UpFront with NGS

10 June 2014

The 2014 NDSA Innovation Award Winners -- Digital Preservation Efforts

Digital (and other forms) of preservation are very important to our genealogical community.

Recently, the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group announced the winners of the 2014 NDSA Innovation Awards. Each year the Innovation Working Group solicits nominations for projects, individuals, and organizations doing innovative and substantive work in digital preservation. This is the third year they have handed out these awards and previous blog posts list the 2012 recipients and the 2013 recipients.

Learn more about the 2014 recipients.

+ Institution: National Software Reference Library, National Institute for Standards and Technology

+ Project: XFR STN, The New Museum. “XFR STN” (Transfer Station)

+ Individual: Trevor Muñoz, Assistant Dean for Digital Humanities Research at the University of Maryland Libraries and an Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

+ Future Steward: Emily Reynolds, National Digital Stewardship Resident, The World Bank.

Have news about other digital preservation efforts? Let us know!

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09 June 2014

FREE Video Series -- Caring and Preserving Family Papers, Photographs and More

A series of tutorial videos has been produced by the [NC] State Historical Records Advisory Board and the State Archives of North Carolina with support by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. These provide basic information about the care and handling of family papers, regardless of where you live.

You can FREELY access these tutorial videos via YouTube. They each run about 10 minutes.

#1, Identifying and Protecting Essential Family Records

#2, General Paper Preservation Tips

#3, Caring for and Sharing Family and Personal Papers

#4, The Care and Preservation of Family Photographs

#5, Managing and Preserving Digital Images

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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.

06 June 2014

Many Languages, One America -- neat infographic of "A history of Languages in the United States"

An infographic from FreePeopleSearch.org. The original infographic can be found here.

Language is so critical to our understanding of records, migration and much more as we research our family and ancestors. Check out the above for some perspective on languages found historically and now in the US.

Do you know of similar infographics regarding languages in other countries? Please share!

Editor's Note [06/07/2014]: Yes, the states of Washington and Oregon are transposed on a map which is part of the infographi (at least the name labels). Please contact the original creators of this infographic about this. If they update/correct the image, please let us know and we will update the post.

05 June 2014

NGS 2014 Family History Conference – Session F322 – Carolinians Settle The South

source: Early American Roads and Trails by Beverly Whitaker, MA, http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gentutor/trails.html

Another in the series on sessions I attended at the NGS 2014 Family History Conference.

F322 (R) Carolinians Settle The South, Jim Ison, AG, CG, Syllabus page 345

So many Carolinians did NOT remain in what often was their state of birth or a first stopover point upon emigration from elsewhere. One has only to look at the 1850 census to get a sense of the scale of out-migration from North and South Carolina.

To get a flavor for North Carolina out migration, read Searching for Greener Pastures:

Out–Migration in the 1800s and 1900s By Donald R. Lennon and Fred D. Ragan (From Tar Heel Junior Historian 34 (spring 1995))

Jim emphasized the importance of understanding migration routes. If you know/believe that your family traveled from location A to location B at a certain time, what were the options for travel? There may have only been one major route or several. Many families spent a generation or more “traveling” as they settled in one spot and then subsequently moved to another. They possibly did this several times. One of my favorite sites for migration routes (and maps) is Early American Roads and Trails by Beverly Whitaker, MA.

Understanding the dynamics of why and how people migrated can only help you as you to try to identify “where” in the Carolinas your ancestors were born!

The associated syllabus pages provide a detailed overview of out-migration from the Carolinas and in-migration to the deeper south.

Editor’s Note: This series is not presented in any particular order.
Editor’s Note: This is the last in the series presented on the sessions I attended at the NGS 2014 Family History Conference. If you would like to share some of what you learned or whom you met or your impressions of the conference, etc, please send an e-mail to UpFront@ngsgenealogy.org.

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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.

04 June 2014

NGS 2014 Family History Conference – Session T211 – Adding Evernote to Your Genealogy Toolbox

Another in the series on sessions I attended at the NGS 2014 Family History Conference.

T210 (R) Adding Evernote to Your Genealogy Toolbox, Julie Miller, CG, Syllabus page 143

Whereas I immediately fell in love with Dropbox the first time I played with it, I have had a more love/hate relationship with Evernote. I had downloaded it to my laptop, I had installed the free Web clipper in Google Chrome and then I stalled ... Everyone says what a great program it is and how they can’t live without it. I, on the other hand, hadn’t figured out how to live with it and living without it was working out just fine.

I am partially to blame for that, I never did fully “Explore Evernote in Five Steps” as the software implores me to do. Even if I had done that, and learned how to create a note and notebook, etc, what I hadn’t really appreciated were some of the following:

1. The use of stacks! Notes and notebooks did not provide me with enough organizational levels to handle client projects along with personal needs. Once I learned about stacks from Julie, for the first time I could now think of how I could organize the information to suit my needs – with a bit of a hierarchy.

2. The value of tags.

3. Web Clipper. Though this was discussed and I could appreciate its value (once I determined on my own that when you do “clip” something from the web, you will get the URL, title and a date stamp (the basics needed to cite the found information as a source)), my attention was really caught when Lisa Louise Cooke (T219) mentioned that newspaper articles that are clipped this way get OCR’d and become searchable. Ah ha – being able to clip newspaper articles/pages and be able to search on them has great appeal to me.

I have now committed to myself (and publicly to you via this blog post) that I will make a concerted effort to make Evernote a tool in my genealogy research arsenal. Besides the benefit of acquiring online information with source information attached (and that you can do real time annotations, note taking, etc), I can now also visualize how it will help me as I explore finding aids for offline material – in a few steps I can save a finding aid as a note, write notes on what project it’s for, mark-up the finding aid to highlight what I need to request, and then visit the repository with electronic notes in hand!

The associated syllabus pages give you a nice overview of why genealogists should consider using Evernote, how to get started with it and some of the neat and useful features of it.

Editor’s Note: This series is not presented in any particular order.

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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.

03 June 2014

Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree FREE & low-cost live-streamed programs

Cannot attend The Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree (6-8 June 2014)? No worries, it will be offering live streaming sessions – 14 FREE live-streamed classes from the Jamboree and 5 sessions (for a nominal fee) from the Family History and DNA program. Details are found here.

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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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02 June 2014

NARA Open Government Plan

Last week, The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released its Open Government Plan for the next two years (2014-2016).

The new plan discusses efforts to engage the public in more than 160 external projects on more than 15 social media platforms, as well as through public events, educational programs, Research Services, and Presidential Libraries. The Flagship Initiative, “Innovate to Make Access Happen,” describes digitization, description, and online access efforts via a program to digitize analog records, expand digitization partnerships, and an updated digitization strategy.

I found the graphic on page 15 (reproduced above) very interesting. I have often wondered if I would be able to fully work as a professional genealogist until I retire (at least 10 years away) given all the digitization which has occurred creating easier access to the records I would once retrieve for clients (see editor’s note). When I look at this graphic stating that less than 2% of NARA’s textual records have been digitized (never mind indexed), I figure it will be a long time before NARA’s holdings are available digitally. I suspect that the same holds true for other archives and repositories possessing records of interest to family history researchers.

It also reminds us that one must do "on-the-ground" (vs virtual research) research to fully explore records relevant to our ancestors!

Obviously, digitization efforts are only one element of the scope of the plan.

What do you think about this plan? Is it what you expected? Does it set a benchmark for other large repositories to follow? If not, why not?

Editor’s Note: As a professional genealogist, my colleagues and I do more than records retrieval, and this post is only focusing on this one component of what we do.

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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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01 June 2014

Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Conference -- Dallas (TX), July 20-22 2014 -- Early Bird Deadline Tomorrow (June 2 2014)

The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies 2014 conference will be held in Dallas, Texas, from July 20-22, at the Hilton Anatole.

An impressive group of some 35 international speakers (scholars, anthropologists, historians, family researchers, filmmakers and screenings, musicians, personal narratives, authors and more) will present, along with musical performances and a pre-conference genealogy workshop.

Early registration discount ends June 2. Register for the conference, see the tentative program and speakers, and get hotel information: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/639496. Full registration includes meals, presentations, entertainment and the genealogy workshop.

Join interested students and academics of the crypto-Judaic experience while exploring the history of Sephardic Jews and their descendants following the 1492 expulsion from Spain.

· Keynote speakers are Angelina Muñiz-Huberman, author of more than 45 books of fiction, poetry and essays, including Jewish mysticism and Converso themes, and Ilan Stavans, author of many books on Hispanic culture and Jewish topics.

· Doreen Carvajal, author of The Forgetting River and journalist for the International New York Times (Paris), will share the tracing of her family's history to Segovia, Spain, in the Inquisition-era prosecution of conversos.

· The conference offers presentations by members of the crypto-Jewish community, arts displays, music performances and scholarly presentations. The Judy Frankel Memorial Concert will feature an artist whose music has been influenced by the Converso experience.

· A pre-conference genealogy workshop will be conducted by genealogists Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Genie Milgrom and Bennett Greenspan; with four sessions (Sephardic resources, Sephardic genealogy, Converso research techniques and DNA Testing).

Conference updates and other news of interest to those involved with Crypto-Judaic studies can be found on The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies Facebook page.

The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies fosters research, networking of people and ideas, and the dissemination of information regarding the historical and contemporary developments involving crypto-Jews of Iberian origins.

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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.

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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

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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.