Forthcoming Resources

--  Patient records and case notes, photographs, administrative documents and registers will be among 800,000 pages of UK mental health records digitised in a project funded by the Wellcome Library. The records will come from the York Retreat, St Luke’s Hospital Woodside, Crichton Royal Hospital, Gartnavel Royal Hospital and Camberwell House Asylum.

They will be added to the Wellcome Library’s own collection of archives from public and private mental health institutions, including the records of Ticehurst House Hospital in Sussex, which provide a rare insight into the running of a privately run asylum. The project will take two years and is part of an ambitious initiative by the Wellcome Library to make freely available over 50 million pages of historic medical books, archives, manuscripts and journals by 2020.

See the announcement here.

-- MyHeritage have announced a new collaboration and product integration with personal genetics company 23andMe which appears to go well beyond the marketing relationship currently existing between MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA.

"23andMe will provide its 750,000+ customers special access to MyHeritage’s family tree tools and matching technologies directly from its website. Eventually they will replace 23andMe's own family tree editor. 23andMe’s customers will enjoy automated family history discoveries by MyHeritage such as Smart Matches™ and Record Matches, bringing them significant new opportunities to grow their family trees and to enrich their family history."

This will be good news to genetic genealogists who have been far from happy with the family tree facility provided by 23andMe.

The immediate benefit to MyHeritage aren't as obvious but there's every prospect of them developing as genetic genealogy gains an even greater following.

According to the MyHeritage announcement the first phase of integration is to be completed by early 2015.