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Jim Douthat of Signal Mountain, Tennessee has been recognized for his many achievements by the Chattanooga Area Historical Association. He has been named the first recipient of the James W. Livingood Historian of the Year award.
The Chattanooga Area Historical Association, founded in 1948, is dedicated to preserving the history of the Southeast Tennessee Region with special interest in sites within a fifty mile radius of Chattanooga. In their award selection process, the organization sought the participation of all historical and genealogical groups within this area.
NOTE: This is an updated version of an article I originally published nearly two years ago. A newsletter reader sent an email today in which he questioned the life expectancy of digital files versus paper. I referred him to my earlier article but noticed that it was a bit out of date. I have now rewritten part of the original article and am republishing it today.
I often write about digital products for use in genealogy. Here is a comment I hear and read all the time, including a comment this morning from a newsletter reader: "I am going to keep my files on paper to make sure they last for many years, longer than digital files."
Wrong! Properly maintained, digital files will always last much, much longer than paper or microfilm. Let's focus on the phrase, "properly maintained."
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
19 March 2012
10 New Digital Images of Historic Documents Created Every Second Indexing Projects Added for Paraguay, Panama, Bolivia, and Slovakia!
Since 2006, FamilySearch has dramatically improved its ability to scan and convert microfilmed records into digital images. In addition, more than 185 digital camera crews are now at work throughout the world, capturing images six days a week. Between microfilm digital conversions and new field captures, FamilySearch now creates an average of 10 new digital images every second of every day and publishes them at familysearch.org within a matter of weeks. All those new digital images means there’s a dramatic increase in the need for online volunteer indexers and arbitrators!
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Do you have boxes of old 8-millimeter home movies? If so, I'd suggest you copy them immediately to more modern media. Those movies started to deteriorate within a few days after they were developed. The colors started to fade, and the film itself started to become brittle. To be sure, the changes were not visible to the human eye for a number of years. Nonetheless, the process started almost immediately. Now, a few decades later, the films undoubtedly have faded a noticeable amount, and the film itself has lost flexibility.
If you procrastinate even longer, there is a risk the movies will not be useable or viewable at all. If so, the images of an entire generation of your relatives may be lost.
It might be the first time a separated couple got back together thanks to their great-great-great granddaughter. The attractive young couple is Benjamin and Maria Gratz, or more accurately their portraits, which were painted in 1831 by noted English-born Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully but somehow the portraits parted ways an unknown number of years ago.
Benjamin has been hanging for decades at the Rosenbach Museum & Library along with other members of the Gratz family, who were prominent in early Philadelphia's business and philanthropic worlds. The whereabouts of Maria's portrait had been unknown for years.
My thanks to the Mid-Cities Genealogical Society in Euless, Texas for hosting me at a day-long workshop on Saturday. This is an enthusiastic group! I gave several talks that were interspersed with questions-and-answers. We talked a lot about search engines, the future of genealogy societies, and about DNA.
I enjoyed the visit, despite the fact that I had to give the presentations with a broken tooth implant. (I spent much of Friday in two different dentists' offices.) I think those in the audience also enjoyed themselves.
Thousands of immigrants entered the United States through the Port of Galveston, Texas from 1845 until 1924. Now that immigration experience is showcased in an exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
Many of the immigrants were helped by the Galveston Movement, a project from 1907 to 1914 aimed at bringing European Jews to the United States through Galveston to settle in Texas and the West rather than the crowded tenements of the East. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History has a new exhibit that shows many of the obstacles that the Galveston immigrants faced.
The Ohio Genealogical Society is selling some of its surplus books. This is an excellent opportunity to pick up some materials that are not frequently available. The following are available as auctions on eBay:
The Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society has moved into a new location at 215 French Avenue South in Arlington, Washington. The new facility is in a historic home built in 1904 next to the old high school.
I suspect it was "fun" moving the 5,000 books of the society's library!
Every March 17, millions of people pause to reflect on their Irish heritage. Conceived as a Saint's Day in the Catholic Church, Saint Patrick's Day is now a time of celebration for millions. However, many of us have little knowledge of the man whose name we celebrate.
First of all, Saint Patrick wasn't Irish. He was a Roman, although born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton in Scotland, in the year 387. His original name is recorded as Maewyn Succat. His father, Calphurnius, belonged to a Roman family of high rank and held the office of decurio in Gaul or Britain. At the age of sixteen years old, Patrick was carried off into captivity by Irish marauders and was sold as a slave to a chieftain named Milchu in Dalriada, a territory of the present county of Antrim in Ireland. He was soon sold to another chieftain in the area. The future saint spent six years tending his master's flocks near the modern town of Ballymena. During this time he learned to speak fluent Celtic.
One of the often-repeated tales about Saint Patrick is the story about driving the snakes from Ireland. One version tells of his standing upon a hill, using a wooden staff to drive the serpents into the sea and banishing them forever from the shores of Ireland. Another legend says that one old serpent resisted, but the saint overcame it by cunning. He is said to have made a box and invited the reptile to enter. The snake insisted the box was too small, and the discussion became very heated. Finally the snake entered the box to prove he was right, whereupon St Patrick slammed the lid and cast the box into the sea.
I have always traveled frequently, but this may be a new record for me. I have been traveling for the past two and a half months, living in a motor home. This week, I "interrupted" that travel in order to travel in a different manner. I parked the motor home in Florida for a few days, drove to a nearby airport, and took a flight to Dallas, Texas. I will deliver presentations tomorrow (March 17) at the Mid-Cities Genealogical Society in Euless, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
Gee, this sounds like a programming example from "Computer Programming 101." Create a subroutine to be called at any time, interrupting the main program's flow.
The following announcement was written by WikiTree:
In Honor of “National Ask A Question Day”
WikiTree announces the official launch of its new Genealogist-to-Genealogist (G2G) Sharing Network (http://www.WikiTree.com/g2g/). While most collaboration and sharing at WikiTree happens along family lines, G2G is especially designed for genealogists to ask for help from other genealogists, regardless of whether or not they have a direct family connection.
Do you remember when you first started researching your family history? Not only did you have questions to ask other family members, but you weren’t sure how to get started tracing your roots. We learn by asking questions, and G2G offers a supportive environment for all genealogists to get the answers they need.
Margaret Scott was hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, in September 1692 after she was found guilty of witchcraft. The indictment against her will be auctioned off by a New York gallery. The document is expected to sell for more than $25,000.
The conversion from printed books to electronic distribution continues. This time, it is one of the oldest and most famous publications that is making the change.
An article by Julie Bosman published in the New York Times says it's the end of the road for the printed Encyclopedia Brittanica. Bosman writes, "...in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular — and free — online encyclopedia Wikipedia."
The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:
World’s largest family network introduces beautiful printed family calendars, created in one click and automatically personalized with family events and photos
PROVO, Utah & LONDON & TEL AVIV, Israel – March 13, 2012: MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, today announced the worldwide release of personalized and customizable family calendars that are created in a single click. Automatically filled with important events such as birthdays, anniversaries and national holidays, and intuitively decorated with the best matching family photos, the beautifully designed MyHeritage family calendars introduce a new and easy way for families to remember special occasions.
On March 2, I published a brief article entitled Is Antivirus Software a Waste of Money? in which I referenced an article by Robert McMillan who wrote that “If you asked the average security expert whether they use antivirus or not, a significant proportion of them do not.”
The article in this newsletter generated a number of comments but apparently that number was tiny compared to the comments that Robert McMillan received. He has now published a follow-up article that further explains the issues in some depth. He still scoffs at anti-virus and anti-malware (malevolent software) problems, writing:
I found an interesting article by Butch Lazorchak published in the The Signal, a newsletter devoted to digital preservation, published electronically by the Library of Congress. Lazorchak writes:
"In the midst of the South By Southwest Interactive Conference, I daydream about a time (ideally in the not-so-distant future) when librarians, archivists and museum professionals (LAMs) rule the world.
"Delusional talk you might say, spoken by someone with more than a little self-interest in ultimate LAM domination. But the halls of SXSWi are full of conversations about “big data,” “cloud computing,” “web usability,” “search and access” and a host of other subjects that are squarely in the domain of today’s information professionals."
Lazorchak also writes of "self-organizing libraries, archives and museums." Really? Self-organizing? How will that work?
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. However, I am very interested in the legal issues surrounding copyrights as those laws apply to genealogy publications. I have read extensively on the subject and have discussed the topic with several attorneys who deal in intellectual property rights. The following is a summation of what I believe I have read and heard. This article is not to be construed as legal advice. If you have further questions, I suggest you consult with an attorney who deals in intellectual property issues.
About once a week or so I receive an e-mail from a person who feels “ripped off.” Each e-mail comes from someone who expends a lot of time and effort collecting genealogy information about their ancestry and then decides to share the information with others. Some time later, that person finds the same information published elsewhere, apparently by someone else who “ripped off” the information from the first person. The usual questions are: “Is this legal? Can he do that?” and “Isn’t my data copyrighted?”
One of the big losses to genealogists and to many others occurred on July 12, 1973, when a fire destroyed many records at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. The records storage facility was operated by the National Archives and Records Administration and housed military service records. The fire destroyed approximately 16 to 18 million official military personnel records. While that is a staggering number of records, it still represents only about one-third of the 52 million official military personnel files.
Sadly, the records had not yet been digitized for long-term preservation nor even copied to microfilm, the standard method of preserving paper documents at that time. The records existed only on fragile paper and were susceptible to fire, flood, mildew, and other dangers. The building was essentially a large warehouse, filled with filing cabinets. There were no firewalls or other fire-stopping devices to limit the spread of fire. No heat or smoke detectors were installed in the building, nor was there a fire sprinkler system to automatically extinguish a fire.
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