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Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
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"Ancestors: The Family Search" on PBSNGS Offers New Online Course For Beginners |
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| March 23, 1999 |
- "Ancestors: The Family Search" on PBS The Public Broadcasting System ran a ten-part series called "Ancestors" about two years ago. Apparently it was well received; PBS now wants to do that again. The announcement says that this time it will be a 13-part series. Even better, the announcement solicits your input: Researchers are seeking genealogical tales for the new PBS series "Ancestors: The Family Search." Each episode of the new 13-part series will focus on a particular record type and we are looking for compelling stories to illustrate each one. The record types that will be covered are: compiled IMPORTANT: Please send a brief synopsis of your story to 76163.1402@compuserve.com no later than March 24, 1999, and include the record type in the subject of your message. Additional contact information (i.e., phone, fax) would be helpful. We anticipate a very strong response and regret that, for this reason, we will only be able to respond to those whose stories most closely fit our criteria. Please know, however, that all submissions are appreciated and will be given careful consideration. Thanks! Note that they are soliciting input from the United Kingdom. Is the show going international this time? - NGS Offers New Online Course For Beginners The U.S. National Genealogical Society (NGS) is now offering a new six-lesson online course for beginners on its website. Those who enroll in "Introduction to Genealogy" will learn how to -- record genealogical information, get started with family and published sources, find twentieth-century vital records, find birth, death, and marriage information for ancestors who lived in earlier centuries, use online finding aids and library catalogs, and write source citations for birth, death, and marriage information. Anyone interested in the course is invited to study the first lesson free of charge by completing a simple pre-enrollment form. At the end of the first lesson, those who choose to do so can enroll in the course. Tuition is $60 for NGS members and $75 for nonmembers. Students who successfully complete the six online quizzes will receive a $25 discount coupon that can be applied toward tuition for the NGS home study course, "American Genealogy: A Basic Course." The Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council accredits NGS and its courses. To access the online course, go to the NGS website at 76163.1402@compuserve.com. Choose "Education," then "Introduction to Genealogy: An Online Course," and then "About the Course." From the "About the Course" page you can learn more about the course and access the pre-enrollment form. Those interested in either the online course or the home study course can contact the NGS Education Department at 4527 17th Street North, Arlington, VA 22207-2399, tel. (800) 473-0060, ext. 223 or send an e-mail to: education@ngsgenealogy.org. - Hotel Rooms at NGS Convention Are you planning to attend the national convention of the US National Genealogical Society? This year it is being held May 12 through 15 in Richmond, Virginia? If so, do you have your hotel reservations yet? If not, you should read this! Richmond is a relatively small city so the 2,000 to 3,000 people that normally show up for an NGS convention should fill the hotel rooms, right? You would expect hotel rooms in that small city to be hard to locate at the last minute with a convention that size in town. However, there is still another "happening" in Richmond that week that will probably dwarf the NGS convention: the NASCAR Winston Cup Series will hold the Pontiac Excitement 400 NASCAR race on May 15 in Richmond. That’s right, the same Saturday. Keep in mind that the Richmond International raceway presently has 95,000 seats usually they are all filled. Those 95,000 people descending on Richmond are already reserving all the hotel rooms. If you haven’t obtained a hotel reservation now, I suggest you do so immediately. The downtown hotels within walking distance of the NGS convention site are already booked but there are rooms still available in the suburbs. A couple of people I know did obtain reservations this past week but I suspect nobody will be able to do so in the last few weeks before the convention. By the way, is anyone interested in going to the NASCAR race Saturday evening after the convention is finished? Even with the hotel room shortage, I am delighted that the NGS scheduled the convention on the same weekend as a NASCAR event. One of my interests is auto racing so you know what I am thinking! Last year Terry Labonte won the Richmond NASCAR race in a thriller. This year’s race looks as if it will be equally exciting. - Genealogical Library Master Catalog I wrote about the announcement of the Genealogical Library Master Catalog CD-ROM disk for Windows and Power Macintosh in the January 30, 1999 newsletter. This week I had a chance to use a late beta test version of the first disk of this series. Once disks two and three are released, the entire set will contain listings of more than 300,000 works held by eighteen libraries across the United States. By "listings" I mean that this is a card catalog. Each entry contains the full title of each book along with the author’s name, publisher, format (usually meaning the number of pages in a book), whether or not the work has a bibliography, notes, a description of the book’s subject, the library where it may be found and that library’s call number. This can be a valuable tool when trying to find books that were printed in limited copies. Even better, some one-of-a-kind manuscripts and record collections are also catalogued on this three-disk set. Volume 1 lists nearly 100,000 family histories, genealogies and related works held by eighteen libraries across the United States. Library profiles provide the libraries' locations and hours for on-site research, as well as reference services available via phone, fax, e-mail or regular mail. The bibliographic references in the Genealogical Library Master Catalog are reprinted with permission of these libraries: AL - Birmingham Public Library I found that using this disk was "falling off a log simple." Keep in mind that the disk has all its data in HTML format. You can read it with Netscape or Internet Explorer or almost any other modern Web browser. In fact, it looks as if you are viewing pages on the World Wide Web with one exception, retrieving data from your own CD-ROM drive is much faster than obtaining similar data from the Web via a dial-up modem. The instructions included with the Genealogical Library Master Catalog report that searches generally run much faster when using Internet Explorer. Otherwise the operation is almost identical in either Internet Explorer or in Netscape. Genealogical Library Master Catalog reportedly works equally well on a Power Macintosh or a Windows PC. For this review I used Netscape 4.06 on a Windows NT system. When I was experimenting a bit I found that I could open two or more copies of Netscape or Internet Explorer at the same time with each looking at a different section of the CD-ROM. I could simultaneously have still other copies of browsers looking on the World Wide Web. The first screen of the Genealogical Library Master Catalog is a typical HTML menu page. I clicked on "Search" and found that the next page resembled an Internet search engine. As I usually do, I first searched for all occurrences of my own surname. I entered EASTMAN in the search window. The light on my CD-ROM drive flashed for four seconds and then displayed the titles of 92 "hits." I could click on any of the titles to read full details. I’ve been searching for books on my own surname for years but I was pleasantly surprised to find several entries that I had not known about previously. For instance, here is one such entry: Author: Bean, William L. I noticed that the words "South Dakota State Archives" were highlighted as an HTML link so I clicked on the words. The next screen that appeared shows information about the archives: South Dakota State You can see that there is a lot of information available. Not only on the book itself, but also on the services of the library or archive that holds it. Even the Web addresses shown above were highlighted as links; click on one of them and you next are looking at that page on the World Wide Web (not on the CD-ROM). The first search that I used was a very simple one: just one name. However, the Genealogical Library Master Catalog will support full Boolean searches. I found that I could use AND, OR and AND NOT when searching on multiple terms. For instance, to find all the references of Eastman in the state of Maine, I would enter EASTMAN AND MAINE. That retrieves all the records that contain both words. Likewise, if I wanted to look at all the entries for my surname outside of the State of Maine, I would enter EASTMAN AND NOT MAINE. The asterisk (*) can be used as a suffix wildcard character in keywords. For example, to find records with any word that begins with Czech, such as Czech, Czechs, Czechoslovakia or Czechoslovakian, search on: Czech*. The software also will search for the European characters, such as umlauts or diacriticals. However, the instructions caution that the data is obtained from many different libraries and not all the libraries use the same conventions. When searching for a word with a special European character, you should conduct two separate searches. The disk that I used for this report was a beta test version of the Family Histories disk, also referred to as Volume One. I had no problems with it. The data looks good and everything that I tried seemed to function well. Volume Two will be Local Histories and Volume Three will be Genealogical Sources, each on separate CD-ROM disks. The Genealogical Library Master Catalog is produced by OneLibrary.com. While the disks are not yet available, the company is accepted orders. The disks will sell for $39.95 US funds each or $99.95 for the set of three. Add $5 shipping and handling per disk or set. For more information about the Genealogical Library Master Catalog, look at: http://www.OneLibrary.com - Dutch Indies Genealogical Association Goes Online The Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia, has a long and colorful history. The Dutch Indies Genealogical Association or, more properly, The Indische Genealogische Vereniging has been in operation for ten years and has become very active. The IGV publishes a quarterly magazine called "De Indische Navorscher." It also has published genealogies of many Dutch families that lived in the Dutch East Indies. Now the IGV have set up a website to further their publicity and information efforts. The IGV publishes the "Indisch Repertorium", a general index of family names to be found in genealogical or related publications concerning both the Dutch East Indies and Dutch West Indies, which have appeared over the past 70 years. It also publishes a series called "Bronnenpublikaties" (Publications of original sources). The website does not have online copies of these documents. However, it does have a searchable database. With this database you can find out if something has been published about a certain family (title of the publication, author, page number). The site also provides information about how to research Dutch East Indies ancestry. The Dutch Indies Genealogical Association website is published both in Dutch and in English. For more information, look at: http://www.igv.nl My thanks to Marco R. Visser for the information on this interesting website. On of the lesser-known minorities in Europe are the Roma, often called "gypsies." Thanks to a new center that opened recently, we may soon know more about them. The new center in Cologne, Germany should help correct misconceptions about the ethnic group and break down prejudice. Some 3,000 books, brochures, and papers are among the holdings of the new Archive and Documentation Center on the History and Culture of the Roma, making it the largest publicly accessible Roma information center in Europe. A large portion of the archive is devoted to information on the persecution of the Roma over the centuries. Historical drawings, a large collection of picture postcards, and some 7,000 photographs show how European perceptions of the Roma have evolved. The archive also includes 250 films, as well as approximately 500 records and CDs documenting the Roma's rich musical heritage. A project of the Association for the Advancement of the Roma in Cologne, the center was created with the help of a DM 300,000 grant from the Hermann Niermann Foundation of Duesseldorf. Kurt Holl, a member of the association's board of directors, said the archive is meant to be used not just as a source of information, but also as a cultural meeting place and network center for Roma organizations. Traditionally a nomadic people, the Roma are believed to have immigrated to Europe from India around the 14th century and have established communities across the continent. An estimated two million Roma currently live in the member states of the European Union, with 85,000 to 120,000 residing in Germany. In accordance with the Council of Europe's convention on the protection of minority languages, the German government is currently developing measures for the promotion of the Roma language, which is spoken primarily in the industrial areas along the Rhine, the Ruhr and the Main. My thanks to Richard Nelson for letting me know about this new center. - Family Album Archive Project Philip Baltzer posted a message on CompuServe this week about an interesting new website. I decided to take a look and found a rather interesting project is underway. This isn’t strictly a genealogy project but it certainly has ties to families in the late nineteenth as well as throughout the twentieth century. Of course, there is a charge for their services. Quoting from the Family Album Archive Project Web page: What is the FAAP all about? The FAAP is a not-for-profit cooperative organization that seeks to preserve the visual history of the American family photograph album. FAAP is seeking to work with historical societies, libraries and community groups who are interested in creating a public education program we call The Family Album Day. By hosting a Family Album Day in your community, your institution can play an active role in preserving your local historical heritage and promote stronger ties with your constituency. Families will be asked to bring their family albums and memorabilia to your institution. While there, a qualified team of local historians, archivists, genealogists, and conservators from the FAAP team will examine albums and other memorabilia brought to them, provide advice on their preservation, give tips on how to do research into their family histories, take oral histories, and create a digital archive that will preserve the images for future generations. History in the Living Room While the concept of gathering likenesses of family members can be traced to ancient Greece, it was not until the invention of photography that the genre became popular for the masses. By the turn of the century, George Eastman's photography innovations in film and camera design brought photography to the people, resulting in a family album in nearly every parlor or living room in America. This led to an unprecedented documentation of the daily lives of the American family at a time when its culture changed radically. Time and Technology Threatens the Demise of the Family Album The family album is in great danger of disappearing, and those albums that do exist are in peril from deterioration or discard. Many of the albums manufactured to hold photographs from ca. 1880 to 1960 were made of acidic papers, some even required the owner to paste in the photographs with harmful glues. The technological advances of Polaroid photography and videotape has also led to the acceleration of the demise of the traditional family album. Finally, when family estates are dispersed, family albums are often left to be acquired by antique dealers who then disseminate the contents, losing their historical and genealogical value. . Or worse, they are discarded altogether. Helping to Preserve Our Past for Future Generations One of the principle objectives of the Family Album Day is to assist in the digital preservation of the family album for future generations. By implementing new digital imaging technologies, the FAAP hopes to create a digital archive that will preserve the fast disappearing family album genre. Through the use of a WWW site, http://www.familyalbum.org, we can provide genealogical research, local and state history, and foster greater familial and community relations. With the approval of the album owners, the FAAP team will digitally scan family albums and preserve them onto CD-ROM disks. Families would have the option of purchasing for a small fee either copies of the CD-ROM, or have low resolution image files prepared for their own WWW sites. All albums brought to the event will be returned to their owners that day. A multi-media education program will be there to explain digital imaging and the potential of the World Wide Web for fostering communication with family members dispersed across the globe. Finally, a photography booth will also be installed to create even more family photos to take away. Products and literature pertaining to archival photo albums will be available to as well. This isn’t genealogy-related, but it’s something you have to see: http://www.hamsterdance.com/. Make sure the volume is turned up on your SoundBlaster board. The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services: Tony's Blue Genes – Tony wood’s genealogy page showing ancestry in Devonshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire: Keener Family Tree from Germany, Holland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia: Cregan Ancestry is a site dedicated Cregan and variant spellings, such as Creegan and Craigen: Family genealogy of these surnames: Tibbitts, Hornkohl, Holsinger and Auten: Information about the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research of Samford University: The Alta family in the Netherlands: History of the Grayston Family from Croydon, UK and Wrockwardine Wood, UK to Adelaide, South Australia: Genealogy Gateway – a fully searchable genealogy guide to surname homepages on-line: To submit your home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.
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