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 Tuesday, May 06, 2008
200 Years of Children's Books on Display
Posted by Grace
Before Webkinz and Tamagotchis, children had to find amusement in analog activities, such as rolling hoops, kicking cans and—gasp!—reading books.  I recently stumbled across the University of Delaware's online exhibit " World of the Child: 200 Years of Children's Books," which gives an in-depth look at what kids read as well as the education philosophies behind the often dry books. You can view sample pages of instructional books, primers and poetry collections, as well as more modern pop-ups and storybooks. The explanations can give you a whole new perspective on your ancestors' childhoods: "Until the middle of the nineteenth century, all books for children were
religious books in the sense that all literature was seen as requiring
a stated moral perspective. Since fairy and folk tales, beloved by
children in both oral and written form, were seen as threatening to the
established moral order, a body of literature was developed to ensure
that children's reading would reflect the conservative Protestantism of
the time. The high infant mortality rate and large numbers of women
dying in childbirth, also contributed to the focus in children's
stories on pious lives and early deaths."
Sure is a far cry from Pokemon. Click here to browse the collection.
Genealogy for kids | Libraries and Archives | Social History
5/6/2008 9:46:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) 
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Friday, March 21, 2008
Smithsonian Develops Photo Initiative
Posted by Grace
The Smithsonian possesses more than 13 million images in 19 museums and 700 collections,
organized by discipline. In the past, it's been difficult for researchers—and even curators—to know where all the images pertinent to a topic might be found. The Smithsonian Photography Initiative aims to change all that, making the institute's massive collection accessible for the general public and inviting history fans to get involved.  One facet of the initiative, click! photography changes everything, is a repository of essays on how the medium has altered the world we live in. Right now, 100 experts' musings can be found on the site; in the fall, click! will invite the public to submit images
and comments. ( Click here to read about our Photo Detective Maureen Taylor's translation of her own grandmother's wedding portrait and how it changed her perception of Nana from a static portrait to a living woman.) Enter the Frame encourages Web site visitors to " tag" Smithsonian photographs to make them more easily searchable. When you tag a photo, you apply keywords that describe the image. This could include dates, locations, seasons, topics, descriptions of people in the photo, objects in the photo, etc. For example, the photo at right (from our Photo Detective blog) might get tagged with mourning, black dress, woman, gloves, seated, veil and hat. Click here to see a list of all the Smithsonian Photography Initiative projects, including click! photography changes everything and Enter the Frame. You can read more about the benefits of tagging in Family Tree Magazine's May 2008 Toolkit article "Tagging Along."
Historic preservation | Libraries and Archives | Museums | Social History
3/21/2008 4:29:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, March 17, 2008
Find Old Newspapers at Free Library of Congress Site
Posted by Diane
The Library of Congress has added more than 79,000 digitized newspaper pages to its free Chronicling America Web site, for a total of 500,000 pages and 61 titles. The papers date primarily from 1900 to 1910, and come from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and Washington, DC. Among these pages are articles about the 1901 assassination of president William McKinley and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (below).  But even if you have no ancestors in those states, you can use Chronicling America's searchable directory of US newspapers from 1690 to the present. Say you want to find articles about a trial your ancestor was involved in. Search the directory for titles of local papers by entering the state, county and town; the year of the trial; a keyword appearing in the newspaper's title; publication frequency (such as daily or weekly); or type of paper (such as an ethnic or labor press). You’ll get a list of papers that might have articles on your relative. Click each title and the View Complete Holdings Information link to see libraries that have the paper, and which year's that library's collection covers. If none of the libraries are near you, see if you can submit a search request or borrow papers on microfilm through interlibrary loan.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives
3/17/2008 9:45:36 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Maps of historic London
Posted by Grace
If your family hails from London (or you just like cartography), you'll love this site: the British Library's virtual exhibition of historical maps of the city. The 40 historic plats are organized on a Google map, making it easy to determine what areas they represent. The maps and images are also divided by time period, and you can access a zoomable version to see them up close. I especially like the map from 1653 with the lengthy title "A guide for Cuntrey men In the famous Cittey of LONDON by the helpe of wich plot they shall be able to know how farr it is to any Street." For more resources for researching your English roots, you can always refer to our Ethnic Toolkit. The University of Texas also has a large collection of historic British maps in its Perry-Castañeda Map Collection.
International Genealogy | Libraries and Archives
3/5/2008 4:25:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Tuesday, March 04, 2008
NARA Posts Free Passenger Indexes Online
Posted by Diane
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has added passenger lists of Russian, German and Italian immigrants to its free Access to Archival Databases (AAD) service. (Irish passenger lists already were available here.) Each collection consists mostly of immigrants who identified their nationality as Russian, German or Italian and arrived at the ports of New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans or Philadelphia during the 19th century. The database for each nationality also contains some names of immigrants from other places. For example, 90 percent of people in the German records said they were from Germany or a “German” area—the other 10 percent came from elsewhere. The data are from passenger list indexes created by the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. Keep in mind they’re not complete listings of all Russian, German, Italian or Irish immigrants. For each collection, you'll see a Manifest Header Data File and a Passenger Data File. The search isn't the most intuitive we've ever seen, so get started with these tips: 1. From AAD, click Passenger Lists under Genealogy/Personal History. Then, click the Search button to the right of a Passenger Data File to look for an ancestor. (NARA calls the search terms you enter “values.”)
2. In your results, click View Record on the left to see first and last name, age, sex, occupation, last residence, destination and other information.
3. Use the ship manifest identification number to determine the port of arrival. Click View the FAQs and scroll to the chart showing ports and the range of manifest numbers assigned to each port’s records.
If you think you've found an ancestor, you can search the database for his or her passenger manifest identification number. That lets you see all passenger records from that ship—handy for finding traveling companions.
In the Manifest Header Data File, you can search for all ships with a particular manifest identification number, ship name, departure port or arrival date. For example, say you know your German ancestor arrived March 16, 1846. Click the Search button next to the German Manifest Header Data file and enter 03/16/1846 in the Arrival field. You'll get all the ships included in this database that arrived that day. Then you can go back to the Passenger Data File and search for the passengers on each ship. I highly, highly recommend reading the FAQ document—each database has its own, linked at the top of the search screen. It’ll help you search the databases and understand your ancestor’s record. Some places of origin or other data are difficult to interpret. You’ll want to see your ancestor’s orginal passenger list, which you can do on microfilm at major genealogy libraries, NARA facilities and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History Library. You can view records online through the subscription Web site Ancestry.com.
Genealogy Web Sites | International Genealogy | Libraries and Archives
3/4/2008 10:21:37 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Search Site for Shelby County, Tenn., Family
Posted by Diane
Derrick Minck, register of deeds over in Shelby County, Tenn. (home of Memphis), e-mailed me about the plethora of genealogical records available on the Register’s Web site—somewhat unusual for a county government site. (Heads up, fellow Mac users: The site came up in Firefox but not in Safari.) If you’ve got Tennessee ancestors, stop by and look for - Property records: “We have indexes and images dating back to 1812,” Minck writes.
- GIS: You can search by name or address and see an aerial property photo linked to property data.
- Archives: Search Shelby County birth (1874-1906) marriage (1820-1910) and death (1848-1956), records—and yes, folks, most matches are linked to record images.
You also can search indexes for Tennessee marriages (1980-2005), divorces (1980-2005) and deaths (1949-2005), with links for ordering copies. Circuit (1893-2000) and chancery (1945-1997) court, naturalization (1856-1906) and Memphis 1865 census indexes are there, too.
Search each record set from the home page. Now staff is scanning Memphis city directories from 1859 to 1924, and Minck says they’re almost ready to post 1859 through 1881.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives | Public Records
2/13/2008 3:01:51 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
More Resources for Cincinnati Researchers
Posted by Diane
We got a note from our hometown Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, which already has one of the best public library genealogy collections in the country, about its recently expanded Genealogy and Local History Department and its new online goodies. The new department consolidates materials previously spread throughout the library, making room in public areas for 7,000 more books and 8,000 reels of high-demand microfilm. Its Cincinnati Room lets patrons access historical materials such as local newspapers and manuscript collections. Librarians also will schedule one-on-one consultations to help direct patrons’ research. Visit the department’s Web site to take a video tour and link to research databases. Check out the librarians’ list of favorite online resources for Cincinnati-area research, too. Digitized historical materials also have made it onto PLCHC’s Virtual Library. Those include several 19th-cenury Cincinnati city directories and volumes such as the 1868 The Black Brigade of Cincinnati: Being a Report of its Labors and a Muster-Roll of its Members, the 1838 Report of the First Anniversary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, and the 1852 Annual Announcement of Lectures of the Miami Medical College of Cincinnati. Click on a book cover to download the file as a PDF.  One of the John Seegers listed in this 1866 city directory may or may not be my ancestor; I'll have to go home and check. We’re interested in hearing what's new at your favorite genealogy library—click Comment and let us know.
African-American roots | Libraries and Archives
2/6/2008 2:19:43 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Reconstructing East German Records
Posted by Grace
East German citizens were aware the Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security) could know everything about their lives. At its peak, the Stasi, as it was familiarly known, employed 91,000 agents in the country of 16.4 million and had hundreds of thousands of informants. But it was not until the GDR began to crumble in 1989 that the concept became palpable, Andrew Curry reports in Wired magazine.
It was discovered that the Stasi had generated enough paper to fill 100 miles of shelves, and it indexed and cross-referenced 5.6 million names in its central card catalog. In the Stasi's final days, officials destroyed about 5 percent of its records before citizens stopped them. Truckloads of paper were taken to industrial shredders, and as the end neared, agents began ripping files by hand. They stored the scraps in paper bags in the archive.
In the mid '90s, a team started piecing the 45 million torn pages together manually, at a rate that would have led to completion in about 700 years. But a new scanning project looks like it will lead to the files being recreated—and shared with the public—much sooner.
Funded by the German government, the Fraunhofer Institute has created a method for double-sided scanning of the scraps and sorting the images by color of paper, type of paper and method of writing. If the pilot project for 400 bags of scraps is successful, it will get the go ahead for tackling the remaining 16,000 bags of paper. It's estimated to cost about $300 million, but the archivists say it's worth it. Wired reports:
Günter Bormann, the BStU's senior legal expert, says there's an overwhelming public demand for the catharsis people find in their files. "When we started in 1992, I thought we'd need five years and then close the office," Bormann says. Instead, the Records Office was flooded with half a million requests in the first year alone. Even in cases where files hadn't been destroyed, waiting times stretched to three years. In the past 15 years, 1.7 million people have asked to see what the Stasi knew about them.
To read the entire fascinating article, click here.
Libraries and Archives | Social History
1/23/2008 1:13:14 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Monday, January 14, 2008
Family Tree Firsts—Part Four
Posted by Grace
This weekend I made my first excursion to a Family History Center. Practically every article we publish in Family Tree Magazine recommends going to your local FHC, not only because you have access to the Family History Library’s massive collection of microfilm but also because the volunteers are so helpful!
I gathered my ever-growing file folder of notes and photocopies and headed to the FHC in Norwood, Ohio, to see what I could find. The center is only open for a few hours a day, and since it was a Saturday, there were researchers at nearly every microfilm and computer station.
I struck up a conversation with the volunteers and learned quite a bit about their holdings. The Norwood FHC has many rolls of microfilm on permanent hold from the FHL, and quite an impressive selection of Cincinnati-specific records. They've got most of their rolls of film indexed in the card catalog you see above. (The volunteers recommend asking before you request any roll of microfilm to double-check if it is available locally. You could save $5.50!)
Most of my family is in Northeastern Ohio, but I did find a roll of Cuyahoga County birth records in the local holdings. One of the volunteers retrieved it for me and helped me get set up at a microfilm reader, and I began poking around the index and the recorded births. My great-grandmother's birth record didn't appear to be on the roll, but the index for her year did not seem to be complete. An FHC volunteer told me that births in the early 1900s were often recorded months or even years after the fact, so there's no telling where my great-grandmother would show up.
I did make one big discovery while I was at the FHC—I found out that I get very queasy looking at microfilm. Will this be the end of my genealogy quest?
Earlier in Family Tree Firsts:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Family Tree Firsts | FamilySearch | Libraries and Archives
1/14/2008 1:12:02 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Friday, January 04, 2008
Find Northern NY Ancestors in Free News Database
Posted by Diane
Did your ancestors live in New York’s Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego or St. Lawrence counties? Yes? You’ll want to search the Northern New York Library Network’s free Northern New York Historical Newspapers database. There, access 910,000 digitized pages from 27 newspapers printed mostly during the 1800s and 1900s. The Plattsburgh Republican is the earliest paper featured, with the coverage starting in 1811; Clarkston Integrator issues range from 1920 all the way up to last year. You can’t search all the papers at once, so click a title from the list, then type your search terms into the box on the left. Narrow your search by putting phrases in quotation marks ( "harold smith") and use Boolean tools (such as a minus sign to exclude a word, as in lake –placid). See the How to Search page for more tips, and Frequently Asked Questions for a trick to limiting searches by issue date. Matches show sentence fragments containing your search term, so it can be a bit hard to tell whether a result is relevant. Just click on a match to download a PDF of that newspaper page. You can zoom in, but your search term isn’t highlighted, so get ready for some reading.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives
1/4/2008 9:29:49 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
FHL and 13 FHCs Get Ancestry.com Back
Posted by Diane
After losing their free Ancestry.com access last spring, researchers at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History Library (FHL) and 13 largest Family History Centers (FHCs) will once again be able to search the subscription site's genealogy databases for free. FamilySearch and The Generations Network (parent company of Ancestry.com) have reached an agreement that provides free on-site Ancestry.com access at the FHL in Salt Lake City and its regional FHCs in • Mesa, Ariz. • Los Angeles • Oakland, Calif. • Orange, Calif. • Sacramento, Calif. • San Diego • Idaho Falls, Idaho • Pocatello, Idaho • Las Vegas • Logan, Utah • Ogden, Utah • St. George, Utah • Hyde Park, London, England The agreement takes effect immediately. Providing access at these centers was a financial decision, says FamilySearch spokesperson Paul Nauta. "The money would be best spent right now focusing on those 13 centers that accommodate a significant amount of patron traffic. We do desire to provide expanded access to all of our centers in the future." If your FHC isn't on the list, see if a public library near you offers Ancestry Library Edition, a version of Ancestry.com databases library patrons can use free at subscribing institutions. Until April 1, the FHL and almost all FHCs had enjoyed free, unlicensed Ancestry.com access since 2000. When it was unable to negotiate a formal arrangement with the LDS Church, The Generations Network discontinued the service (except a few databases for which contracts did exist and which are still available at all FHCs). See the March 29 E-mail Update newsletter for more details.
FamilySearch | Genealogy Industry | Libraries and Archives
12/20/2007 8:43:05 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Attention, Genealogical Librarians
Posted by Diane
…and friends of genealogical librarians. Family Tree Magazine editors are working on an article that will honor libraries across the United States with outstanding genealogical collections—and we need your help! To learn more about libraries' resources and collections, we want to survey as many genealogical libraries as we can. Any type of genealogical library is eligible to participate: public or private, large or small, etc.—as long as it has a genealogical collection the public can use (for free or by paying an admission fee). Librarians can get more details and download our questionnaire (as a Word document) from www.familytreemagazine.com/librarysurvey. Questions cover the types of materials, collection scope and size, online information, that type of thing. We’ll need completed surveys e-mailed to us by Jan. 14, 2008. If you have questions about the survey, please post a comment here or e-mail our editorial staff.
Family Tree Magazine articles | Libraries and Archives
12/18/2007 4:54:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Looking for one's own Peeps
Posted by Grace
The Birmingham Public Library posted this too-cute video about a little guy's genealogy quest:
Genealogy fun | Libraries and Archives | Videos
12/11/2007 4:37:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Research Your Tree in Just-Updated PERSI
Posted by Diane
The Allen County (Ind.) Public Library genealogy staff has beefed up its Periodical Source Index ( PERSI) with references to another 132,000 history and genealogy articles published in journals and magazines during 2006 and 2007. HeritageQuest Online, the genealogy database you can search free in many public libraries, has included the updates in its searchable version of PERSI. That brings PERSI's total article citations to more than 2 million. They reference 6,600-plus periodicals published in the United States, Canada and abroad since 1800. It’s the most extensive periodical index available for local history and genealogy research. You can search the updated PERSI at libraries offering HeritageQuest Online and at Allen County, Ind., public libraries. The subscription site Ancestry.com offers an older version of PERSI, dating from 1985. Search PERSI on a name, place or subject, and you’ll get citations for journal and magazine articles that mention your term. Then, request the full article from your library, borrow it through interlibrary loan or order copies from the Allen County library ($7.50 for up to six articles, plus the cost of photocopies). Read more about the formation of PERSI and about the Allen County library on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
Libraries and Archives | Research Tips
11/28/2007 9:17:06 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Map Chicago Ancestors on Interactive Site
Posted by Diane
Chicago's Newberry Library has created a Web site to help you with place-based research of your Windy City ancestors. ChicagoAncestors.org is a searchable interactive mapping site. Type in an address, and you’ll get a map showing the location, along with nearby churches, sites of crimes and more. Roll over the map markers for each place to see data such as addresses, date and type of crime, associated library resources or links to online images. (The data come from sites such as Homicide in Chicago and Jazz Age Chicago.) There's also a keyword search box, Type in St. Thomas, and you’ll see locations of churches with that name. You’ll want to read the search tips. You need to use address conversion tools for addresses before 1909, and leave off street descriptors such as Ave. or Rd. For example, I entered 137 DeKoven St., which is where Mrs. O’Leary (whose cow did not start the Chicago Fire) lived in 1871, and got nothing. But after downloading the 1909 street number conversion book (under Tools) as a large PDF, I looked up the address, searched on 558 Dekoven, and got my map. Wondering if Mrs. O’Leary might’ve attended nearby St. Wenceslaus church, I clicked on its name and got its years in organization and a list of its available records at the Family History Library. Registered ChicagoAncestors.org users can click to add their own comments to map points or map their own genealogical information and save it to their profile. Click Tools to get street guides, more maps and other useful links; and click What’s New for updates from the Webmasters.  Here, Mrs. O'Leary's address is the blue star, and the yellow dot is the site of nearby criminal activity.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives
11/14/2007 5:33:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
Find WWII Ancestors in Just-Opened Records
Posted by Diane
It just got easier to find information on your ancestor who served in World War II. This week, the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) opened Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) of Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard personnel who were discharged, retired or died in the service prior to 1946. That’s more than six million records documenting assignments, evaluations, awards and decorations, training, demographics, medical information and disciplinary actions. Some files also contain photos of the individual and official correspondence. You can access your relative’s records by visiting or writing the NPRC in St. Louis, submitting Standard Form 180, or (if you're next of kin) using eVetRecs online ordering. See the NPRC announcement for more details. The NPRC, a National Archives facility, holds service records of military personnel discharged after 1917. It plans to eventually open its entire collection 57 million OMPFs, with more available to the public each year through 2067.
Libraries and Archives | Military records
10/25/2007 8:43:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Utah Brand Books and Software Try-outs
Posted by Diane
Things just haven’t felt the same lately without a new announcement from FamilySearch, so I was glad to hear these updates: • As part of its records digitization program, FamilySearch has digitized Utah’s historic brand books. You can access the images free at the state archives’ Web site. City slickers may or may not know brand books show the identifying symbols more than 42,000 Utah ranchers branded onto their livestock (ouch!). Ranchers had to register their brands and ear marks with the state agriculture department.  Books from about 1849 to 1930 are digitized, with images linked to a full text search and name index. Each entry in the brand book can include an illustration of the brand, the name and county of the person registering it, registration date, and the location on the animal’s body. • At your next Family History Center (FHC) visit, you can log your finds on its computers using the same commercial software or utility you have at home. Or, you can try out a new program—free. Here are the programs newly available on FHC computers: Genealogy software- Ancestral Quest
- RootsMagic
- Legacy Family Tree
Genealogy utilities
- Personal Historian (helps you write about your family)
- Family Atlas (creates maps based on your family data)
- Map My Family Tree (creates maps based on your family data)
- Genelines (helps you create ancestral timelines)
- Pedigree Analysis (submit your family file for research advice)
- PAFWiz 2.0 (add-on tools for for Personal Ancestral File)
- PAF Insight (performs advanced functions for LDS church members using Personal Ancestral File)
- PAF Companion 5.2 (generates reports for Personal Ancestral File)
Check out the January 2008 Family Tree Magazine, on newsstands Nov. 13, for our software panel test results of four popular programs.
Genealogy Software | Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives
10/9/2007 9:17:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, August 20, 2007
NARA Record Request Fees Go Up Oct. 1
Posted by Diane
We’ve known it was coming since the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) proposed last February to raise its reproduction fees for records you order. The good news is, it could’ve been worse. Effective Oct. 1, NARA will charge $75 for a Civil War pension file of up to 100 pages, plus $.65 per additional page (for longer files, staff will contact the requestor with a price quote before filling the order). NARA will charge $50 for pre-Civil War pension files regardless of page count, and $.75 per page to copy other records. While still a steep increase from the current $37 for a Civil War pension file, these fees are less than the $125 and $60 NARA originally proposed for Civil War and pre-Civil War pensions, respectively. (Still, save some cash by sending your request before October. The July 2007 Family Tree Magazine has instructions for ordering Civil War pensions.) In the Aug. 17 Federal Register,
national archivist Allen Weinstein attributes the change to public comment-inspired alterations in formulas for calculating document reproduction costs. Though its average pension file order was for 106 pages, 65 percent of orders were for files less than 100 pages. NARA received 1,281 comments during the 60-day comment period. About half the commenters identified themselves as genealogists. Looks like some comments hit a nerve by saying NARA’s proposal exaggerated actual copying costs. Weinstein wrote, “We firmly reject allegations that the fees are being raised capriciously for the purpose of supplementing funding for the agency or reducing the number of reproduction orders received.” He added it’s not practical to compare NARA’s photocopying costs with those of other entities because of archival document considerations including file retrieval and replacement, paper fragility, separating papers from fasteners, placing non-standard-size documents on copiers' glass platens and ensuring image legibility. Weinstein said NARA lacks funding for digitizing all the Civil War pension files. The agency considers them prime candidates for a digitization partnership, but “there is no near-term alternative to the current process for fulfilling fixed-fee order requests for reproductions of Civil War pension files.”
Libraries and Archives | Public Records
8/20/2007 10:25:08 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Saturday, August 18, 2007
FamilySearch starts new records-access project
Posted by Diane
In the next two years, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' FamilySearch will release free online indexes for a long list of genealogical records—150 million images total. Thousands of volunteers are already working fast and furiously on FamilySearch projects to index digitized records, so the church is turning to another source for help with this one: businesses such as The Generations Network, Footnote and others.
For what’s known as the Genesis Project, FamilySearch—the church’s records-scanning arm—has put out a “request for information” seeking interested commercial service providers and records repositories.
FamilySearch will digitize the records, which spokesperson Paul Nauta says is the most expensive part of putting records online, and service providers would index them. Indexes would be free on FamilySearch and on the service provider’s and/or record repository’s Web site.
Targeted record groups include US and British censuses, US county naturalizations, Spanish parish registers, German SS records from the National Archives and Ukraine L’viv church records.
Those entities could choose to charge for access to digitized record images; the images would be free at the LDS church’s Family History Centers.
In other FamilySearch news:
- FamilySearch’s Family History Library, Allen County Public Library and the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library are joining to digitize and index 100,000 books in the libraries’ holdings of local and family histories from all across the country. It’ll be the largest collection of its kind on the Web with free access at the BYU library's site. Read more on FamilySearch.
- Next up for the FamilySearch Indexing Project is the 1930 Mexico Census, Revolutionary War Pensions and Land Warrants, Irish Civil Registration and 1900 US census records for more states.
For more information on FamilySearch records access initiatives, look for the November 2007 Family Tree Magazine, on newsstands and FamilyTreeMagazine.com Sept. 11.
FamilySearch | Genealogy Software | Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives
8/18/2007 10:39:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, August 16, 2007
Genealogy Heaven at Allen County Library
Posted by Diane
Yesterday, the first day of the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Fort Wayne, Ind., the staff at the nearby Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center shelved 11,460 books and other materials. That's just a fraction of the largest public library genealogy collection in the country, and conference attendees are eager for the chance to search for ancestors between lectures. Astounding is a good word for the center. Yesterday we toured some of the giant collection of 350,000+ books (including 55,000 family histories; an impressive array of county histories, school yearbooks and records indexes) and 513,000 “microtexts” (microfilm and microfiche). Those include censuses, passenger lists and more. Hoosiers and non-Hoosiers come here for the resources covering counties
across America, plus countries overseas. The library’s staff are
the folks behind the Periodical Source Index, too, which references
genealogical and historical periodicals dating back to 1800. Soon you can see more details in a video of the tour in an online video—we’ll
let you know when you can see this truly quality visual experience.
Genealogy Events | Libraries and Archives
8/16/2007 5:30:27 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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