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GeneaNet : Community : Genealogy Blog Saturday Nov 21, 2009

Genealogy Blog 


18 November 2009

Rare Books A Top Draw For Georgia Archives' Book Sale

You never know what treasures may be buried among the 25,000 books that go on sale Thursday at the Georgia Archives in Morrow, USA.

Volunteers at the state’s repository for historic documents have amassed an assortment of volumes from around the country that just may include a few hidden gems.

"There is usually a small section of rare books, but it’s an odd assortment," said the Stone Mountain resident. "You might find exactly what you want; you may find nothing at all. I always look for genealogy books or anything about Atlanta, and I love mysteries, so I buy lots of paperbacks that are very cheap – about $1. No matter what you’re looking for, it’s best to go early."

Source & Full Story

17 November 2009

Collection Of Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers Soon To Become Public

The last great archives of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency may soon be available to researchers and the public -- 14 boxes of handwritten notes, gifts and correspondence, including a letter from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini congratulating him on his 1933 inauguration.

The House on Monday approved a bill to clear the way for the memorabilia to be donated to Roosevelt's presidential library and museum in Hyde Park, N.Y.

The boxes have been sitting sealed at Roosevelt's presidential library since July 2005, tied up in an ownership dispute between the government and a private collector.

Source & Full Story

The National Archives Of Australia Will Close Its State offices In Adelaide, Darwin And Hobart

The National Archives of Australia has announced it will close its State offices in Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart in a bid to cut costs.

Director General of the Archives, Ross Gibbs said the offices would be closed over the next two-and-a-half years as building leases expired. "The decision to close these particular offices was difficult, but is, I believe, a responsible one," Mr Gibbs said. "Canberra will bear budget cuts to achieve the savings, and there would naturally be a flow-on to all State offices."

"The decision to close the Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart offices was based on the knowledge that they could not endure any more budget cuts while still maintaining the high level of service that they are known for."

Source & Full Story

12 November 2009

JFK Investigation Photos Now Online

Photographs taken by Dallas police and used as evidence in the criminal investigation following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are now available for public viewing.

The University of North Texas Libraries' Digital Projects unit placed the photographs in its Portal to Texas History.

UNT recently received a grant from the Summerlee Foundation to digitize 404 images taken by the Dallas Police Department during the week following Kennedy’s assassination. The Dallas Municipal Archives, a division of the City of Dallas City Secretary’s Office, possesses all of the original investigation files except for those that have been transferred permanently to the federal investigation collection held at the National Archives.

Click here to launch the JFK photos site

Source & Full Story

11 November 2009

US National Archives Launches New Online Reservation System

For the first time, the US National Archives today launches a new online reservation system to make it easier for individuals, families, and large groups alike to visit National Archives. By simply going online, visitors can reserve their choice of dates and times in a matter of minutes. While reservations are not required to visit the National Archives and admission is free, this new system will eliminate the long lines and often lengthy wait.

"This important step will simplify the vacation planning process for our visitors and provide an opportunity for easy access to the National Archives Experience," said Acting Archivist Adrienne Thomas. Reservations will be handled through the National Recreation Reservation Service (NRRS).

Starting today, November 11, visitors to the National Archives Experience can make reservations online at www.archives.gov/nae/visit/reserved-visits.html, from the NRRS website at www.recreation.gov.

Source & Full Story

9 November 2009

Digital Library of Georgia Brings 3 Georgia Historic Newspapers Online

The Digital Library of Georgia announces the free online availability of three historic Georgia newspapers: the Macon Telegraph Archive, the Columbus Enquirer Archive, and the Milledgeville Historic Newspapers Archive. Each extensive archive provides historic newspaper page images that are both full-text searchable and can be browsed by date. Zooming and printing capabilities are provided for each page image (via a DjVu browser plug-in).

The Macon Telegraph Archive (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/telegraph) offers online access to weekly, daily, and semi-weekly issues under various titles spanning the years 1826 through 1908, and includes over 51,000 page images.

The Columbus Enquirer Archive (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/enquirer) provides online access to weekly, daily and tri-weekly issues under various titles spanning the years 1828 through 1890. The archive includes more than 32,000 page images.

The Milledgeville Historic Newspapers Archive (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/milledgeville) offers online access to eleven historic newspaper titles spanning the years 1808 through 1920 (including the Civil War years when Milledgeville was the state capitol). The archive includes over 49,000 page images.

The Visible Archive: Mapping the National Archives of Australia Collection

The Visible Archive is a research project on the visualization of the huge museum collection currently held by the National Archives of Australia.

As archives are increasingly digitised, so their collections become available as rich, and very large, datasets (the Archives, for instance, contain more than 18.2 million images). Individual records in these datasets are readily accessible through traditional search interfaces. However, it is more difficult to gain any wider sense of these cultural datasets due to their sheer scale. Conventional text-based displays are unable to offer us any overall impression of the millions of items contained in modern museum collections.

Source & Full Story

Digitization Is Not A Long-Term Solution

The euphoria that opportunities in the field of digitization generate is great. However, Dr. Martin Luchterhandt, senior archives councillor at the National Archives Berlin, warns about considering digitization to be a universal remedy.

Mr. Luchterhandt, the blessing of digitization is praised by many and especially by libraries. You tend, however, to take a somewhat more sceptical view towards it. Why?

In the case of digital media the norm is: everything that is not regularly updated becomes at some point obsolete. All the money put into digitization is lost if we do not constantly invest in additional expenditure to uphold the level achieved. If you, for example, scan in a document today, you are using standards that will in 20 years be outdated. In order to still be able to view the document in 20 years you must have the right hard and software at your disposal. Continual up-grades are necessary. And, if you miss just once, damage will occur. For instance, this can be seen by looking at the technical problems the Birthler authorities are confronted with when they want to use old, electronic recordings from the “Stasi” (former East German Intelligence Service).

Source & Full Story

8 November 2009

ScanRobots For Mass Digitisation – Even For Delicate Books

Dr. Markus Brantl, who runs the Munich Digitisation Centre, explains in this interview how modern mass digitisation works in the Bavarian State Library (BSB).

Mr Brantl, in July 2007 the Bavarian State Library started a mass digitisation project funded by the German Research Community (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Within two years almost 37 000 printed works in German with a total of over 7.5 million pages from the period between 1518 and 1600 are to be digitised.

Source & Full Story

6 November 2009

Early English Laws

Early English Laws is a project to publish online and in print new editions and translations of all English legal codes, edicts, and treatises produced up to the time of Magna Carta 1215. The research questions, problems, context, and method driving the project are discussed in Project Description.

It is supported by a collaboration between the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at Kings College London. The AHRC has provided initial funding for the first three years of the project (2009–2011).

http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk

UK: Digitisation Of GRO's Births, Marriages And Deaths Records

The digitisation of GRO's births, marriages and deaths records is moving forward and a new project, called the Digitisation and Indexing (D&I) Project, has been initiated.

The new project covers the digitisation of the records themselves together with indexing and upgrading the online certificate ordering process.

Until such time as it is able to provide an online index, GRO will continue to make a full set of the GRO indexes freely available in microfiche format at several libraries and record offices across England and Wales. Further information on the current location of the microfiche indexes can be found on the Directgov website.

Source & Full Story

5 November 2009

ProQuest Offers Online Access to More than 90 Years of the Detroit Free Press (1831‐1922)

News from the Motor City — from before statehood to the American Civil War to the birth and growth of the automotive industry — is now available in ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the definitive digital archive offering cover-to-cover, full-text, and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th Century.

The Detroit Free Press (1831‐1922) provides one of the deepest historical files and comprehensive coverage of the social, political and economic development of the Midwest, and offers new avenues into understanding the history of Detroit and Michigan.

Source & Full Story

4 November 2009

Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, To Help Fund Library Lincoln Collection

Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, will likely spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect the Lincoln Foundation Collection at the Allen County Public Library.

Tuesday night, city council passed a proposal out of committee to provide $250,000 to support the collection.

The money will come from Community Economic Development funds. The "Friends of the Lincoln Foundation Collection" requested the financial help.

The money will be used to make collection items available on the Internet and pay staff members.

Source & Full Story

1 November 2009

Rare Books Don’t Always Live in Glass Cases

STANDING among the 10,000 rare books in the stacks of the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Bruce Bradley, the director of the history of science special collections, pulls out a copy of “The Starry Messenger,” the revelatory book in which Galileo detailed his astronomical observations made with his own “spyglass” — the instrument that would later be known as the telescope.

“Treat it with care,” Mr. Bradley said as he gently handed me the library’s first edition, one of the more than 500 initially printed in Latin as “Sidereus Nucius.” The library paid $38,000 for the book in 1988 — at the time the costliest book the library had ever bought. But it’s hardly the only jewel in a collection of 500,000 books, journals and pamphlets that make this private library among the largest science libraries in the world. Also in its stacks are Isaac Newton’s “Principia,” the 1687 book that presented his laws of gravity, and Copernicus’s 1543 “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” among other noteworthy works.

Source & Full Story

29 October 2009

New Founding Fathers Documents Available On-Line Through NHPRC Pilot Program

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), in partnership with Documents Compass at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this week announced 5,000 previously unpublished documents from the nation’s founders are now available online through Rotunda, the digital imprint of The University of Virginia Press.

The ROTUNDA Founders Early Access project makes available for the first time letters and other papers penned by important figures such as James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The Founders Early Access portion of the site allows users to read, search, and browse the newly transcribed documents, and is available at no cost to users.

In 2008, Congress urged the National Archives to investigate ways to make the Founders Papers more readily available. Later that year, NARA issued The Founders Online, a report which included a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to historians, scholars, and the general public at no cost.

Source & Full Story

28 October 2009

Senate Panel Clears Ferriero Nomination to be Archivist of the United States

On October 28, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, by voice vote, approved the nomination of David S. Ferriero to be the next Archivist of the United States. Ferriero’s nomination is considered non-controversial and confirmation by the Senate is expected shortly.

Source & Full Story

Read also: David Ferriero Confirmation Hearing as U.S. Archivist

26 October 2009

Archives Of Queen Elizabeth's Dressmaker Sir Hardy Amies To Be Opened

Sir Hardy, who opened his fashion house at 14 Savile Row in 1946, helped establish British couture as a force in its own right.

The exhibition will contain material including previously unseen photographs of the Royal Family, sketches, and letters from such clients as Baroness Thatcher and Sir Cecil Beaton, the photographer.

It will also contain unseen drawings of Princess Elizabeth in the year before she was crowned Queen, and sketches of his costumes for Stanley Kubrick's science-fiction film 2001.

The designer was knighted in 1993 and died in 2003.

Source & Full Story

23 October 2009

Maps Revolutionised By 3D System

A new way of producing maps with lasers to create three-dimensional images has been tested in Bournemouth, England.

Ordnance Survey has used the system to produce a detailed computerised map of the town centre.

The map is the result of a three-year trial and the agency says it could revolutionise the way maps are produced and used.

Every metre of the town was captured using land-based and aerial surveys with high-accuracy lasers.

The lasers, which use 700 million points of light, plot detail including terrain, vegetation and buildings. The road network and aerial imagery were added to complete the maps.

Here's a video of the 3D map of Bournemouth.

Source & Full Story

21 October 2009

Washington University Libraries Receive Grant To Digitize Pre-War Slave Lawsuits

Washington University Libraries has received a $376,426 National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for "The St. Louis Freedom Suits Legal Encoding Project"—one of the largest grants the University Libraries have ever received.

The University Libraries will partner on the project with the Missouri History Museum and several internal partners, including the Humanities Digital Workshop, the Law School Library, and the American Culture Studies Program. The project will focus on pre-Civil War suits brought by enslaved persons against slaveholders in the St. Louis Circuit Court. In addition to transcribing the records, the project will develop a standard for encoding the legal function of the documents, which will provide a model for similar archives.

The two-year project begins December 1, 2009.

Source & Full Story

20 October 2009

LDS: Digitizing Arkansas Marriage Records

Arkansas marriage records from 1837 to 1957 are part of a volunteer project to put them in a free online database with a searchable index linked to digital images of the original certificates.

The collection includes 442,058 records linked to 199,431 digital images of the original marriage certificates. The records represent the counties of Ahsley, Baxter, Boone, Chicot, Clay, Crittenden, Desha, Crew, Fulton, Jackson, Johnson, Lee, Logan, Madison, Monroe, Montgomery, Nevada, Perry and Pike.

The first fruits of the effort can be searched at FamilySearch.org by clicking on Search Records, then on Record Search pilot.

Those interested in volunteering to help with the Arkansas project need Internet access and can do so at indexing.familysearch.org.

Source & Full Story

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