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 announcement was written by Generations:
Chicago, Illinois – March 23, 2012: Professional Genealogist, Jennifer Holik, of Generations publishes six new genealogy textbooks for kids. Parents, teachers, and genealogical societies looking for a how-to genealogy textbook for elementary through high school-aged students need to look no further. In Branching Out, a new series available from Generations, author and professional genealogist Jennifer Holik provides parents and educators with the tools they need to teach genealogical research skills to children and teens.
I have written often about the risks of storing information on paper. Paper is fragile and is susceptible to deterioration as the years pass. Information that is printed on paper will deteriorate and disappear after a period of time. Even acid-free paper is vulnerable to moisture, mold, tearing and fire. Digitizing images solves some of these problems but also introduces new concerns.
Now one company, Progeny Software, has a new solution: a family tree, preserved forever on a metal plate, will be available centuries from now to tell the story of the family. Centuries? This strikes me as an excellent method of preserving family tree information.
These courses should be very popular. I suspect the courses will fill up quickly, so I suggest you register as soon as the registrations open.
The following announcement was written by the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh:
Registration for the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) will begin on Tuesday, February 7, 2012, at 12:00 noon (Eastern Standard Time).
The four course coordinators have proven popular at institutes and conferences:
The following announcement was written by the Family History Information Standards Organisation:
New standards-setting organisation formed to support Family History and Genealogy
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA--Wednesday, February 1, 2012--FHISO (http://fhiso.org) is a newly-formed international organisation created to develop standards for the digital representation and sharing of family history and genealogical information. The standards will solve today’s interoperability issues independently of technology platforms, genealogy products or services. They will provide opportunities for innovation and will address robust user requirements such as search, capture and research administration.
The following announcement was written by The MagiKey, LLC:
Salt Lake City, February 3, 2012- The MagiKey, LLC proudly announces that the 1940 U.S. Census extraction forms are available in its new release of MagiCensus Deluxe (version 3.1). In the last year MagiCensus has more than doubled the number of census extraction forms available, and now includes over 110 census forms across 10 countries. This makes it the largest collection of census extraction forms available for genealogy researchers. In honor of this milestone The MagiKey, LLC is offering conference specials for their first non-beta product, MagiCensus Deluxe, and their online webinars about Census Tracking. www.themagikey.com.
RootsTech hasn't even started yet but the announcements are being made. The following was written by the staff at Mocavo, the genealogy search engine:
Historical Record Storage and Sharing, iPhone and Android Apps, Discovery Stream
Boulder, Colo., February 1, 2012 – Mocavo, the world’s largest free genealogy search engine, today announced several new product capabilities and content additions that will be demonstrated at this week’s RootsTech Family History and Technology conference in Salt Lake City. New product capabilities include: free storage and sharing for historical records, iPhone and Android applications, and the new Discovery Stream.
"With these new features, Mocavo has evolved into a primary resource for genealogists and family historians to research and share their stories," said Cliff Shaw, CEO of Mocavo. "Our goal is to host all of the world's free genealogy content, to make new discoveries an everyday occurrence and to put more research tools into the hands of family historians."
On January 16, I published an announcement about professional genealogist Michael Leclerc joining the team at genealogy search engine Mocavo. That article is still available at http://goo.gl/ydSqv. The company obviously is expanding still further.
The following announcement was written by Mocavo:
Ryan Hunter Appointed Chief Operating Officer, Michael Leclerc Appointed Chief Genealogist
BOULDER, Colo., Jan 25, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Mocavo, the world's largest free genealogy search engine, today announced the appointment of Ryan Hunter as COO and Michael Leclerc as Chief Genealogist. Hunter joins Mocavo after four years as a Wall Street Analyst preceded by thirteen years of operational experience in the Technology Industry. Leclerc joins Mocavo after fifteen years with the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch Genealogy Research Communities first appeared as Facebook pages and Skype group chats in May 2011. Each Facebook page or Skype group is dedicated to a state in the US or an entire country. These pages and groups are run by experienced genealogy volunteers for those areas. These virtual communities are the online equivalent of asking for help at your local Family History Center. We grew from 4 communities to 59 over the past several months. With a minimum need of 2-3 admins per community--and a greater need for larger communities--we are at less than 50 percent "staffed." Advisers are looking to recruit more volunteers.
Join our team of admins who lead research communities on Facebook and Skype:
Will you attend RootsTech 2012 in Salt Lake City on February 2 through 4? If so, would you like to attend dinner with a bunch of genealogists on Saturday evening, shortly after the close of RootsTech? Indeed, you can join at least 91 other genealogists for dinner!
I often sponsor "pick up" dinners with no set agenda after the close of major genealogy conferences. These typically have no presentations, no speeches, no commercials, and little other organization. Most of the time, it is a bunch of people with similar interests going out to dinner together. The highlight of the evening is the conversations to be held over the dinner table. However, a rumor from a good source states that door prizes also will be awarded at this dinner. These will include at least one valuable door prize.
The following announcement was written by the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research:
Registration for this summer's Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research (IGHR) will open on Tuesday, January 17, 2012.
To prevent an overload of the online registration system, the opening of course registration will be staggered with different courses being opening at different times. Please see the schedule of times below. Once open, registration for each course will remain open until the course is full. All times are Central Standard Time.
The following announcement was written by Family Chronicle:
Family Chronicle is please to announce the immediate availability of our newest special publication, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors. The 68-page issue, the fourth in the "Tracing Series", is feature-packed with all-new content from a variety of experts in the field of Irish family history research. It contains many online sources, as well as information on city and trade directories, an Irish case study, Irish currency, Irish mariners and ships, Irish surnames and DNA, and much more. Cover price is $9.95 plus $4.50 shipping. To order, visit the Family Chronicle bookstore at: www.familychronicle.com.
The following announcement was written by the Handley Regional Library:
Stewart Bell Jr. Archives of the Handley Regional Library is involved in a project to put thousands of photographs online. An anonymous donation received by the Joint Archives Committee is driving this project. The archive is operated jointly by the Handley Regional Library and the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society. The donor instructed the archives to use the gift to digitize material and host it online. The archives houses over 20,000 photos. These materials are and have been available on a computer in the Archives Reading Room.
The following announcement was written by SavingOurs.com:
Morrow, Ohio, 23 November 2011- Saving Ours is a new grassroots group dedicated to preserving our archived records by ensuring they are digitized and made free to the public. The group started earlier this month and has recently published their new website. The website is SavingOurs.com. The group's main focus will be the hundreds of small town newspapers housed in local libraries. Small town newspapers contain invaluable genealogical and history data that will be lost unless preserved and indexed. Currently only a small percentage of these papers have been digitized and of these most are only available after purchasing a subscription. Saving Ours intends to work with local volunteers, companies and governments to digitize these documents and ensure that they are available free to the public.
A major business announcement was made today: MyHeritage will acquire FamilyLink.com, Inc., the parent company of genealogy web sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. This should strengthen MyHeritage's presence in the North American marketplace.
The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:
MyHeritage Acquires FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com
Significant move into US and addition of historical content mark major evolution for world's most popular online family network
PROVO, Utah & LONDON, UK & TEL AVIV, Israel-- MyHeritage, the most popular family network on the web, announced today the acquisition of FamilyLink.com, Inc., maker of the family history content sites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com. This is MyHeritage's seventh and largest acquisition since 2007. The purchase marks a significant move into the US market commercially and operationally, and will boost MyHeritage’s offering to families with the addition of a vast database of more than 3 billion historical records. With offices and staff in Europe, Australia and Israel, MyHeritage will now be adding its first US-based office in Utah, the home of FamilyLink.com and often cited as the family history capital of the world.
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 following announcement was written by Eneclann:
Eneclann genealogists were delighted to be acknowledged by President Obama in the speech he made in College Green, Dublin.
‘Eneclann were delighted to be given VIP tickets to the reception in College Green, along with Megan Smolenyak, the American genealogist who first made the connection between the President’s family and Ireland,’ explains Fiona Fitzsimons, Director of Research at Eneclann. ‘We weren’t really expecting an acknowledgement, so to hear him thank the genealogists who had worked on his family history was fantastic.’
The following announcement was written by Michael John Neill, publisher of Casefile Clues:
July 17, 2011 - Rio, Illinois: Madaleine J. Laird once served in the United States Air Force as an Arabic cryptologic linguist, but to paraphrase Forrest Gump, that's all she has to say about that. Her favorite civilian 9-to-5 jobs were at public and academic libraries, where she worked on the "front lines" at the circulation desk and in the trenches in technical services. She has written margin features for lower-division college textbooks, biographical profiles for a book on Irish American history, reviews of romance novels for a national magazine, and dozens of how-to articles on everything from household appliances to genealogical research.
Writing in Google+, Janis Martin has announced, "Unclaimed Persons is proud to announce our new home! We will no longer be working cases on Facebook starting tomorrow (Friday)."
She also wrote, "The new forum is for our VOLUNTEERS - those who help research cases. It has a public area for guests with information about UP, and a private area for our volunteers where we post the cases and helpful information for our members."
The following was written by Thomas Jay Kemp, NewsBank’s Director of Genealogy Products:
Discover Unique, long-forgotten Information about Your Ancestors.
GenealogyBank recently added over 32 million records and now has more than 855 million records online. 70 million of these records are obituaries published in newspapers and documents from the late 1600s to today. Along with birth announcements and marriage notices, obituaries are an important genealogy resource found in newspapers that can help you with your family history research. Obituaries do far more than tell you about the deceased—they provide a springboard to push you off into other searches, perhaps to unexpected places.
Once you’ve found them, however, what’s the best way to glean all the information you possibly can from an obituary?
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
Todd Knowles, a FamilySearch British reference consultant and Jewish genealogy specialist who works in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, was recently added to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain’s Roll of Honour at their annual meeting in London. Knowles was recognized for his distinguished service in the development and publication of resources relating to the Jews of the British Isles. His free online database (search the Knowles Collection) contains linked and sourced entries for more than 100,000 Jews from the British Isles and over 100,000 Jews from other parts of the world. The online collection provides invaluable information for those researching their Jewish ancestors.
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