British Library Newsroom: lessons for LAC

The new British Library Newsroom opened at the main site for the British Library at St Pancras on Monday.


Many people will miss the old dedicated library at Colindale which the video refers to as having been the Cinderella of the British Library.
That would be a great way to describe the treatment of the newspaper collection at Library and Archives Canada.
Canada's collection remains great, even though unique material was recently junked; a treasure. The treatment is shabby with the collection hidden away, no dedicated newspaper librarian/archivist, no digitization program.
Canada has a lot to learn from Britain (including Wales), Australia, New Zealand and the US.

Guy Berthiaume: Taking libraries into the digital age

The Montreal Gazette has published an article with a Q/A with the Library and Archivist of Canada designate Guy Berthiaume.  He clearly has a firm grip on what's needed at LAC. It's good to see this exchange:

Gazette: What surprised you the most during your time as head of the BAnQ? 

Berthiaume: One of the things that surprised me the most is people’s passion for genealogy. There’s a very popular British TV series, Who Do You Think You Are? Radio-Canada did a similar show called Qui êtes-vous? Each episode started out here in our archives. It generated a lot of interest. After the show, a lot of people came to our website to try to find their ancestors.

Elsewhere in the article Berthiaume speaks of digitization, restoring morale among the staff and building bridges with partners and stakeholders.

No doubt change won't happen fast enough for some, and will be resisted by others.  I'm cautiously optimistic that M Berthiaume has the vision to bring about a revitalization at LAC and hope he gets the support needed from us all.

More than 2 million Shropshire BMBs at findmypast

Shropshire Parish records, with image originals, are now available exclusively on findmypast. You may well have already accessed the IGI version of these records, now you can verify with the originals online.

The Shropshire Collection is made up approximately 2.1 million fully searchable and browse-able transcripts spanning 1538-1900; around 1,133,580 baptisms, 535,600 marriages, 42,245 banns, 800,795 burials and contains around 720,000 unique names.

It includes 155,000 scanned colour images of the parish registers, and a selection of Anglican, Methodist and Non-Conformist registers from well over 200 Shropshire parishes from Abdon to Yockleton.

www.findmypast.co.uk or findmypast.com and affiliated sites,

Zoomer show wrap-up

Lots of folks did enter to win the grand prize, including a year of Ancestry, a 2014 membership in OGS and Ottawa Branch and a membership in BIFHSGO, offerred at the OGS/BIFHSGO/City Archives booth at last weekend's Zoomer Show. There could only be one winner, and he was Neil Johnston of Gloucester

At the end of the weekend, we had talked to 630 visitors and the majority of them had never heard of any of our organization before, although they were either interested in genealogy or had been researching for some time. We had a variety of questions on researching, software, resources and even adoptions. Hopefully, some of this folks will be in touch for help in moving forward in the hobby.

MyHeritage milestone

One of the invited international speakers at this coming weekend's OGS conference in St Catharines, MyHeritage's Daniel Horowitz, has already arrived in Canada. He mentioned in a note that MyHeritage has reached an exciting milestone: now more than 5 billion historical records.

It has taken only two years for MyHeritage to build this treasure trove of historical information demonstrating that MyHeritage is one of the fastest-growing and most internationally diverse family history companies in the world. The records come from a wide variety of collections from many different sources and from dozens of countries. The collections were also given a great boost after our multiple acquisitions in recent years, including World Vital Records and Geni.
MyHeritage is proud to provide Historical Big Data; which together with our advanced record matching technologies, helps users worldwide make breakthrough family history discoveries and learn more about their families’ legacies.
MyHeritage continues to add millions of new records to SuperSearch every single day. We are working hard to add more global content and to make researching ones family history easier and more accessible than ever before. We expect to surpass 7 billion historical records by the end of this year.
To celebrate reaching this milestone, we looked at some iconic names within our collections and made a fun info-graphic with our discoveries (attached). We invite you to share this with your readers and friends.
Please read more about this exciting milestone in our official blog post here http://blog.myheritage.com/2014/04/myheritage-reaches-new-milestone-5-billion-historical-records/ 

Daniel will be presenting at the conference, participating as a member of the social media panel plenary starting at 8:15am on Saturday and be available at the MyHeritage booth in the marketplace. Then he goes on to the NGS conference.

Paul Jones on genealogical confidence

On Sunday afternoon at the St Catharines OGS conference Toronto genealogist Paul Jones will present "Determining how much confidence you should have in your genealogical inferences."
As Paul mentions blog postings of mine I'm giving the presentation a shout out. The abstract reads
Over the past quarter-century, the use of statistics in the sciences has been shifting from a “frequentist” approach (t-tests and the like) to the realm of conditional probabilities and Bayes Theorem, i.e., the use of successive pieces of evidence to progressively modify our estimate of 
the probability of the truth of a hypothesis. This trend is now entering the social sciences and it is a reasonable question to ask whether genealogists should add simple probability calculations to their research tool kit to distinguish between conclusions that are, say, 20%, 80% and 99% likely to be accurate. This presentation illustrates basic probability calculations, corrects some common misunderstandings about probability and suggests how probability could, in some circumstances, augment but never replace the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS). 
One of the other references for Paul's presentation is Richard Carrier, author of Proving History, who posted If You Learn Nothing Else about Bayes’ Theorem, Let It Be This on his blog on Sunday. The  main he discusses are that Theories Cannot Be Argued in Isolation and Prior Assumptions Matter
Be aware that Carrier doesn't pander in his writing. His post has a fog index of 11.7 where 5 is readable, 10 is hard, and 15 is difficult.

What do OGS, BIFHSGO and Rillington have in common?

I spotted a tweet about a One Place Study for the North Yorkshire community of Rillington, it's one of the latest, and it rang two bells with me.
Next weekend, at the OGS conference in St Catharines, Kirsty Grey, a founding member and Chair of One Place Studies, will be a speaker. That includes participating on the Social Media Panel starting at 8:15 am EDT on Saturday. It will be streamed out free via the links

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cgkbikrmmec7hi1irnenf5jmqbc and 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5TXenbLqCA

Rillington is also featured in a presentation at the BIFHSGO conference next September. One of well known author Lucille Campey's presentations will be In My Mind I Oftentimes Visit Rillington: 
Canada’s Intrepid Yorkshire Settlers.

Zoomer show photos

 Mike More removes the velcro protectors on one of  the "genealogy words" used as a backdrop for the partnership display at the Zoomer Show held at the Ernst and Young Centre, 26-27 April 2-14.

The booth, profiling OGS Ottawa Branch, BIFHSGO and Ottawa City Archives, was in a choice location, near the entrance and about as far from the enthusiastic musical entertainment as it was possible to get.

On Saturday the 26th we recorded 352 people who stopped at the booth for information and advice. Areas of ancestral interest for those I spoke to included Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia/Newfoundland,  Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany,and Poland. A couple of adoptees were interested to receive information on how DNA testing might help them.
Glenn Wright was delighted to discover one of the people who stopped by to talk was a previously unknown relative.

OGS Toronto Branch April Meeting and call for speakers

Toronto Branch April Meeting
On Monday 28 April the featured speaker is Canada’s “Word Lady”, Katherine Barber, on “Where There’s a Will There’s a Word“. A Canadian lexicographer, and former Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, she will share her expertise on the evolution of some of the words that are of particular significance to family historians – the ones we find in wills.

Patricia Sheehan, one of the volunteers on the Branch research services team, will close out the evening with a short additional presentation on “Who was that Woman with King George VI—and What is she Doing in the Back of my Grandmother’s Photo Album?“.

The meeting begins at 7:30 in the evening at the Burgundy Room, North York Memorial Hall, 5110 Yonge Street in Toronto (convenient access from the North York subway station).

Call for Speakers: England’s Industrial Revolutions
Toronto Branch has issued a Call for Speakers to take part in a full-day workshop for family historians on the social, economic and cultural effects of England’s Industrial Revolutions. The workshop will take place on Saturday 1 November 2014.

Potential speakers—professional genealogists, historians, family historians, librarians and archivists—are invited to submit proposals for presentations related to Industrial England, particularly during the period from 1750 to 1870. Possible topics could include migration to the cities, changes in occupations, effects of industrialization on rural communities, and changes in social organizations, cultural life, religion and education.

The deadline for proposals for this workshop is Friday, 30 May 2014.

For further information about the workshop and to find out how to make a submission, please download the full Call for Speakers.

Win BIG at Ottawa's Zoomer Show

You could win a one year subscription to Ancestry World Deluxe, a one year membership to OGS and Ottawa Branch and a basket to other genealogical resources. You have to attend the Ottawa Zoomer Show being held this Saturday and Sunday at the Ernst & Young Centre by the Ottawa airport. Look for the OGS/BIFHSGO/City Archives booth right by the entrance where you can enter the draw.

For more information and opening hours visit http://www.zoomershow.com/events/ottawa2014. Print off tickets for free admission to the show at:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/zoomershow-ottawa-2014-tickets-8781011241?discount=GENEOOTT14

What Irish records are online?

A compact list of where to find Irish records online is available via the Irish Times. They are listed under headings: General Register Office records, census records, church records, property records, wills, emigration, newspapers, directories, occupational and, graveyards, all updated to 22 April.

Shaking Your Family Tree in Belleville

A last-minute notice that the Belleville Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are hosting a Shaking Your Family Tree event this Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 9:00 am to 4:30pm.
You can learn (or fine-tune) your genealogy skills to further research your family lineage.
The location is 135 Palmer Rd  Belleville, ON K8P 4C9. There's a little additional information at http://shakingyourfamilytree.weebly.com/
This is information from Lesley Anderson who will be one of the speakers.

Ancestry adds RCMP and Norfolk Poor Law databases

More from Ancestry's cooperation agreement with FamilySearch:

Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police obituary card index and notices, 1876-2007, 9476 records. There's more information at FamilySearch at http://goo.gl/H5XTW7

England, Norfolk Poor Law Union Records, 1796-1900 are 138,680 browse only records with further information at http://goo.gl/boJA89

Books Boxes and Boats

From The UK National Archives Books Boxes and Boats  "brings together a wide variety of websites and databases hopefully useful to anyone carrying out maritime related research but in particular librarians archivists and family historians. These include 'official' sites such as the National Archives and the Royal Naval Museum as well as websites run by enthusiasts," Some of the contents linked are:

Lloyds Register, with links to an incomplete sequence of 18th & 19th Century volumes scanned by Google and the 1930-1945 volumes from Southampton Library & Archive;

Lloyds List, with details of ship movements, marine casualties & maritime news, an incomplete collection from 1741 to 1826;

Mercantile Navy List. an annual publication containing "the most comprehensive listing of British vessels, incomplete starting in 1849;

and lots more.

Scattered in are resources explaining the records which you'll appreciate after you've struggled to interpret the many abbreviations used.

Thanks to Christine Jackson for the tip.

FreeBMD April update

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Tuesday 22 April 2014 to contain 237,672,737 (236,907,482) distinct records.

Years with major updates, more than 5,000 entries are: for births 1940, 1943, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1969-70, 1972; for marriages 1952, 1962, 1964-70; for deaths 1969-71.

Archives of Ontario ships fewer microfilms

Month by month, from April 2010 to February 2014 the Archives of Ontario have monitored various customer service statistics, including total microfilm shipments.
Shipments have slipped by an average 93 per year. At that rate in 3-5 years shipments will drop to zero. Let's hope a different technology, perhaps digital microfilm, will replace the antiquated current system.

OGS Ottawa Branch April meeting

The Ottawa Branch Meeting presentation this coming Saturday 26 April, 13:00 – 15:00 is "Using Social Media for Genealogy Research"

Ken McKinlay will be talking about the various social media sites, such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and blogs to name just a few places, that can be used to help in your own research through interacting online with others around the world via the world wide web.

Speaker bio: Ken McKinlay's foray into his family tree research started with three simple family stories that he wanted to confirm or refute. He has now been researching his family tree for over 14 years making use of the Internet as his primary means of locating relevant documents and also discovering new cousins. He has given talks for the Ottawa branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society, BIFHSGO, and the Ottawa Public Library. His talks generally focus on methodologies and providing the skills needed to help solve those brick wall problems.  He is currently working on the Canadian Records certificate offered through the National Institute for Genealogical Studies.

The meeting is at the usual location, City of Ottawa Archives, Room 115 starting at 1pm with
Networking - tea, coffee, cookies. This meeting will be simulcast for members who can't join in person.

Crowdfunding map digitization

The British Library have opened at campaign seeking support to unlock King George III’s personal map and views collection, over 1,000 maps and views of London and "one of the world's most important and beautiful map collections."
They aim to raise a total of £100,000 to catalogue, conserve and digitise all the London maps and views with £10,000 of the total coming from donors and enthusiasts.
Read more and donate at http://support.bl.uk/Page/Unlock-London-Maps

St George's Day

A Mummers play in celebration of this day, St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday.



or

http://youtu.be/xEPXtIS83rw

Now you'll know

Peter Munro correctly identified the list of nicknames published a few days ago as British Army regiments.  More specifically they were in the war of 1812 in Canada. They are:

The Holy Boys: The Royal Norfolk Regiment, recruited from East Norfolk
Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard: The Royal Scots, recruited from Berwick
The Elegant Extracts: The Royal Fusiliers (City of London)
The Vein-Openers: Worcestershire Regiment (Worcestershire and Herefordshire)
The Devil's Own: Connaught Rangers (Ireland and Scotland).