Saturday, January 17, 2009

a personal WIKI

Main Page - Family

from my GENBRIT email:-

Back in August, I posted a message about my experimental use of a Wiki as a personal (rather than collaborative) software application for genealogy.

The principal reasons for experimenting with it were:

- You can load all kinds of "media" into it: images (in lots of formats), video, pdf documents, word documents and use it like an electronic filing system.

- It is good at linking information together: take a look at Wikipedia and the way that everything is linked to everything else.

- It is very good for editing the free-format (eg biographical)information about people.

- It allows the creation of templates which could be applicable tosuch things as recording information from certificates or censuses.

- The software is free

The main challenge has been in writing scripts that will populate the wiki from my existing genealogy database, together with the complementary scripts that will recreate the database from the
wiki.Only with both of these sets of scripts in place, have I felt confident to work on the wiki, knowing that I can always switch back to the old database if things don't work out.

I have put one or two example pages on a website at
http://www.martleweb.co.uk/JosiahGumbleton/JosiahGumbleton/index.html
which give an idea of how it looks. Please note that these are just
html extracts from the wiki (essentially screen shots) - the full wiki
database is not running at this site. This means you can't edit pages,
search etc, and some of the links go nowhere.

What I like so far...
- As expected, the wiki is a superb way of cataloguing scanned
documents, transcripts, images, etc.
- Mediawiki's citation extension is excellent for tagging facts about
ancestors with references to the source information, which appear as
numbered footnotes. I have mostly used these as links to separate
pages for the source materials.
- The use of "categories" is a very handy way of grouping pages
together (eg into families).

So far, I have populated the wiki with almost 300 "people pages" and
about an equal number of pages with source material, information about
places and other miscellaneous material.

I have't yet decided to move my genealogy data exclusively to the wiki, but results so far are quite promising. Is anyone else out there pursing any similar projects?

Regards

Steve West

ancestry.com transcriptions


Question
How do I get started with the World Archives Project?
Answer

Getting started is easy. First, you'll need to download the World Archives Project software. Click here to download and install the keying tool. Once you've downloaded and installed the software, view the tutorial for instructions on participating in the project. Then you are ready to begin keying records.

Additional World Archives Project Information

Click on the links below to view additional information and help in keying with the World Archives Project.

World Archives Project Keying Guidelines
Project specific tips for the World Archives Project
FAQs about completing a World Archives Project record set

If you are a member or registered guest of Ancestry.com, simply use your Ancestry.com username and password to login to the software. If you are not a member or registered guest, visit Ancestry.com and register as a guest to obtain a username and password. Registered guest accounts are available for free.


World Archives Project vs. FamilySearch Indexing:

"So what then is the underlying difference between the two projects? Not much that I can see. Both projects promise free access for everyone to the indexes created by the volunteer indexers. Both do not plan, however, to offer free access to the actual images themselves.

FamilySearch, at least so far, is offering free access to the images online, but they have stated that in their future collaborations with societies and other organizations that not all images will be available free on their Web site.

Ancestry.com also does not plan to offer online access to the images for free, although they are offering free image access to frequent contributors (currently volunteers indexing 900+ records per quarter).

Both organizations will handle the expensive digitization of the records, and provide an online indexing tool which makes it easy for society members to participate in indexing the records. Both provide participating societies with a copy of the index and the digitized images for their own use (to put up on their Web site as a tool to attract new members, for example)."

The World Archives Project - Google Search:

FamilySearch Labs: "FamilySearch Labs showcases new family history technologies that aren't ready for prime time. Your feedback will help us refine new ideas and bring them to market sooner. Have fun playing with these innovations and send your feedback directly to our development teams."

Released Projects

FamilySearch Indexing

Extract family history information from digital images of historical documents to create indexes that assist everyone in finding their ancestors.

Friday, January 16, 2009

AOL genealogy chats

today friday.-

see you tomorrow in Mugs & Hugs 9 AM ET - (USA New York for example)
Ancestral Digs (Keyword to: aol://2719:3-232-Ancestral%20Digs)

or tonight in CW at 10 PM ET

or in the UK GENTREK at 4 PM ET
Genealogy Chat UK (Keyword to: aol://2719:3-5135-Genealogy%20Chat%20UK)

Ancestry.com Blog

Ancestry.com Blog - » For those who use the old search ui….: "For those of you that use the old search ui, you may notice that the links to the State and Country pages are now going to the new Card Catalog. First, be assured that your searches will still be in the old search interface, that has not been changed.

So why did we do this without telling you? As I’m sure many of you noticed the first few days of this week were not stable at times for the site. One of the culprits was the old state and country pages. They are based on code that has not been touched in about 5 years (that’s pretty ancient in terms of code and technology). These pages were incredibly inefficient and we made a choice between pulling those and getting the site more stable, or leaving them up and dealing with continuing site issues."

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Denmark Rootsweb list

Welcome to the Denmark Rootsweb list FAQ site!: "from Paula Goodfellow (listowner) and other members of the list,

This site is a basic guide to Danish research by and for the members of the Denmark Rootsweb list. If you're not a member of the list yet, but interested in Denmark history, we'd love to have you join the group.

The Denmark list is mostly meant to help English-speaking descendants of Danish emigrants to learn how to research their Danish origins. We talk about Danish culture, history, language, and of course Danish family history research. We don't do y
Publish Post
our family history research for you, but we do try to provide information and guidance in your research."

RootsWeb: Genealogy Mailing Lists: Denmark : DENMARK
  • Archives. You can search the archives for a specific message or browse them, going from one message to another. Some list archives are not available; if there is a link here to an archive but the link doesn't work, it probably just means that no messages have been posted to that list yet.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

BBC NEWS | England | Remains of census restored

BBC NEWS | England | Remains of census restored: "The remnants of the 1851 Manchester census are undergoing restoration so the information can be retrieved."

BBC NEWS 1911 census records

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 1911 census records now online: "Census records from England and Wales in 1911 have been made available online.

The snapshot of life reveals the number of servants in Winston Churchill's household - and that David Beckham's great-great grandfather was working as a refuse collector."

What US Census Numbers Mean

Diana's Genealogy Pages: What Census Numbers Mean: "the column headings for the 1790-1930 U.S. Census Population Schedules, plus some state census and other census schedules. Items are listed in the order they appear on the schedules as columns, left to right. Be aware that there are some differences from state to state, for example, northern states are apt to omit columns for slaves. With regard to immigration, 'Na' means naturalized, 'Al' means alien, and 'Pa' means papers of intent (to become a citizien) have been filed"

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Old Bailey London

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834: "A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
We can no longer maintain this early version of the Old Bailey Proceedings Online and it will be permanently withdrawn on 31 January 2009.

"For the Proceedings, please go to www.oldbaileyonline.org. The bibliography and schools pages have been transferred to the Old Bailey user wiki, at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/obp-wiki/index.php/Main_Page. If you have any concerns about these changes, please contact oldbailey@sheffield.ac.uk.

Contains 101,102 trials, from April 1674 to October 1834

The 1911 Census

The 1911 Census: "Special findmypast discount, 10% off pay per view credits including 1911 census through this link.
Use promotional code UYR23PAYG when buying pay per view credits.
Also 10% discount on subscriptions with promotional code UYR23SUB."

The 1911 census from findmypast is now officially launched
For more information and for a special discount offer on
pay-per-view credits for viewing transcripts and schedules,
see the accessing the 1911 census page.

Message Board: "Welcome to the 1911census.org.uk message board. It's free to use and you can post messages and queries, either for a new subject or to follow up on existing subjects."

Inger Christensen død, 73 år

TV 2 Vip - Forfatteren Inger Christensen død: "Inger Christensen har flere gange fortalt, hvorledes hun på gymnasiet i fødebyen Vejle blev regnet for lidt undselig, fordi hun virkede fjern og ligesom indelukket i sin egen verden. Formentlig var hun i den verden travlt optaget af at lege med sprogets virkemidler, selv om hun ikke i første omgang tog den direkte kurs mod det, der senere skulle blive hendes livsgrundlag.

Inger Christensen indskrev sig på Københavns Universitet, hvor hun i 1955 gik til filosofikum. Samme år blev hendes første digte antaget i tidsskriften Hvedekorn. Hun droppede hurtigt universitetsstudierne og begyndte i stedet på Århus Seminarium, hvor hun fik sin lærereksamen i 1958.

Kort efter mødte hun Poul Borum, som hun blev gift med og siden skilt fra. Hun følte sig dybt forbundet med Borum, lige til han døde i 1996, selv om de fulgte forskellige spor i deres parløb med digtekunsten. Mens Poul Borum var enormt produktiv og konstant involveret i alskens projekter og polemiker, arbejdede Inger Christensen anderledes selektivt og langt fra offentlighedens søgelys i det værksted, hvor hun samlede ordene sammen og formede dem til poesi"

ENGLAND 1911 Census website

Welcome to the official 1911 Census website

form my email:-

Dear family historian,

We wanted you to be the first to know that the 1911census.co.uk website launches officially tomorrow.

We have added many more of the counties that were unavailable on the beta site over Christmas, including Lancashire, Essex, Kent, Yorkshire (West Riding), Nottinghamshire and Herefordshire. We continue to scan the remainder of the census and will make the remaining counties available as soon as possible. A full list of the counties available at launch, and those still to come, appears at the end of this email.

We expect the site to be very busy at first, and so we have taken a number of measures to make sure that as many people as possible can get their searches completed successfully. The first is that we have deliberately restricted some of the search functions on the site, meaning that the search is not as flexible as it will be later on. Secondly, we are only allowing users to download original pages, rather than view them directly on the website.

Obviously, we will 'unlock' the powerful search features and switch on image viewers as soon as possible after launch and let you know by email and via the blog when we have done this.

During launch, if the site becomes exceptionally busy, we will also restrict the number of new people entering the site. We want to allow the people who are already using the site to complete their searches rather than make the site impossibly slow for everybody. We have built the site to withstand a very large (but not infinite) number of visitors, so if you find that you are not being allowed in, please bear with us. Real-time service updates can be found on our blog, which we advise you to check frequently for the latest news.

Finally, we know many of you are as excited as we are to see the remaining counties that will become available over the coming months. However, we cannot give you specific launch dates for these remaining counties - we are continuing to scan the census into the spring and anticipate that the census will be complete by this summer. Rest assured that by staying signed up to our newsletter and checking the blog, you will be the first to know of all new developments.

Thank you to all those who participated in the beta period and we wish you the very best of success in using the 1911census.co.uk website to broaden your family history research.

The 1911census.co.uk team

Counties available at launch:

Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Cheshire
Cornwall
Derbyshire
Devonshire
Dorsetshire
Essex
Gloucestershire
Hampshire
Herefordshire
Hertfordshire
Huntingdonshire
Kent
Lancashire
Leicestershire
Lincolnshire
London
Middlesex
Norfolk
Northamptonshire
Nottinghamshire
Oxfordshire
Rutlandshire
Shropshire
Somersetshire
Staffordshire
Suffolk
Surrey
Sussex
Warwickshire
Wiltshire
Worcestershire
Yorkshire West Riding

Counties not available for launch but coming soon:

England:
Durham
Cumberland
Northumberland
Westmorland
Yorkshire – East Riding and North Riding

Wales:
Anglesey
Brecknockshire
Carnarvonshire
Cardiganshire
Carmarthenshire
Denbighshire
Flintshire
Glamorgan
Merionethshire
Montgomeryshire
Monmouthshire
Pembrokeshire
Radnorshire

Other:
Isle of Man
Channel Islands
Royal Navy
Overseas Military Establishments

Monday, January 12, 2009

England and Wales 1911 Census website

Welcome to the official 1911 Census website: "The 1911 census is a record of everyone who lived in England and Wales in 1911. It provides a unique snapshot of the lives of your ancestors. 1911census.co.uk brings this vast resource to you online, so that you can search the census simply and quickly to discover how your family lived in the past."

the site is rumoured to be launching tomorrow 13 January 2009 and is already up and running now and then

Sunday, January 11, 2009

LMA

Aims and policies: "London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the archive repository for many London-wide organisations. The archives of the City of London Corporation (COL) and the former Greater London Council (GLC), London County Council (LCC), Middlesex County Council (MCC) and their predecessors are held here. LMA also holds records for many religious, public, business, local authority and other organisations based in London. The dates of items that can be found here range from medieval to the present day, and our collections are constantly expanding. At the moment, there are documents to fill around 72 km worth of shelving!"

Building works and closure: "Modernising and automating access to our collections and catalogues

This January, we introduced our new comprehensive catalogue to the 79 kilometres of archive collections held on this site: this is the outcome of over 8 years of work by our Acquisitions and Cataloguing team. In the course of the year, we will be introducing online document requests: coupled with electronic catalogue, you will be able to plan your visit very effectively."

LMA area map: "We do not hold every kind of record for all the areas. For the City of London we hold no parish registers,"

Digitisation project

London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section are delighted to announce a new partnership with Ancestry™ to digitise genealogical sources. To find out more please visit our digitisation page.

Genealogy Sitebuilding

The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding: "© ('TNG') is a powerful way to manage and display your genealogy data on the Internet, all without generating a single page of HTML. Instead, your information is stored in MySQL database tables and dynamically displayed in attractive fashion with PHP (a scripting language). Want to learn more? While here you can:"

AN EXAMPLE:-

William Moffat b. 25 MAY 1829 Blackerstone, Longformacus, Berwickshire, Scotland d. 8 SEP 1895 Balclutha, Otago, New Zealand: Roger's Online Genealogy