, Ecuador, and U.S.
21 September 2011
Among the 16 million records added to FamilySearch.org this week, over six million are from the United States, including new collections from California, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. Additionally, five million new Civil Registration and Catholic Church records from Mexico are now available for free viewing at FamilySearch.org. Begin searching now!
Searchable records on FamilySearch.org are made possible by thousands of volunteers from around the world who transcribe (index) the information from handwritten records to make it searchable by computer. More volunteers are needed to help accelerate this important work of preserving and freely publishing important genealogical records. To learn more about the FamilySearch indexing program, visit indexing.familysearch.org.
I have written a number of times about the problems of credit card theft and how easy it is to avoid such problems. In several of these articles, I have mentioned that the attorney-generals of a number of states have promised investigations into the problems. Now someone has really gained the undivided attention of one state attorney-general.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Tuesday that her office would be launching an investigation into recent credit card thefts. During the press conference, Coakley said that she was a victim of identity theft in recent months, telling the audience that her stolen credit card information was used to make fraudulent iTunes purchases.
Ebook readers continue become more and more popular. Yesterday, I flew from Florida to Massachusetts and it looked to me as if more than 25% of the airline passengers on my flights were reading ebook readers during the flight. In fact, I was doing the same. The popularity of these handheld devices is undoubtedly going to increase further with Amazon's latest announcement.
Thousands of Kindle ebooks will soon be available for free in America through 11,000 local public libraries.
To check out a book from a library, you must have a valid borrower's card from that library. In fact, I suspect this policy might revolutionize and re-invigorate libraries as never before.
GENP is a family history program for Windows that is very easy to use and yet has features that will appeal to advanced genealogists. It also does a nice job of integrating photographs, maps, and other images into its database.
A new version of GENP has been released. Here is the announcement:
Melbourne, Australia, September 2011.
GENP version 4 has been released with over 70 new features. Now with presentation quality tree charts.
GENP is a family history software program for the beginner, experienced and professional genealogist.
A newsletter reader asked about available free genealogy software. I have mentioned each of the programs individually several times, but it has been a long time since I have published a complete list so I decided to publish an update.
None of these free programs are limited trial offers. In fact, just the opposite. Several of the free genealogy programs are very powerful and none of them are "limited trial offers." However, upgrading to the "Plus Editions" of a couple of programs will add even more features.
David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, writes a very interesting personal blog. This doesn't appear to be written by an anonymous staff member; Ferriero appears to write the articles himself.
In a recent article entitled The Wisdom of the Crowd, he describes a recent crowd-sourced that should benefit genealogists and historians alike. He writes:
At last! The final volume of Robert Charles Anderson's huge work, The Great Migration Series: Immigrants to New England 1634—1635, is now available. If you have early New England ancestry, you will want to refer to this series.
Here is the announcement from the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
NEHGS ANNOUNCES NEW VOLUME TO SECOND “GREAT MIGRATION” SERIES
Volume VII: Final Volume of the Second “Great Migration” Series Now in Print!
Boston, MA – September, 20, 2011 – The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announced today the release of the seventh and final volume of The Great Migration Series: Immigrants to New England 1634—1635, which is now available online at www.GreatMigration.org.
First proposed to NEHGS in 1988 by Robert Charles Anderson, FASG, the Great Migration Study Project aims to produce comprehensive biographical and genealogical accounts of all immigrants to New England between the years 1620 and about 1643.
Anyone researching Native American ancestry will probably be interested in a new online video from the Smithsonian. The video examines the question of "Who is an Indian?"
Unlike other ethnic minorities in the United States, American Indians are defined not solely by self-designation but by federal, state, and tribal laws. Blood quantum—originating from archaic notions of biological race and still codified in contemporary policy—remains one of the most important factors in determining tribal citizenship, access to services, and community recognition. This concept, however, is not without debate and contestation.
I find it fascinating to watch the genealogy business world. New companies get launched, a few companies fade away, and quite often the successful smaller companies are acquired by larger companies. Such is the case this week: BackupMyTree LLC is being acquired by Israeli-based MyHeritage.com.
BackupMyTree is a great service that takes the worries of data loss away from individual genealogists. It is software that installs in your computer and automatically makes online backups of any data you add to your genealogy database. The backup process is automatic: after installation, no further user action is required. All the genealogy data is heavily encrypted within the PC for security reasons, then sent across the Internet to servers operated by BackupMyTree. In case of a future data loss caused by hardware malfunctions or perhaps by human error, the preserved data can quickly and easily be retrieved at any time by entering the encryption password into the data recovery software.
I have written about BackupMyTree several times. About a year ago, I wrote at http://goo.gl/XEoBt:
The 24th Annual Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival will take place at Annapolis, Maryland, City Dock, which is the actual site of Kunta Kinte's arrival to America in 1767. The festival will be held next Saturday, September 24. The event, a day of Afrocentric music, dance, poetry, crafts and food, offers visitors of all races, but particularly African Americans, a chance to reconnect with their own family and cultural heritages.
The Kunta Kinte Heritage Festival was first conceived as a way of marking the arrival of the Gambian-born slave Kunta Kinte on the docks of Annapolis in September 1767. Kinte was a forebear of Alex Haley, the author who retraced his own family history by telling the slave's story in the international bestseller "Roots."
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