The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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J.R. "Corky" Rubio has published an article in the Express-News web site questioning why the University of Texas continues to hold, and ignore, documents from the early 1700s that were produced by the Spanish pioneers of San Antonio. Rubio claims that, in the 120 years since Bexar County sent a portion of the Spanish Archives to the University of Texas at Austin to be translated, relatively few portions of them have actually been translated. In San Antonio, after more than a century, local scholars, researchers and historians could have already completed these translations.
Rubio suggests it is clear UT cannot perform the task, and should return the archives to San Antonio. He also suggests that private groups, such as Los Bexarenos Genealogical and Historical Society and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and others, could make better use of these documents.
Kirkwood professor Gail Brown, coordinator faculty of the Geographic Information System program at Kirkwood Community College, has been working on pioneer cemeteries in Linn County, often with her Kirkwood students, for more than two years. Pioneer cemeteries are defined by the State Association for the Preservation of Iowa Cemeteries as cemeteries with 12 or fewer burials in the past 50 years.
Brown typically records information about each tombstone, including its precise longitude and latitude, then shares the information freely with genealogy and historic preservationists. She is interested in finding a way to make the information more easily and freely accessible.
Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Carol Christian warns that thousands of historical Texas documents are at risk of theft, loss or destruction by bugs, rats or weather, according to a report released Wednesday. Some of the documents ar even stored in boxcars.
Issued by the Texas Court Records Preservation Task Force, the report studied preservation in the state's 254 counties. Conditions range from excellent to abysmal, despite most county officials' good intentions, the group said.
Newsletter reader "Stony" Stonebraker wrote to tell of a new scanning service that is available. I read about the new service and became enthused. I write about a lot of services and products in this newsletter, but this is one I think I will use frequently!
I have been scanning genealogy books in preparation for "downsizing" someday. As I move closer to retirement, I realize that I will someday move to smaller living quarters without room for all the books and magazines I have accumulated. I won't have room for the required bookshelves. The answer seems obvious: digitize them! Thousands of books can be stored in a very small computer or in a tablet computer or even a flash drive.
The problem is that my progress to date has been slow. Scanning a book is a tedious process, and I haven't completed the scanning of very many books. Now a new online service promises to do the job for me at a modest price: one dollar per 100-page book. The same service will also scan documents, photographs, business cards, and even the old greeting cards from relatives I have been saving all these years.
William Jerry (Champ) Champion has created a YouTube video that shows a quick and easy way to read and photograph grave markers that are worn or have become discolored. In years past, genealogists have used a variety of materials to improve legibility of tombstones, from shaving cream to chalk and a variety of other materials. However, most of those methods reportedly damage the stone to some extent. Many of the materials are abrasive and also may leave chemicals behind that cause long-term damage. However, Champ claims the use of flour creates no damage.
Not everyone agrees. Some so-called "experts" will tell you that flour is harmful because it can penetrate into small pores of the stone, and, when wet, the flour will swell and can cause flaking of the stone. Some also claim that flour contains yeast, which encourages the growth of lichens and micro-organisms that can then live and grow in the stone, causing expansion and cracking. Technically, flour does not contain yeast when first ground. However, yeast floats in the air most everywhere and may land on flour, where it may flourish.
Newsletter reader Jim Benedict wrote to call attention to an article in the IEEE Spectrum that will interest many genealogists. Preserving the Present: Will Your Grandchildren Know What You Look Like as a Child? by Robert Charette describes the preservation of digital files and the potential for a "digital dark age."
As stated in the article, "The problem is that by the time we decide to preserve a digital record, the devices needed to read the file formats are often no longer readily available."
Records are fragile. While I have written several times about the need to make duplicate copies of all records of genealogical significance and to always store them in a different location, a new article by Cristian Salazar and Randy Herschaft of the Associated Press adds one more cause of record losses to the list: terrorism.
Besides ending nearly 3,000 lives, destroying airplanes and reducing buildings to tons of rubble and ash, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks destroyed tens of thousands of records, irreplaceable historical documents, and art. Items lost included forty-thousand photographic negatives of John F. Kennedy taken by the president's personal cameraman, letters written by Helen Keller, a collection of documents related to U.S. trade dating back to at least the 1840s, 900,000 objects excavated from the Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan (a famous working-class slum of the 19th century), and millions of documents stored on hard disk drives in computers within the building.
On August 5 and 6, Staunton, Virginia area residents will have an opportunity to contribute to the pool of knowledge about the War Between the States when the Civil War 150 Legacy Project comes to the Staunton Public Library. The Library of Virginia, teaming with the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, is seeking to scan and eventually to make available online as many privately held war-related documents as possible.
Residents who have original documents such as letters, diaries, military passes, discharge papers, oaths of allegiance, hand-drawn maps, pension materials, photographs and claims for damages by Confederate or Federal armies are asked to share their materials with posterity. The project is interested in digitizing documents dating from 1859 to 1867. Members of the Augusta County Historical Society will be on hand to explain how to properly preserve family manuscripts and photographs.
I am not the only one to be warning of the need for disaster planning. New Zealand Chief Archivist Greg Goulding's latest report on the state of government record keeping warns the country's public offices to "have plans to prepare for and manage the effects of natural disasters on their records and information."
Archives New Zealand is committed to assisting in the rescue and recovery of public records in Canterbury," Mr. Goulding said.
Time and again, I have reported on losses of historic documents, caused by fires, floods, earthquakes, burst water pipes, and even one building collapse a year or so ago. All of those sad events raise a question: "How can we salvage what is left?"
The quick answer is: "plan NOW for future disasters."
The Library of Congress Preservation Directorate has created a model Collections Emergency Response Contract that can be consulted by other institutions for their own collections emergency response contract development. The contract describes the services and associated requirements for stabilization and recovery of the institution’s collections when it is confronted with a disaster that affects or has affected its collections and the magnitude of the disaster outstrips the resources of the institution to respond effectively.
Like many other archives, the small island nation of Niue preserved their records on paper. Unfortunately, a category 5 cyclone devastated Niue, 1500 miles northeast of New Zealand, in 2004. The cyclone destroyed almost all the paper records. The island's museum, the repository of almost all Niue records, was a total loss. You can see what was left of the museum in the image below.
Michigan State University is using a federal grant to help preserve some of its most important digital records, including its catalog of academic programs. The three-year, $251,079 grant is from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and is funding the “Spartan Archive,” a prototype of an electronic records archive for what are known as “born-digital” records.
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