ACC Omnibus Edition: 16 May 2010

Welcome to the first posting in the revamped Anglo-Celtic Connections. I'm experimenting with an omnibus edition incorporating items I would previously have posted separately . You won't get them quite as quickly, but only have to visit once.

Items in this edition are:

Resource Discovery at LAC
Long Lost Family
NGS Award to Anglo-Celtic Roots
OGS Ottawa Branch Meeting
Family Search Pilot Resources
OGS Conference Tweets

Resource Discovery at LAC

In a previous posting I mentioned that Services have disappeared from the LAC organization chart. I asked for an explanation of the change and have been offered a meeting. More on this soon.

In advance of the meeting I'm informed that the reorganization, announced internally on March 16, 2010, is a realignment to strengthen each of LAC's core functions: acquisitions; collection management and resource discovery.

"Resource discovery covers how Canadians access their documentary heritage. As such, it goes beyond the strict notion of services to Canadians as it also includes how we promote what we have and how we can better serve the greater public and key user communities. On the last point, it also encompasses description that meets the needs of users."

Long Lost Family

ITV in the UK will be airing a six episode series next fall featuring people being reunited with living relatives they have been trying to track down.Each episode will be 60 minutes.

The show is produced by Wall to Wall, the independent production company behind the long running BBC genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are?.

Read more at www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/13/davina-mccall-nicky-campbell-itv

NGS Award to Anglo-Celtic Roots

As mentioned in a previous posting, Anglo-Celtic Roots, the newsletter of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa, edited by Chris MacPhail of Ottawa, was the first place winner for major genealogical society newsletter in the annual competition held by the National Genealogical Society in the United States. Here's a photo of Chris receiving the award from NGS President Jan Alpert. The award was presented at the opening session of the NGS annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, April 28.

OGS Ottawa Branch Meeting

Library & Archives Canada on Tuesday 18 May at 7.30 p.m. is the venue for a presentation by four volunteers from the Rideau Township Archives. Owen Cooke, Carol Lindsay, Susan McKellar, George Tupper will describe the history of Rideau Township Archives, Branch of City of Ottawa Archives, on genealogical resources and published works in the library, original documents and community outreach programs.

FamilySearch Pilot Resources

Especially if you research ancestors in Norfolk, England, you'll probably be interested in the images of parish records available through FamilySearch. Go to http://pilot.familysearch.org and click on "Search or browse our record collections". Click over Europe on the map and scroll down on the list to United Kingdom. Then click on England, Norfolk Parish Registers and scroll down in the left hand panel to the parish of interest. There are lots of them. I plugged a couple of holes in my Norfolk ancestral information. It's a great resource, no name index but you're looking at images of the originals.

This site hosts an ever growing collection from around the world, well worth browsing, bookmarking and revisiting.

OGS Conference

I was surprised at how little coverage there was of the OGS Conference in Toronto this past weekend . Perhaps there were no announcements to cover, but judging by the published presentation summaries there was no lack of good content. No doubt they'll be more follow-on reporting. Here are the tweets, and one Facebook post I noticed.

- At the OGS conference. If you're going to learn about Ont. land records, Fawne Stratford-Devai is the one to talk to. Woman's amazing!

- Too bad there's no hashtag for the OGS conference. I would have liked to follow along.

- Luxegen is wishing she was at OGS in Toronto this weekend

Brian Gilchrist posted on Facebook "This weekend I am attending the Ontario Genealogical Society conference in Toronto ... over 725 delegates (so far!) and walk-ins tomorrow and Sunday for sure."

Update

Dave Obee: Thanks to everyone involved in the Ontario Genealogical Society conference in Toronto, which was possibly the best-organized conference I have ever attended. And thanks to the special people -- Paul Jones, Rick and Sandra Roberts, John Philip Colletta, Brenda Dougall Merriman, Sharon Murphy, Ed Zapletal, Rick Cree, Stephen Young, Lisa Louise Cooke, Elizabeth Lapointe, and about two dozen more!