Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Major Book Publishers Terminating Their e-Book Contracts with OverDrive

A change in technology is always gut-wrenching for those who supply products that are affected. The record companies at first refused to allow electronic copying and distribution of their records. The result was widespread pirating of popular music which meant zero profits for the record companies. In recent years, however, the record companies have relented and most are now enjoying huge profits from songs sold on iTunes, Amazon.com, Rhapsody, and other paid online music services.

Throughout history, similar "problems" have occurred often. Buggy manufacturers suffered turmoil when the horseless carriage appeared. Many went out of business, although a few switched to manufacturing automobiles and made more profit than ever. Telephone companies used to have monopolies on telephone equipment and service, until Judge Green forced the breakup of Ma Bell. After a few years of turmoil, most of the phone companies are again enjoying reasonable profits while consumers have lower telecommunications costs than ever before in history.

The Second Edition of A Primer for The Master Genealogist by Terry Reigel is Now Available

The following announcement was written by Terry Reigel:

Boone, North Carolina - 10 February 2012

ReigelRidge Press is proud to announce availability of the Second Edition of Terry Reigel's sell-out book, A Primer for The Master Genealogist. The First Edition, introduced in February of 2008, was very well received by users of the renowned genealogy program The Master Genealogist™ (TMG). Two printings in the U.S. sold out, and the book has been out of stock at many outlets recently.

JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth Gets a Complete Genealogy

This looks like fun. The fictional Middle-earth is now the subject of a minutely-detailed "family tree project."

Emil Johansson, a photographer and chemical engineering student from Sweden, who has read "every book there is to read about Middle-earth" has spent years compiling a family tree of every character in Tolkien's world. Supreme god Eru Ilúvatar sits at the top, but dig a little further and you'll find out how the Sackville-Bagginses are linked to the Bagginses, that Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton had 12 little hobbit children, and much more.

The Cost Justification for eBooks

A local news story interested me and applies directly to past articles and comments in this newsletter. A private school in Florida is switching from printed books to eBooks on iPads for several reasons. One major reason is to save money. At the beginning of the next school year, each student will be given an Apple iPad. Most all textbooks needed by the student will be downloaded and stored on the iPad.

When I have written about the use of eBooks in the past, a number of newsletter readers have questioned the economics. Comments have been posted that questioned the ability of poorer families to afford the expense. The recent news story seems to answer those questions.

Apple's iBooks Author Disappoints Many

On January 17 I wrote "Apple to Announce Tools, Platform to 'Digitally Destroy' Textbook Publishing" at http://goo.gl/AezoI. The announcement is now official. Many people have looked at the announcement, and feedback has been lukewarm, at best.

Genealogical Publishing Company Catalog Online

In my drive to get paper out of my life, I noticed that one of my favorite vendors makes their catalog available online. Genealogical Publishing Company, affectionately known as "GPC," offers the company's latest catalog at:

http://www.genealogical.com/upload_images/GPCCatalog.pdf
 
http://www.genealogical.com/content/products_catalog.html

(+) How NOT to Republish Your Family's Genealogy Book

This is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

I recently heard a story of a family society that invested thousands of dollars in publishing a book that is valuable to family members. Due to a shift in technology, however, the society may lose its "investment." I decided to share the story with others to hopefully prevent repetition by others.

Thousands of family genealogy books were published from the late 1800s through the early twentieth century. These books vary widely in quality, but many of them are exhaustive reference sources, containing information about thousands of individuals born with the same surname. The most common format is a book that contains information about all the known descendants of an original immigrant or some other individual. Some of these books contain hundreds, or even thousands, of pages of information.

Why I Went Paperless

The term "paperless office" was first mentioned in a 1975 Business Week article entitled, "The Office of the Future." At a time when personal computers and the Internet were still embryonic, experts foresaw PCs on every desktop that could talk to each other by network. Over the years, the term "paperless office" became a joke as new computer owners discovered they could create more paper than ever before. Millions of people did just that: they used their new-found productivity enhancement tools to perpetuate old, inefficient habits.

Genealogists were not immune. Indeed, genealogy has always been a personal interest that attracts paper. We make notes, we create photocopies, and we purchase books. We quickly adopted the personal computer as it extends our research efforts further and faster than ever before. So how did we use our new computers? To create more paper!

Millions of genealogists started reading messages in newsgroups, searching databases online, and using search engines to find obscure references to our elusive ancestors. Once we found new information, we reverted back to old habits: we printed it. Those with organizational skills then indexed and filed the printouts.

I was always rather good at printing, but not so good at filing and indexing. Over time, I ended up with stacks and stacks of paper, typically not organized in any discernible manner. Over the years, I upgraded my printers more often than the computers. I went through a series of dot-matrix, then inkjet, then laser printers. Each new printer could produce more paper than ever before and at faster speeds as well.

Of course, I still could never find anything.

Genealogical Publishing Company Books Now Available Abroad

Good news for those outside North America! The following announcement was written by the Genealogical Publishing Company:

Genealogical Publishing Company Books Now Available in Great Britain, Ireland & the E.U.
 
Genealogical Publishing Company (www.genealogical.com) is delighted to announce that many of its 2,500 genealogy reference titles are now manufactured in the UK. Genealogists can now order our books from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.eu, bookdepository.co.uk, and other fine booksellers—without incurring the time and expense of overseas postage and handling charges. These include the works of authorities David Dobson for Scotland, Brian Mitchell for Ireland and Northern Ireland, Peter Wilson Coldham for England, and hundreds of other authors.

Kindle’s Personal Document Service

The Kindle eBook readers are very popular devices and for good reasons. They work well and are reasonably priced. However, Kindle devices are not limited to downloading books from Amazon. Did you know that you can publish your own documents or even digital books (up to 50 megabytes in size) or MP3, or Audible files you already own to your Kindle device? In fact, you can publish them to your own Kindle as well as to Kindles owned by friends and family, assuming that each Kindle owner gives you permission to do so.

Denise Barrett Olson has written a great article that describes how to copy documents to Kindle devices. You can read the article on FamilySearch's Tech Tips at http://goo.gl/5eR4a. Another "how to" article may be found on Amazon.com at http://goo.gl/e7FPm.

Reintroducing RootsBooks.com

Some time ago, I created an online genealogy bookstore called RootsBooks.com. It was in operation for a couple of years but, a few months ago, it encountered technical problems and I had to shut it down. Due to my heavy travel schedule at the time, I was not able to rebuild RootsBooks.com until this week.

Now I am delighted to announce that RootsBooks.com is back in operation, just in time for the holiday shopping period. You can find it at http://www.RootsBooks.com.

The new online genealogy store has an all-new look and feel as well as many new products. The emphasis is on genealogy books, naturally, but you will also find many other products of interest to genealogists, including handheld scanners, slide and negative scanners, ebook readers, and more. RootsBooks.com now has more than 1,000 products available for sale.

How to Find Libraries Near You That Provide Free eBooks

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.

Amazon Bypasses Library, Lends Kindle Books Directly

I have written before about libraries lending books at no charge to Kindle owners. 11,000 participating libraries are now lending the books. You can see my earlier articles at http://goo.gl/xnzCY and http://goo.gl/TEsDs.

If your local library is not participating, you now have another option: starting this week, Amazon is also lending books directly to Kindle owners without requiring a library card or any other form of library membership. You do have to shell out $79 per year for an Amazon Prime subscription, however. Actually, there are several good reasons why you might want to pay for an Amazon Prime subscription besides book lending privileges, such as lower shipping charges on Amazon.com purchases and downloadable videos. The Kindle Owner's Lending Library is simply a new addition to the list of services available to those who pay for Amazon Prime.

Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes

If you have an interest in old books, especially in the restoration of really old books, you will be interested in the story of an 800-year-old book that originally contained many of the writings of Archimedes. Many years later, the Archimedes text was scraped off and overwritten with text of prayers. However, the book still held a legible echo of the original text.

Thanks to extreme archival efforts, multi-spectral imaging techniques and computer algorithms, digital images have been produced that help the original Archimedes and ancient texts stand out from the visual clutter around them. The result is major changes in how we will think about Archimedes.

Checking Out Library Books with Kindle

On September 22, I published an article titled Amazon To Offer Kindle ebooks Via Public Libraries. I wrote:

"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."

The system is now in place and operational. Most of the 11,000 participating libraries are now lending books. Writing in the Ars Technica web site, Nate Anderson described his experiences borrowing library books with a Kindle. He writes, "Login to the system, usually by entering details like a library card number and PIN code, and you'll find a website straight out of 2002. Browsing a library's physical shelves remains far preferable to browsing the eMediaLibrary, but the site is serviceable, and finding specific books is simple enough."

Kinship Books

A new bookstore featuring books by Arthur Kelly is now available at www.kinshipny.com.  The newly-designed website allows searches by book, topic or surname.  A print on demand system is now being used to prepare the books with newly designed covers and perfect bound binding.

Arthur Kelly, charter member of the Rhinebeck Historical Society & the Dutchess County Genealogical Society, and member of the Palatines to American and other national genealogical societies, has been transcribing, indexing and printing books for genealogists and historians for almost 40 years.  His work involves working from original records, some of which include Dutch, German or Latin sections.  He transcribes the information into a standardized format, indexes and prints the volumes.  To date he has prepared over 300 books, including the records of early  churches, cemetery, tax and road records.

NEHGS releases the Seventh & Final Volume of The Great Migration Series: Immigrants to New England 1634—1635

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.

A Funny Book About Funerals

I haven't read this book yet but the description sounds great. In Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death, writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen writes of her travels around the country to discover how Americans are reinventing the rites of dying. It seems that the funeral industry is changing rapidly, much of it to the dismay of funeral directors. Cullen reportedly finds the humor and the irony in many of today's funerals.

For traditional funerals, the normal industry players are being shoved aside by newcomers. For instance, Costco now sells caskets made in China at very low prices compared to the prices charged at funeral homes. Many people are bypassing caskets and visiting hours entirely in favor of cremation and perhaps a memorial service held at a local rented hall or even at a local bar.

California Genealogical Society Publishes a Guide to Finding Records Supposedly Lost in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

The following announcement was written by the California Genealogical Society:

“I’m Sorry, Those Records Were Lost”
California Genealogical Society Publication Gives Researchers New Hope
 
OAKLAND, California–July 25, 2011–The California Genealogical Society (CGS) announces publication of Raking the Ashes: Genealogical Strategies for Pre-1906 San Francisco Research, second edition, a guide to circumventing the enormous record loss in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. This authoritative book by Nancy Simons Peterson, Research Director at CGS, is a must have for researching San Francisco ancestors, providing invaluable guidance on which records were lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire, which records survived, and where to find them.

Borders Books to Close

In still another indication of the turmoil in the book publishing business, Borders Books is shutting down.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection five months ago with hopes of shedding unprofitable stores, cutting debt and reemerging by September as a viable company. The company then closed more than 230 stores, but continued to lose millions every month.

This afternoon, Borders Books called it quits. In a late-afternoon announcement, Borders said it will close all remaining stores, close its Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters, and will also lay off all employees. The company will cease to exist.