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The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration long ago announced that the 1940 census records would be hosted online as digital images free of charge, beginning on April 2, 2012. However, until now, NARA did not mention WHERE the images would be found. Since the National Archives and Records Administration does not have enough web servers or personnel to do the hosting on the www.nara.org web site, the assumption has always been that NARA would contract with a commercial firm to provide the hosting.
Fierce competition has existed amongst four different genealogy services for the rights to be the first and the official hosting service. However, the contract for the hosting company was not awarded until this week.
The 1940 census will first be hosted at a new web site owned and managed by Archives.com
The following announcement was written by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society:
The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society announces the election of two leading New York genealogists as Fellows of the Genealogical and Biographical Society (FGBS).
The designation of Fellow of the Genealogical and Biographical Society, the oldest such designation in the genealogical field in the nation, is reserved for people who have contributed to New York genealogical research, writing, speaking, and advocacy at the highest level of proficiency. There are currently fourteen Fellows.
For nearly 250,000 people adopted in Illinois, anyone over the age of 21 can get a copy of their original birth certificate. Even if it was a closed adoption, the birth parents names will be included on birth certificates.
NBC has announced the new midseason schedule. Of interest to genealogists, the new season of Who Do You Think You Are? will be broadcast on Fridays from 8 pm to 9 pm, beginning February 3, 2012.
Check your local listings for times and stations in your area.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
SALT LAKE CITY —November 15, 2011: FamilySearch International announced today a change in its chief executive officer. Effective January 2, 2012, Dennis C. Brimhall will succeed Jay L. Verkler as CEO of FamilySearch. Mr. Verkler will continue in a consulting capacity for a few months to ensure a smooth transition.
It is the business culture and practice of FamilySearch, as an organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to regularly rotate its senior leaders. This pattern assures the forward momentum of its core programs.
As mentioned in an earlier article, I am on the Wholly Genes genealogy cruise this week, visiting Aruba and Curaçao. I have been on cruise ships several times before and I expect Internet access to be slow. However, Holland America's access isn't slow, it's glacial.
Seven minutes from initial log-in until the next screen appears. If I click on any icon I have to wait five to seven minutes for the next screen to appear.
I give up. I can't post articles or even read email. I'll be back online next week.
The following announcement was written by ICAPGen:
ICAPGen announces a new “levels” program that will recognize the achievements of applicants sooner as they strive to attain the accreditation credential. The new program allows applicants more time to prepare for the written exam and offers a choice as to when the exam is scheduled.
The accreditation requirements remain the same—a quality four-generation research report followed by an eight-hour written exam and an oral review. The new levels program segments the accreditation process into three distinct levels and allows an applicant more time to prepare for each level. The three levels are:
It is with great sadness that I report that Bridgett Schneider, best known as the primary person behind Random Acts Of Genealogical Kindness, passed away today. She was 64 years old.
The last message I received from Bridgett was on October 18 when she wrote:
RAOGK has been around with our volunteers helping other genealogists get copies of documents required to prove your lineage back to Adam and Eve (giggle). Pictures of your ancestors' tombstones were also high on the lists of requests. I hope everyone got as much service as we were able to give.
Our heart is saddened that we will be offline for quite awhile. Between computer problems (harddrive turning to toast) and the health of the administrator very questionable ... RAOGK, after 11 years, will cease to exist for awhile.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
11 November 2011
A broad range of records were added to FamilySearch this week from 20 countries, notably Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, England, Dominican Republic, Germany, Italy, Philippines, and the U.S. The U.S. additions include a variety of records from California, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin (See the full listing of new updates below). Begin your search now at FamilySearch.org.
Amazon's Kindle device is great for reading eBooks. You can also read Kindle-formatted books without a Kindle device. Up until now, all you needed was a Windows or Macintosh computer with either the Chrome or Safari web browsers. Now the Firefox browser has been added to the list of supported browsers.
You can access Kindle books now at http://read.amazon.com with a Firefox, Chrome, or Safari web browser. The Kindle Cloud Reader still does not work with Internet Explorer, however.
An ebook reader is a great tool for borrowing free ebooks from a lending library near you. How do you find a participating library? Actually, it's easy.
Almost all the lending libraries that offer ebooks use a service from OverDrive, a digital distribution and publishing company that partners with thousands of libraries, schools, and universities around the globe to give users access to ebooks on any device they may own. The OverDrive service works with Kindle devices as well as Kindle apps on on Macintosh systems, Windows computers, iOS devices, Android devices, and Windows Phones. If there's a library near you that participates in the Overdrive program, you can use any supported device to borrow an ebook to read.
The following announcement was written by Genes Reunited:
To coincide with Remembrance Day, UK family history site Genes Reunited have added to their growing number of military records.
From today people interested in tracing their ancestors with military backgrounds can visit www.genesreunited.co.uk. The new release includes The National Roll of the Great War 1914 -1918 which has brief biographies of soldiers who survived the Great War and also information on those who supported the War, such as nurses and civilians, who rarely feature in other WW1 Records.
This is a brief note to let you know that I will leave home later today and will be traveling for about ten days. You probably won't see as many new articles as normal in this newsletter during that time. Of course, I travel often and have written similar notes in this newsletter before. However, I will be more incommunicado than normal on this trip.
I will start with a visit to a combined meeting of both the Falmouth Genealogical Society and the Cape Cod Genealogical Society, to be held in Osterville, Massachusetts. I have the honor of addressing the two societies at an all-day seminar on Saturday.
I will then fly to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to board the ms Westerdam on a genealogy cruise to Aruba, Curacao, and to Half Moon Cay, a small island in the Bahamas. The final leg of the cruise will return to Fort Lauderdale. The cruise is hosted by Wholly Genes, Inc., the company that produces The Master Genealogist software as well as Archive CD Books USA.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
This week I purchased a new laptop computer: an Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook. This is a very thin Windows computer at 0.7 inches thick. It weighs just three pounds. The tiny system sells for $899 although many retailers will discount that price a bit. I thought I might write about my experiences with it so far.
Laptops always keep getting smaller and lighter. A few years ago, netbooks became popular, and I purchased one. I soon found that I didn't like the undersized keyboard, and my aging eyes had difficulties reading the 9-inch screen, especially when the room lighting was not perfect. Since I couldn't type on it very well, I soon stopped using the netbook computer.
The following announcement was written by the American Society of Genealogists
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF GENEALOGISTS ANNUAL MEETING, SALT LAKE CITY, 8 OCTOBER 2011
The Fellows of the American Society of Genealogists held their annual meeting on Saturday, 8 October 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Nathaniel Lane Taylor of Barrington, Rhode Island, was elected to the Society as its 160th Fellow. Mr. Taylor is a widely published author whose articles and review essays have appeared in many scholarly genealogical publications.
I have written before about security issues when using wireless wi-fi networks in public places. Most public access wi-fi networks are not encrypted, meaning that anyone else on the same network with the proper software can intercept and read whatever you are sending and receiving. I wrote about this recently in an article entitled Turn Off File Sharing in Your Laptop! that is still available at http://goo.gl/jqGgh. When traveling with a laptop and connecting from hotel rooms, coffee shops, airport terminals, and elsewhere, I always use a VPN (virtual private network) to encrypt my communications and to keep everything private. However, until today, I didn't have a good VPN product for the iPhone.
Tomorrow (Friday 11/11/11) is No Email Day, a campaign to encourage people to stop using email for 24 hours for greater productivity and to realize how email has become abused/overused. Can you stand the withdrawal symptoms?
No Email Day is billed as a way to ‘be more productive with your time’ and, as its manifesto makes clear, stems from the frustration of an over-crowded inbox. Set up by digital innovator Paul Lancaster, the ‘No Email Day’ is not a plan to go back to old-fashioned forms of communications. Indeed, it is an attempt to move FORWARD into newer forms of communication, such as social media, to increase greater collaboration and productivity. Paul Lancaster states, “Managing your email can be a massive time suck.”
You may be familiar with the web site WolframAlpha. It provides a "computational knowledge engine" with an English-language user interface that is quite popular. With Wolfram-Alpha, you can find answers to such questions as "weather London June 29, 1977" (answer: 54 to 68°F, rain, overcast, cloudy, relative humidity 46 to 94%m wind speed 4 to 14 mph) or "my great great grandfather's great grandson" (Answer: second cousin once removed).
Wolfram now has an application for the iPhone and related iOS devices called the Genealogy Research and History Assistant. It provides answers to questions you can investigate about your ancestors, such as:
I wrote earlier about a new web site called BillionGraves.com at http://goo.gl/jeAad. At that time, the service was designed for use with Apple iPhones. Now version 2.0 of the application has been released. Best of all, it now works with both Apple's iOS operating system and with Android.
BillionGraves allows you to:
Collect photos of the headstones in your local cemetery with our iPhone camera app. Then upload the mapped-out photos here.
Transcribe information from uploaded headstone photos - then descendants everywhere can easily search for their ancestors.
Search for your ancestors' graves using our easy search. You can access their headstone records, photos of headstones, and accurate locations of all the graves.
Version 2.0 adds several new features and fixes, according to the BillionGraves.com web site:
Family Historian is the leading Windows genealogy program in the UK and it is very popular in a number of other countries as well. A new version of the program has been announced and will be available in a few months. The company is also offering a free upgrade to anyone who purchases the program now.
The following announcement was written by Calico Pie Limited:
Family Historian 5 - Coming Soon and a Free Upgrade Offer Now
10th November, 2011. Calico Pie today released details of version 5 of Family Historian, the UK's leading genealogy software program. The new version is due for release in February 2012, but thanks to a Christmas offer, anyone who buys Family Historian 4 now from a participating stockist, or as a download, will get a free upgrade to version 5 when released.
Version 5 - a Great Christmas Present
Although version 5 isn't quite ready yet, you can still effectively give it as a Christmas present! This is how:
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