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Imagine a central clearinghouse for letters, manuscripts, and other pieces of evidence used by genealogists, historians, and many academics. A new online hub that researchers can consult to find archival materials is now being proposed.
Social Networks and Archival Context Project, or SNAC, is a collaboration between researchers and developers at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information, and the California Digital Library. The project recently finished its pilot stage with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Another grant, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will support the project through another two years as it adds millions more records and begins beta testing with researchers.
A few days ago, I wrote and published an article of Peer Review of Open-Source Books: An Opportunity for Genealogists? I proposed a free and open review of new and old genealogy books be created online. I envisioned it would operate as a mix of CyndisList, eBay, and the University of Minnesota online catalog of open-source books. However, it would be strictly limited to reviews of genealogy books. You can read the entire article at http://goo.gl/Du7sC.
I was delighted when Robert Barnes of FamNet not only volunteered to construct such a service, he actually built it and placed it into operation! It is available TODAY to the genealogy community. You can access it now.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Too many genealogists are addicted to paper. In this day and age, that's sad. I have no statistics about the amount of paper, ink, and toner consumed by genealogists every year, but I am sure we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars purchasing printers, paper, and supplies. That's a huge waste of money, in my opinion. I wonder how many filing cabinets are sold to genealogists for in-home use. I will suggest there is a better way to store personal copies of genealogy records and related information.
After the end most major genealogy conferences, I usually host a Saturday night dinner for readers of this newsletters as well as their friends, families, and anyone else who wishes to join in. Despite the short notice of this week's event in Cincinnati, 42 folks joined me at McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant, just two blocks from the convention center where we had spent many hours this week. I think the dinner was a success.
The dinners are a tradition started years ago with an informal "pick up" dinner at a local restaurant. The dinners have since grown into far bigger events, now held in hotel or restaurant banquet rooms. The dinners are always completely informal with no presentations or speeches, except for a few welcoming remarks by myself.
The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com Inc.:
PROVO, Utah, May 13, 2012 -- Ancestry.com Inc., the world's largest online family history resource, today commented on NBC's decision not to renew the Who Do You Think You Are? television series for a fourth season.
"We want to thank NBC for their support of this terrific series, which over the last three years has inspired many viewers to follow their passion to learn more about who they are and where they come from," said Tim Sullivan, President and CEO of Ancestry.com. "We have a great partnership with the show's producers, Is or Isn't Entertainment and Shed Media, and we look forward to exploring other avenues of distribution."
I have been writing all week about this year's annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. The conference ended on Saturday afternoon. However, I am already excited about next year's conference as it is being held in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is one of my favorite cities, even though I am not a gambler. I was there just three weeks ago but never put a nickel in a slot machine during my visit. However, Las Vegas has the best shows, great restaurants, and reasonably-priced hotels. The airfare to and from Las Vegas from almost every city in the U.S. is also reasonably priced, as it is a very competitive route for the airlines. The "people watching" is probably better in Las Vegas than in any other city. In short, it is a great place to hold a conference of any sort. I suspect the genealogists will love it.
The annual conference of the U.S. National Genealogical Society wound down on Saturday. Most of the day continued in much the same manner as the first three days, which I wrote about previously.
Most everyone I talked with seemed happy with the conference. The biggest "complaint" I heard was actually a compliment: it was difficult to find space in some of the presentations. On a number of occasions, all chairs were filled fifteen minutes or even earlier before the start of the presentation. I consider this a compliment to the organizers and to the presenters: it is an obvious statement about how good the presentations were. The better-known presenters were in great demand!
Jason Sudeikis was the celebrity guest on last Friday's U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? A long-standing member of Saturday Night Live, Sudeikis has branched out to star in several movies. He was raised in Overland Park, Kansas, and was led to believe that his grandfather on his father's side died when his dad was only 2 years old.
He started out at his parents' home looking at pictures of his grandmother and trying to find out about his father's father which has always been a mystery. He soon discovered the reason his parents had never discussed the grandfather: he was an alcoholic and he died homeless.
Sudeikis also found out that his great-grandfather led a double life. It seemed he was married to two different women at the same time, one in Chicago and one in Connecticut.
The third day of the annual conference of the U.S. National Genealogical Society continued on Friday at the Duke Energy Center in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. I have already written about the first two days and cannot add much more information about the third. It was a continuation of the first two. However, I can show a few more pictures that I took at the conference.
Can you help? Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping crashed his American-made P40 Kittyhawk single-engine fighter in the Egyptian desert in 1942. The remarkably well preserved airplane was recently discovered near a remote place called Wadi al-Jadid by a Polish oil worker, Jakub Perka. The RAF Museum in Hendon, north London, says it is hoping to recover the plane as soon as possible.
Here is a little-known resource: Internment Serial Numbers. There more than 16 million Americans, uniform or civilian, participated in World War II. Nearly 150,000 individuals who supported the war effort found themselves captured as POWs in internment camps run by the Japanese or Germans. Records of those prisoners exist today. The savvy genealogist just needs to know where to look and what information to have on hand when researching this information.
The following announcement was written by the American Society of Genealogists:
The American Society of Genealogists gives an annual $500 scholarship that can be applied to any of three genealogy institutes: (1.) the National Institute of Genealogical Research at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; (2.) the Institute of Genealogy and Historical research at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama; and (3.) the Certificate Program in Genealogical Research at Boston University.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
Genealogy information is wherever you find it. Have you ever thought of looking for genealogy books and records at everyone's online garage sale on eBay? I keep an eye on the genealogy-related offerings and have found some interesting items.
Perhaps the best thing I ever purchased on eBay was a tax collector's book from Corinna, Maine for 1907 that listed the taxes my grandfather paid that year. Another was a handmade quilt made by a distant cousin in the 1840s. I have also purchased limited edition history books for several of the small towns that I research with some of those books mentioning my ancestors. Some of the books were original editions that were 100 years old or more although recently I have limited my purchases to scanned images of old books that are sold on CD-ROM disks.
Is there a lesson to be learned from a University of Minnesota project? Could the same methodologies be applied to new genealogy books that become available for free on the Internet?
As a new University of Minnesota project expands, open-source college textbooks should become more readily available and easily vetted. Open source books have long been considered a promising way to cut costs. However, significant disadvantages have slowed the adoption of open source (free) textbooks: they are hard to locate, and they are of indeterminate quality. Few professors have adopted the cost-savings books because of the lack of quality control.
The University of Minnesota has launched an online catalog of open-source books (at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/) and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500 per book, with all of the money coming from donor funds. You can read more at Inside Higher Ed at http://goo.gl/VhSSz.
The annual conference of the U.S. National Genealogical Society continued on Thursday (May 9, 2012) in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio.
As the conference settled down into its second day, a few things became clear. The conference is well orchestrated with very few problems. This is surprising for an event that is held in a different location each year with (mostly) different organizers. Most all of the volunteers and quite a few of the senior organizers have never worked at a major conference before. I was pleasantly surprised to see things flow so smoothly. I am sure there must have been a few "bumps" here and there, but I didn't see any.
Ancestry.com is offering a free scanning service on their professional scanning equipment for attendees at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Cincinnati this week. I was a bit surprised yesterday when I stopped by room 238 where the scanning is taking place. There were no customers at all at the time I was there. I was told there had been customers earlier, but that "business" was generally slow.
This is a great service and has been very popular at past conferences. Conference attendees can provide the documents and photographs, while Ancestry provides flash drives to contain the scanned images. Scanning is done on professional-grade industrial scanners. The charge? Zero. Zip. NADA.
The annual conference of the U.S. National Genealogical Society opened yesterday (May 9, 2012) in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio.
The word "downtown" is a mixed blessing: it indicates the location is easily accessed by public transportation and has a number of excellent hotels within walking distance. Like the downtown areas of most other large cities in the eastern U.S., the word "downtown" also indicates that everything is expensive, including the same hotels, the restaurants, parking, and other necessities for those attending. It also is a very inconvenient commute for local genealogists who drive in daily to attend the conference. I am staying about 30 miles out in the suburbs in an RV resort. I got my introduction to Cincinnati's commuting problems on the opening day when the normal 30-minute commute required more than an hour!
The opening session started promptly at 8 AM. Well, I was told it started promptly as I was stuck in traffic at that moment. I arrived in the convention center about ten minutes later.
I have often written about cloud-based computing, including file storage, web servers, and even genealogy applications that run in the cloud. The question asked most often concerns security: "Is it safe?" In fact, cloud computing can be safer than home computing or networked computers in the office. The keywords here are "can be." Security is not automatic but can easily be achieved by paying attention to common sense security issues.
D. Joshua Taylor addressed the security issues at the annual RootsTech conference held in Salt Lake City earlier this year. He described the efforts and especially the security safeguards implemented on recent genealogy web sites. If you have any interest in cloud computing or simply want to learn more about what constitutes cloud computing, I suggest you watch Josh's presentation at http://bcove.me/59xmxxg8 or click on the image below:
An article on the PBS web site contains an interview of Henry Louis Gates Jr., known widely as "Skip." Gates is best known for his research tracing the family and genetic history of famous African-Americans. "There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees," says Gates. "My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree."
He says his goal in this work is twofold: "First, to show that we're all immigrants, and secondly, that we're all mixed — that we all have been intermarrying, or interrelated sexually from the dawn of human history."
The following announcement was written by the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project:
First Set of High-Quality, Easy-to-Search Records Now Available to the Public Thanks to Efforts of Volunteer Indexers
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH (May 9, 2012) – The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project announced today the availability of a free, searchable index of 1940 U.S. census records for six U.S. states, including Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia and New Hampshire. Records for these states are now searchable by name, location and family relations thanks to the efforts of more than 100,000 volunteers nationwide.
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