UpFront with NGS: Archive

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23 January 2017

Worldwide Archive Finder

Worldwide Archive Finder

The National Archives (of the UK) has a neat webpage, Find an archive in the UK and beyond. Obviously, its strength are the archives of the UK and it also includes archives from around the world. Scroll down to “Find archives by country.” When you find a country of interest, click on the name and you will be taken to a list of archives for that locale. The list for the United States currently includes 276 entries.

The list is not complete and it doesn’t include some of the bigger national archives, such as The National Archives of Finland.

That said, for Oldham Lancashire, a haunting ground of my ancestors it does include the Oldham Local Studies Library and also the Oldham Hulme Grammar Schools Archive. The latter is new to me and of great interest as my mum attended that particular school for a few years (and, I think my grandfather and his sister did also (though I need to verify that))!

I definitely did not need to learn about this now; I have so many other things that I must do! Well, I guess feeding our genealogical soul on occasion is important also!

What neat archive did you learn existed that you weren’t familiar with using this database?

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Republication of UpFront articles is permitted and encouraged for non-commercial purposes without express permission from NGS. Please drop us a note telling us where and when you are using the article. Express written permission is required if you wish to republish UpFront articles for commercial purposes. You may send a request for express written permission to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org. All republished articles may not be edited or reworded and must contain the copyright statement found at the bottom of each UpFront article.

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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26 April 2016

Israel State Archives Putting Collection Online

The Israel State Archives is in the process of putting its entire collection online.

You can currently search the archive. Sometimes you will get an index entry (example for Mrs. Frida Levy) and sometimes you will see an actual document (I found an example of a scanned item for Frieda Levy, maiden name Hemo).

When any page loads, I just “right clicked” my mouse and selected “Translate to English.”

Everything isn’t quite fully functional (I had issues getting to videos except in Hebrew, a language that I do not speak) and that’s why you will see “The site is still under development” in bright red letters on the main page.

I did eventually find a video, in English, about the new web site!

Do note that using the English language interface only allows you to research documents that are in English. The project hopes to eventually catalogue the entire collection into English. Until then, you can also search using the Hebrew-language catalog (use Google Translate if needed to translate into Hebrew) and then translate into English.

If you have family who lived in Israel and/or you have an interest in the history of Israel, do check out the web site. If you find a document listed and not yet scanned, contact them and they will work to scan the requested document.

What interesting index entry or document did you discover?

Editor’s Note: Thanks to a recent IAJGS access alert for letting me know about this new web site.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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07 December 2015

Social Media Archiving -- a toolkit -- increasingly relevant and important to family historians!

Image by Jason A. Howie, https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/7910370882/

Used per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 2.0 Generic license

It used to be we communicated in person or via written correspondence. Then telegrams joined the mix followed by telephones ... nowadays, in addition to cell phones and face-to-face communication, we use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and numerous other social media platforms. It’s rare that hand-written pieces of correspondence are created anymore.

We all can identify with archives that carry printed material, video material and audio material. What about archives that only deal with material not created in any of those media? How do you archive? How do you create access?

This has increasingly become a challenge – archiving social media. The perpetual question of what’s valuable and what’s not always has to be considered. Then, a discussion of “how” to archive it is needed. Never mind the question of access.

These are very important to genealogists and family historians. How many “cousins” have you connected to through a rootsweb newsgroup? Facebook? Instagram? Pinterest? The list goes on.

Have you “archived” all of these dialogues? Are you assuming that the platform has done so? Are you assuming that the posting institution on Flickr has archived its uploaded material? How about those great YouTube videos – are you guaranteed access in the future?

To help institutions as they curate their social media efforts, NCSU has created a toolkit “Social Media Archives Toolkit” – “a free web-based documentary toolkit and an open source virtual software collecting environment. This initiative builds on the NCSU Libraries’ leading role in this area of work, established, in part, by its recent development of Lentil—an award-winning open source social media harvesting and presentation tool...This toolkit addresses curatorial, legal, and ethical issues associated with archiving harvested social media data.”

You can read more about the project in “New Voices” Preserved by NCSU Libraries Social Media Archiving Resource.

What have your local family history supporting institutions done to preserve their social media presence?

Are you aware of other neat tools created to help preserve social media archives?

Editor’s Note: Related Upfront with NGS blog posts ...

+ Personal Digital Archiving Conference Re-Cap (2015)

+ One Family’s Personal Digital Archives Project (2012)

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

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Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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07 July 2015

FREE Access to Chicago Tribune Archive (Beta) [end date unknown]

Love a good news archive? What if it also happens to be free?

For an unknown amount of time while the Chicago Tribune works on a “Beta” version of its archive, you can access it for FREE.

As shared on the archive FAQ page ...

What do you mean by “beta”?

The archives are a work in progress, but we wanted to make them public so you could start exploring. The piece you’re most likely to notice as not being quite finished is search, which is still in the process of compiling results. This is an ongoing process, however, so don’t be discouraged—if you don’t get many results for your search term one day, try again a day or two later and you might be surprised by what you find!

Occasionally you may notice incorrect highlighting on articles; this is an artifact of the digitization process and not something we can fix at present.

See anything else that looks wrong? Email us at archives@tribune.com—we appreciate your feedback.

Let us know if you make any neat finds!

Eventually, the archive will require a subscription to access.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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11 June 2015

Couldn't Attend the Global Family Reunion -- No Worries -- Select Sessions Recorded & Available to Watch

The Global Family Reunion took place this past Saturday (6 June 2015).

If you weren’t able to attend, many sessions were streamed and are now available in an online archive. You need to click on which venue interests you and then select which video you would like to watch. Note that the video labels are not always terribly descriptive (e.g. Theatre Session 5).

Here is a schedule of events which might help you correlate the archived sessions for the three venues. The Vicusi Gallery archive includes some names familiar to our genealogy community – David Rencher and CeCe Moore.

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

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Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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30 May 2014

Upfront Mini Bytes – Ashkenazic Jews, The Vault, Congregational Archive, British WWI Army Diaries, Google Newspaper Archive, Canadian Parliament, Durham (NC), American-Canadian Marriages

Welcome to our newest edition of our periodic feature Upfront Mini Bytes. In Upfront Mini Bytes we provide eight tasty bits of genealogy news that will help give you a deeper byte into your family history research. Each item is short and sweet. We encourage you to check out the links to articles, blog posts, resources, and anything genealogical!

We hope you found the past editions helpful. Use your favorite search engine with “Upfront with NGS” “Mini Bytes” or use this Google search link.

Do you have questions, suggestions for future posts, or comments? Please post a comment or send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

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Understanding of the origin of a surname can be very helpful as we research our ancestors. If you are researching Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry, consider reading Here's The Fascinating Origin Of Almost Every Jewish Last Name (Business Insider). [1 June 2014, Editor's note: the hyperlink to this article has been disabled. The article as originally written and as edited has been found to be filled with assertions which are non-referenced/sourced, myths, and contain untruths and inaccuracies. Rather than perpetuate this error-filled content, Upfront with NGS hopes to soon post an editorial about this article and the critical reaction it received from the community.]

If you don’t read The Vault on Slate.com with posts by Rebecca Onion, you might want to add it to your list. It is a neat blog where interesting historic information is often posted – typically in the form of a visual graphic that tells a story. Some examples are: Some Everyday Words That Meant Really Different Things to Early American Colonists, Chart Shows Occupations of Soldiers Most Likely to Be Rejected by the Union Army. (Sorry, Editors, Barkeeps, and Tailors.), and A Map of Hundreds of Noise Complaints in 1920s Manhattan, and Four Other Stupendous Digital History Projects. You can access the blog version here, which gives you a sense of the esoteric and interesting history tidbits shared.

Church archives and their records are fascinating. For some ancestors, early mentions in church records may be the only documentation of their existence, especially if they were landless, female, or just generally “under the radar” of who was documented. If you had practicing Congregationalist ancestors who lived in New England in the Colonial Era, check out the Congregational Library & Archives History Matters digital collection.

British Army war diaries (1914-1922) are online with more to be added. These are British Army unit war diaries for both Flanders and France. Note that these are not personal diaries.

Though the Google news archive of newspapers is no longer being added to, this doesn’t mean that you can’t access its really neat historic archives. Go to this page and you will see a list of all newspapers (or you can search for a title). Select a newspaper of interest and then you can browse the available issues. You can also search through the newspapers though I suggest you put the name of the newspaper in quotes along with your search term. The absence of a result may not truly mean that there is no matching content. Between the vagaries of the search feature and OCR indexing technology, don’t completely trust the search feature!

If you want a view of the Canadian Parliament in action, the historical debates (in English and French) of both the Senate and the House of Commons from 1867-mid 1990s are now online. Who knows, maybe a member of your family was a topic of conversation either directly or as part of a group impacted by the outcome of a debated topic.

Community digitization projects are always fascinating. Durham (NC) has a project, Digital Durham that includes Personal Papers, Business Records, Maps, Photographs, Printed Works, Miscellany, Public Records, and Audio all accessible online thanks to funding from Duke University and the North Carolina State Library.

The Maine Franco-American Genealogical Society has created a summary of American-Canadian Marriages 1599-1984 that reflects “Marriages from Canadian Parishes with American descendants.”

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Want to learn more about interacting with the blog, please read Hyperlinks, Subscribing and Comments -- How to Interact with Upfront with NGS Blog posts!

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NGS does not imply endorsement of any outside advertiser or other vendors appearing in this blog. Any opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the view of NGS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow NGS via Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter

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Think your friends, colleagues, or fellow genealogy researchers would find this blog post interesting? If so, please let them know that anyone can read past UpFront with NGS posts or subscribe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suggestions for topics for future UpFront with NGS posts are always welcome. Please send any suggested topics to UpfrontNGS@mosaicrpm.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unless indicated otherwise or clearly an NGS Public Relations piece, Upfront with NGS posts are written by Diane L Richard, editor, Upfront with NGS.