Saturday, January 31, 2009

FamilySearch Indexing: Completed Projects

FamilySearch Indexing: Completed Projects:
including
"# Irish Birth Indexes 1864-1883
# Irish Birth Indexes 1884-1903
# Irish Birth Indexes 1904-1921
# Irish Birth Indexes 1922-1942
# Irish Birth Indexes 1943-1958

# Irish Death Indexes 1864-1884
# Irish Death Indexes 1885-1905
# Irish Death Indexes 1906-1921
# Irish Death Indexes 1922-1944
# Irish Death Indexes 1945-1958

# Irish Marriage Indexes 1845-1868
# Irish Marriage Indexes 1868-1892
# Irish Marriage Indexes 1893-1921
# Irish Marriage Indexes 1922-1958"

GSU now FSI

At-Home Indexing Rapidly Increasing Genealogical Records Access - LDS Newsroom: "“If a hundred thousand people indexed only five names—which would only take a few minutes,” Nauta said, “that’s 500,000 names we didn’t have before – and that’s a chunk of progress in processing those millions of microfilms!”

From early in its history, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged its members to research their family history. In 1894 the Genealogical Society of Utah (now FamilySearch International) was established for that purpose. Recognizing that millions of people throughout the world have their own reasons to be interested in family history, the Church makes its collections of microfilmed and digitized records freely available to everyone."

"FamilySearch International" - Google Search

Friday, January 30, 2009

FamilySearch Record Search

FamilySearch Record Search

from my usenet email:-

As I don't see the topic recorded here, it might be appropriate to welcome the fact that FamilySearch has placed online Irish indexes of births, marriages and deaths from 1845/1864-1958. Go to http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch, click Ireland on map and follow link currently at end of page (map may be slow to load if you do not have a fast connection). Note that this is a pilot project which may be subject to alteration, and that the indexes only are online, so that it is still necessary to obtain full registrations by personal or postal application to the Irish General Register Office.

This development is a godsend for all interested in Irish genealogy in Ireland and abroad. The poor standards of service in the GRO search facility in Dublin are well known, and a much needed government project to digitise BMD records appears to have run into technical difficulties after the expenditure of millions. Having discussed the new FamilySearch service with some fellow genealogists, I have one reservation, which is that it may be unwise to place online particulars of the births of living people, including mothers' maiden names. Perhaps this element of the excellent service might be delimited to 1930 or thereabouts.

I have tested the online BMD indexes against a sample of data retrieved from manual research in the GRO, and find that the service passes the test with flying colours. Alas, the same cannot be said for the National Archives of Ireland 1911 Census online, which is riddled with errors and omissions and features only four counties after four years' work. Examples include misreadings such as Raster for Rafter, Mc surnames indexed with a space after the prefix, surnames indexed as forenames, a whole bunch of Valentia Island townlands misplaced, and nothing approaching a soundex facility. While it may be free to view, this National Archives project has already cost 3.5 million Euros of public funds and it is not clear where further money can be found as the Irish economy continues in freefall. It is my view that the Latter-Day Saints and/or commercial firms with a track record in digitising need to be drafted in to rescue the Irish census project.

Sean Murphy
Directory of Irish Genealogy

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Friends of Somerset Archives

Oddities - Friends of Somerset Archives: "To Cure ye Bite of a Mad Dog
Take of Rue pluckt fm ye Stalk - 6 ounces
of Garlick a little bruised, of Venice or Comon Treacle and shrid'ed Tin (of each a Quarter of a Pound)
Boyl all these in 2 Qts of Ale Till its shrunk a Pint

To a man or woman give 9 spoonfuls every morning, for 7 mornings
To a boy or girl 6, to an infant 3
To other creatures 3 sponfulls a morning for 7 mornings"

JewishGen is temporarily down

JewishGen is temporarily down: "JewishGen is moving!

The re-hosting of the JewishGen servers from Texas to their new location at the Ancestry.com data center is now in progress.

We hope to make this transition as quickly as possible. But in order to ensure the complete and reliable transfer of data, it is necessary to completely shut down all JewishGen servers for a period of time.

We will start up the new servers as soon as possible, but we may encounter some 'bumps' in our initial operations in the new location, as there are many programs and operations to be ported and configured.

We anticipate that after the transition, JewishGen will be stronger, faster, and more reliable than ever. Thank you for your continued patience and support, and we look forward to providing you with an ever-improving JewishGen experience.

Update: Thursday, January 29: We're making good progress, and hope to have the basic servers online and accessible within the next 24 hours."

see
site:ancestry.com jewishgen - Google Search which includes Rootsweb message boards which are gratis

AND - site:ancestrylibrary.com jewishgen - Google Search

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Wiltshire County Council - Wiltshire Archive Catalogue - Wiltshire Wills

Wiltshire County Council - Wiltshire Archive Catalogue - Wiltshire Wills: "The first stage of our on-line catalogue project provides access to a detailed catalogue of wills, 1540-1858, held in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives (also known as Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office). Access to the catalogue is free of charge.

We are also in the process of gradually adding digital images of probate records (at present about 25% of records have images attached but we hope to increase that substantially during 2009) and in order to increase the speed at which these can be added, from 26 January 2009 we will begin charging to view the digital images on-line. There will continue to be free access to view the digital images on DVD at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

We are grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the other organisations who have made the Wiltshire wills project possible."

family trees for Baltic Germans

Digitale Bibliothek - Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum: "Titelblatt: Stammtafeln Deutsch-Baltischer Geschlechter. I. Reihe"

Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek - Bavarian State Library: "The library in brief
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds almost 10 million volumes, about 50,000 current periodicals and newspapers and 8.500 licensed electronic journals as well as outstanding historical collections and one of the most important manuscript collections worldwide."

Abbreviations for English given names - Wiktionary

Abbreviations for English given names - Wiktionary: "his List of abbreviations for names shows common abbreviations of English given names.

Many historical records utilise standard abbreviations of given names in order to save time and paper. This was possible in English speaking countries due to the relatively small number of personal names in use until relatively recently. Although very rare now, knowledge of these abbreviations is essential for genealogists when consulting very old records that list many names, such as parish registers.

Many of these abbreviations do not look like their full name equivalent. This is because the abbreviation is often derived from the Latin form of the English name."
Latin names with their English equivalent and some changes seen in Irish parish records©Jane Lyons

more:-
UNT Libraries Digital Collections: "Rules for a dictionary catalog, by Charles A. Cutter, fourth edition, rewritten"
UNT Libraries Digital Collections -- Rules for a dictionary catalog, by Charles A. Cutter, fourth edition, rewritten: "Rules for a dictionary catalog, by Charles A. Cutter, fourth edition, rewritten" 1904 from 1878

Genea-Musings: More FamilyLink.com News

Genea-Musings: More FamilyLink.com News with Randy Seaver: "I'm amazed by the tremendous shift in emphasis from 'genealogy content on WorldVitalRecords' emphasized in March 2008 to 'social networking using web sites and personal media devices' emphasized in November 2008.

The application of We're Related to Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut, Friendster, Yahoo, hi5 and iPhone is the major development shown in the presentation, and appears to be the focus of development over the past six months.

One message I received from this presentation is 'a company has to do what it has to do' in order to survive and be profitable. It has to take risks, innovate, try to catch the next technology wave, etc. It appears that FamilyLink.com is riding the wave right now. Will they succeed or wipe out?"Paul Allen posted Near Death Experiences yesterday on his http://www.paulallen.net/ blog, in which he describes how close startup companies can come to failure. Near the end of his post, he wrote:

"...but FamilyLink.com (corporate site) had its own very intense near-death experience in the past few weeks. Amid the global economic meltdown, a bank loan was called, and we scrambled for weeks to find a way to pay it off. A few options emerged, some less attractive than others, and then finally, a couple of days after Christmas, we were completely delivered from our financial pressures. We have now finalized our Series B funding which will be announced shortly.

"Amazingly, at about the same time, we turned profitable. Just six months ago we were losing nearly $300,000 per month. But through a combination of very painful cost reductions and the growth in our subscription, advertising, and product revenue streams, we literally turned the corner the week after Christmas, and hope to never turn back."

Monday, January 26, 2009

Den Store Danske - Gyldendals åbne encyklopædi

this is going to be a WIKI style group work:-

Den Store Danske - Gyldendals åbne encyklopædi: "I februar 2009 slår Gyldendal portene op for Danmarks største online-leksikon, Den Store Danske – Gyldendals åbne encyklopædi. Og vi inviterer dig til at være med – for ud over at læse i de mere end 160.000 artikler kan du skrive nye artikler, redigere i eksisterende, uploade billeder og film, kommentere artikler og meget, meget mere."

FamilySearch.org - News

Family History Archive: "The Family History Archive is a collection of published genealogy and family history books. The archive includes histories of families, county and local histories, how-to books on genealogy, genealogy magazines and periodicals (including some international), medieval books (including histories and pedigrees), and gazetteers.

It also includes some specialized collections such as the Filipino card collection and the “Liahona Elders Journal.” The books come from the collections of the FamilySearch Family History Library, the Allen County Public Library, the Houston Public Library – Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, the Mid-Continent Public Library – Midwest Genealogy Center, the BYU Harold B. Lee Library, the BYU Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Library."

FamilySearch.org - News

25,000 Historical Titles Now Free Online
15 December 2008

FamilySearch Digital Preservation Initiative Hits a Milestone

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—FamilySearch International reached a milestone today with the digitization of its 25,000th publication online. It began the initiative in 2007 and is ramping up to do even more—and faster. The effort targets published family, society, county, and town histories, as well as numerous other historical publications that are digitally preserved and made accessible for free online. The digital publications can be searched at www.FamilySearch.org (Go to FamilySearch.org, then click Search Records, then click Historical Books).

The 25,000th digitized publication was "A History of Lewis County, in the State of New York, from the Beginning of Its Settlement to the Present Time" by Franklin B. Hough. The book was published in 1860. The lengths of titles digitized to date vary in length, but the average is about 350 pages. There are even publications in Spanish, German, French, and Russian.

FamilySearch has nearly a million publications in its famous Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and there are millions of similar publications elsewhere in the United States. "The problem with the collection [of out-of-print titles] is limited access," said Ransom Love, FamilySearch senior vice president of Strategic Relations. "To view the publications, patrons have to travel to Salt Lake City or one of FamilySearch's affiliate libraries. If you are lucky, you might be able to order a microfilm copy, but then you have to wait for it to arrive at your local family history center. And there's the inconvenience of having to read it on a film reader," added Love.

FamilySearch aims to change all of that. Working with volunteers and select affiliate libraries, it plans to create the largest digital collection of published histories on the Web. It is targeting a wide range of historical publications—for example, users might be pleasantly surprised to find digital copies of Hawaii Sugar Planters Association Filipino Laborer files (1909-1949), medieval family history resource titles, and oral history abstracts (mostly from Hawaii), and numerous gazetteers.

"These are publications that were usually limited in the number originally printed and therefore only accessible in a few libraries or special collections worldwide. Yet there can be some great information of genealogical significance in the publications that only a few people would have access to prior to now," said Love.

Through its Records Access Program, FamilySearch is digitally preserving a copy of the publications and making them available online for the masses. Once digitized, the collections have "every word" search capability, which allows users to search by name, location, date, or other fields across the collection. The search results are then linked to high quality digital images of the original publication.

FamilySearch is not stopping with its own collection either. Over the past year, it announced that it is also helping to digitize and publish collections from the Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University—Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Houston Public Library, in Houston, Texas, and Mid-Continent Public Library Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri. When all is said and done, there will be over a million publications in the digital collection online. It will be the largest free resource of its kind.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Churches in Denmark

This is a useful listing of danish churches with district and county

Søg via: Kirker | Sogne | Herreder | Amter | Provsti | Stift
Tidligere danske områder | Kirkekort | Statistik | Logbog | Tilføj Link | OSS

Kirker i Danmark - en billeddatabase: "Dette site er blevet til efter en diskussion i nyhedsgruppen dk.videnskab.historie.genealogi omkring hvilke billeder af kirker der var frit tilgængelige.
Flere af brugerne sagde, at de havde billeder liggende som de gerne ville stille til rådighed, men der manglede en 'fælles platform', hvor billederne kunne sendes til og hentes fra. Det er formålet med dette site.

Da billederne stilles frit til rådighed for ikke-kommercielt brug pålægges det indsenderen at undersøge om der er copyright på billedet."

Translated version of http://www.dis-danmark.dk/kirkeimg/: "This site has been following a discussion in the newsgroup dk.videnskab.historie.genealogi around the pictures of the churches were freely available.
Several users said they had pictures of this as they would like to make available, but it lacked a 'common platform', where the images could be sent to and retrieved from. That is the purpose of this site.

Since the images be freely available for non-commercial use requires the submitter to examine whether there is a copyright on the picture."

DIS-Danmark: Amt-Herred-Sogn: "Amt-Herred-Sogn er et forsøg på sognevis at samle referencer til kilder på Internettet.
Der ligger ikke egentlige data i Amt-Herred-Sogn men alene henvisninger til slægtsforskningsdata.

Der er tale om en samling af informationer fra flere forskellige enkeltpersoner, og DIS-Danmark påtager sig således ikke ansvar for det datamæssige indhold. Der er anvendt samme administrative inddeling som i foreningens:"

Amt-Herred-Sogn is an attemt by parish to compile sources on the internet.
There are no data stored in this portal. Only references to other genealogy sites

This is a collection of references from various sources and DIS-Danmark cannot be held reliable for the validity of the nested content.

The organisation of this site: is County (Amt) -> District (Herred) -> Parish (Sogn)