The Time of Cholera

BIFHSGO's February monthly meeting features Alison Hare speaking on "The Time of Cholera"

Longtime BIFHSGO members may recall a Great Moments presentation by Alison some years ago about her ancestor who died in London’s cholera epidemic of 1854. This presentation takes the story of Dr. John Snow, the Broad Street water pump and a map, much further by identifying many of the forgotten victims using lesser known resources and careful research technique.

The meeting is at 10:00 a.m., 14 February 2009 at Library & Archives Canada 395 Wellington Street

At 9:00 am BIFHSGO President Mary Anne Sharpe will host a discussion "Charting the Future" a opportunity for members to discuss and influence future directions for the society.

LAC opens doors wide for collaborative digitization projects

The Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) has issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) "in order to identify collaborative opportunities for the digitization of its diverse collections. Arrangements could include digitization and/or the creation of nominal indices or other research tools.

This RFEOI is intended to enable LAC to identify the extent of interest by outside parties in non-monetary arrangements. In parallel, LAC may undertake mass digitization projects using its in-house resources or contractors on a fee-for-service basis."

Appendix B of the RFEOI, not available online without registration but copied below, details the range of materials available, which is very wide.

This initiative to open up the collection should appeal to commercial organizations, including Ancestry, whose present arrangement with LAC is probably a model. FamilySearch and a limited number of other not for profit organiztions, perhaps even including OGS with their Trillium grant, could benefit.

I'm wondering if there will be any interest in newspaper digitization.

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Appendix B

Collections available for digitization Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) collection consists of publications and archival records of interest to Canada. It is a national treasure of inestimable value; it spans the entire history of Canada, and comprises materials in all media from all parts of the country, as well as records and publications of Canadian interest from outside the country.

The collections available for digitization are:

Genealogical material: LAC has thousands of reels of microfilm and millions of pages of original material that is of interest to the genealogy community.

Books and periodicals published in Canada, or with content of interest to Canadians: These include volumes from LAC’s general collection and comprise approximately 1.3 million book titles, and approximately 110,000 periodicals titles (e.g. magazines, scholarly journals).

Newspapers: LAC has over 3,300 newspaper titles comprising approximately one million reels of microfilm and an additional 150 newspaper titles in original print format only. This collection includes dailies, as well as Aboriginal, and ethnic titles.

Government of Canada Publications: LAC holds material published by the Government of Canada: approximately 390,000 titles mostly in original book format, and some on microfilms. This collection includes the Canada Gazette, Sessional Papers, Parliamentary Committee proceedings, and Royal Commission reports.

Government of Canada Records: LAC houses government records that document decisions and directions taken pre- and post Confederation. This collection includes Orders-in-Council, Cabinet Conclusions and Residential School records.

Private textual records: LAC holds open private textual records, including the records of former Prime Ministers and other politicians. As well, this segment of the collection includes records of various social, cultural, and ethnic organizations; of unions and businesses; and of musicians, artists and arts organizations.

Audio-visual holdings: LAC has extensive audio-visual holdings in its collection as well, including approximately 50,000 hours of obsolete video recordings (including 2” quads, 1” C tapes, ¾” cassettes, D2 cassettes, Betacam and Betacam SP) as well as audio recordings (including ¼” acetate tape, 78 rpm discs, acetate discs). The audio-visual segment comprises productions from both the private and the public sectors. The audio component includes musical and spoken-sound recordings.

Maps: LAC houses hundreds of thousands of maps, charts and plans, including geological maps, township plans, sectional maps, topographic maps, aeronautical charts, and early cartography; as well as hundreds of atlases and 40 globes.

Photographs: LAC has an extensive photograph collection with millions of photographs from government and private sources.

Theses: LAC holds approximately 300,000 theses on microfiche from Canadian universities.

Could the economic downturn be a genealogy opportunity?

With RRSP savings sinking, and general economic uncertainty, people are starting to rediscover family history. Folks are taking out the family files they put on the back burner and finding many no- and low-cost resources online that weren't there only a few years ago. Compared to the cost of travel and shopping, staying at home and researching family history is a bargain.

FamilySearch and Library and Archives Canada's Canadian Genealogy Centre continue to open up new resources. You can sign up for a free two-week trial subscription to Ancestry.

Some companies are sharpening their pencils and offering discounts. For example, recent customers and subscribers to the Global Genealogy eNewsletter can get 15% off on purchases until Saturday night, February 14th at midnight from Global Genealogy. Even if you're not presently an eNewsletter subscriber you can sign up online, here, then place an order the same day and receive the discount. Just put "Customer Appreciation" in the Special Instructions box in the final online check out screen.

Whither OGS Families

A package with OGS Newsleaf and the February issue of Families arrived on Tuesday.

In Families I was interested to find an article "Newspapers: A Gold Mine of Information," a topic on which I shall shortly be lecturing. It had items I shall borrow for my talk, but also notable omissions.

I also read J Brian Gilchrist's article "Eternal Rest Interrupted - Elmbank Roman Catholic Cemetery" about relocation of graves from the Toronto International Airport site, not that the topic is a particular interest but then any article by Gilchrist is a good bet to be interesting.

The remaining major articles didn't appeal to me - not everything in any magazine does.

There were two letters to the editor. One commented that the previous issue had "too many long family stories and not enough sources for us to check." The other was complimentary about the development of the publication, grateful for the treatment received as an author, liked the diversity of topics in the last issue and expressed a preference for more shorter articles.

A plea from the editor under the heading "Volunteers Wanted," a familiar refrain, suggests I'm not alone in seeking something different. It asks if recent issues have too narrow a focus -- the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

To that I'd have to say yes, but go further and suggest that the answer may require a more fundamental rethink of the publication.

There's no lack of talent amongst OGS members. Many articles by members appear in commercial magazines. I see them all the time in the Moorshead family of magazines which at least pay something, although not very much, and likely reach a wider audience. Why would an author publish an article in Families they could be paid for?

Families seems to consider its remit strictly Ontario, although many members have interests much further afield and would likely welcome good material from elsewhere? Has Families considered reprinting articles from publications of other genealogical and family history societies? That's one thing that could have been facilitated by an association of Canadian societies, but which OGS appears to have done nothing to encourage.

Beyond that is the question of whether technology means the days of this type of magazine are numbered. Many of us subscribe to genealogy databases, while others choose a pay per view option. Similarly, maybe people would prefer to have a choice between subscribing to Families and paying to access individual articles online. Some of the considerations are discussed in this recent article.

Some Hampshire and Suffolk burials online

Start the search here for data from some Hampshire cemetery registers, from Bishopstoke, Chandlers Ford, Eastleigh, Fareham, Locks Heath, Portchester, Sarisbury, Stubbington and Titchfield.

For the Waveney District Council of Suffolk start here for listings of burials at cemeteries in Beccles, Belle Vue Park, Bungay, Halesworth, Kirkley, Lowestoft, Southwold and Wrentham.

All are free.

Information returned is typically: cemetery, grave, surname, name, burial date, address, age and for some occupation.

Commemoration Week?

This week sees the bicentennials of the births of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

In Ottawa can we spare a moment to remember Archibald Lampman, termed Canada's finest 19th-century English-language poet, who died 110 years ago, on 10 February 1899.

WINTER UPLANDS

The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
I sit in the great silence as one bound;
The rippled sheet of snow where the wind blew
Across the open fields for miles ahead;
The far-off city towered and roofed in blue
A tender line upon the western red;
The stars that singly, then in flocks appear,
Like jets of silver from the violet dome,
So wonderful, so many and so near,
And then the golden moon to light me home--
The crunching snowshoes and the stinging air,
And silence, frost and beauty everywhere.

Happy Birthday Les

TNA podcast on Irish land records

Sharon Hintze from the London (Exhibition Road) Family History Centre gave a TNA lecture on 20 January 2009 now posted as a podcast . The talk covers Tithe Applotments, Griffith's Valuation including the assessment books. It also mentions the Registry of Deeds, Irish Flax Growers Lists, Return of Owners of Land and records catalogued under Voters Lists. None of these document ages or families but may be the only record option available.

Listen here.

British and Irish Architects

Chris Paton blogs that "the Irish Government has funded a new online database of interest to those with architects in their ancestry. The Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720-1940 at www.dia.ie can be searched by the name of the architect in question, or by the work he created."

Chris also mentions that Scottish architects can be researched online, at www.scottisharchitects.org.uk, which covers 1840-1980.

There does not seem to be an equivalent site for English or Welsh architects. There is some limited information at www.lookingatbuildings.org which serves as "an introduction to architecture with pages on Building Types, architectural styles and traditions and building materials and methods of construction, and an expanding guide and introduction to buildings in seven of England's cities. Research tools including glossary, links, an index of architects and their works and a guide to further reading on all aspects of English architecture."

Genealogy Gripe Week - Review

There were more comments posted to items this past week than ever before on the blog. Most items hit a sore spot with somebody, not just me!

The item about a petition to open the civil registration records got most hits. Some may have thought from the title that these records are being opened, not just petitioned to be opened. The petition remains open, now with over 2,500 signatures.

Apparently Ancestors magazine still doesn't want subscriptions. You can get a bit further in the subscription process than when I first tried, but it's no progress to enter all your information only to receive the message "Error! Click here to return to the homepage."

There was some good news about LAC service problems. An archivist is going through all the orders where issues have been found to try and identify the problems. She was only up to surnames beginning with L when I spoke to her on Friday. Nevertheless, every time I visit some other issue seems to surface. On Friday I found out that if you send an item for photocopying then the whole box has to go along with it. you can't have the file put in a different box keeping the remaining available to you. Perhaps there's a shortage of boxes. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue if LAC found a way to provide as standard the same reasonably rapid photocopy service provided elsewhere.

Comments identifying additional uses of the Internet for genealogy were added, now many more than mentioned in The Beaver column.

On the TNA podcast one comment agreed with the difficulty of following the talk without the visuals, and then went on with her own suggestion that I add a direct link to the audio on my blog. A suggestion isn't exactly a gripe -- but turnaround is fair!

Congratulations John L Sayers

Helping celebrate genealogy gripe week.

John Sayers is a gentleman, a dedicated genealogist known far and wide for his work on home children. His many other contributions to family history in Ottawa have included cemeteries coordinator for OGS Ottawa Branch, longtime volunteer with the local Family History Centre, and running the England discovery table at BIFHSGO monthly meetings. He was named to the BIFHSGO Hall of Fame in 2001.

Posted on the OGS Ottawa Branch web site is information that John is to be recognized with an Ontario Heritage Trust award to be presented at 9:30 am on Thursday April 2, 2009 at the Community and Protective Services Committee at City Hall.

So what's to gripe about?

I'll be away and miss the event. Two other people well known in the local heritage community will also receive awards. Who are they?

Civil registration, and beyond

Helping celebrate genealogy gripe week.

The most recent podcast from The National Archives is by Audrey Collins who takes a look at civil registration, and reveals some of the little-known facts and stories behind the records. You might not learn much to help in your research.

At least one myth gets debunked and you'll gain an appreciation for the people pushing the pen that wrote the indexes.

My gripe -- lack of visuals to go along with the audio.

How genealogists use the internet

Helping celebrate genealogy gripe week

In his latest genealogy column in March issue of The Beaver columnist Fraser Dunford identifies four, and only four, genealogical uses of the Internet. They are:

1. to look at original documents;

2. to search indexes;

3. to look at prepared genealogies;

4. and to contact others who are interested in the same families as you.

Contrast this with a list I found through Stephen Abrams blog which had a bar graph of online activities of internet users worldwide. They aren't specifically genealogy but most have application to genealogy. I certainly check the weather forecast online before deciding about going to genealogy meetings at this time of year.

Here's a longer list specific to genealogy/family history: getting news about new resources; getting news about meetings, conferences and workshops; registering for genealogical events; online genealogy education; ordering books, magazines and other published genealogical resources; consulting library or archive catalogues; reserving a computer to consult databases at the local library; ordering certificates; discussing genealogy; viewing transcribed or abstracted material; viewing maps; finding photographs; backing up genealogical data; organizing speakers for meetings, conferences and workshops; accessing cloud resources, e.g. "Google documents"; accessing and writing blogs.

Dunford takes far too narrow a view, and in doing so misses much of the importance and potential of the internet for genealogy.

More on service problems at LAC

Helping celebrate genealogy gripe week

I finally managed to get to LAC on February 3 during full service hours, only to find the slip for the material I ordered on 20 January annotated "cannot find this reference, see archivist."

Nothing else was done with it. No effort to contact me by email or telephone, both of which LAC have on file.

Talking to others I learn this lack of communication is standard LAC practise. That's appalling for a service organization. How much effort would it take to pull up the client email address and send a prompt notification that there's a problem?


Added at 12:30 pm -- As promised yesterday while talking to the duty archivist, I received a call from LAC to say these boxes have arrived.

Ancestors magazine doesn't want subscriptions!

Helping Celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

I post fairly regularly on items drawn from Ancestors, a UK magazine published in association with The National Archives. It's a good source. I subscribed for the past year, even though the cost for an annual subscription, with airmail delivery, is a sky high 66 pounds.

You`d think at that price they`d bend over backwards to get you to renew.

I tried to get into the web site without success several times -- no page was loaded. On Saturday my request was caught in the Google “This site may harm your computer.” error.

Later that day I did connect. Clicking on `click here to subscribe now`and `subscribe` returned to exactly the same page. In fact every internal link returns to that same page. There was no way to enter a subscription!

Also their RSS feed is broken, and it's not accepting subscriptions.

Another renewal option would be to mail a form to the company, but that's with the risk of giving out a credit card number, including the security code. No thank you.

1891 Canadian census free online at LAC

Helping celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

No gripe on this one. Kudos to LAC and Ancestry.ca

Now there is free access online to an indexed 1891 Census of Canada through the LAC web site here.

The indexes are linked to digitized images of original census returns which list the name, age, country or province of birth, nationality, religion, and occupation of Canada's residents at the time of the 1891 Census. More detailed information is here.

LAC acknowledges the contribution of Ancestry.ca.

Open access to registers of Birth, Marriage and Death from 1837 to 1908

Helping celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

A long time gripe of many a genealogist is the cost of obtaining full information on civil registrations of births, marriages and deaths in England and Wales. To obtain the information you have no option but to buy a certified copy of the certificate. Most of us just want the information, not a certificate.

Now there's a petition to open the civil registration records under the 100 year rule. It reads:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to allow full and open access to registers of Birth, Marriage and Death from 1837 to 1908.

The further explanation reads "Having full and open access to the registers of births, marriages and deaths from 1837 to 1908 will make it easier for genealogists to research the records and ensure they get the copies they require. If copies were put on the internet this would simplify the process. These records are over a hundred years old and should now be accessible to all with a small fee to cover the cost of copying the originals.|

The petition, which may be signed online by British residents and expats, already has over 650 signatures. If you qualify please consider signing the petition, but don't expect any fast action.

Find the petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/OpenBMDrecords/

Also on England and Wales BMDs, FreeBMD updated their database on 30 January - now with an amazing 162,001,022 distinct records and working on index entries for the 1930s.

LAC open, but not for service

Helping Celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

With the bus strike it has been a trial getting to Library and Archives Canada. Parking, challenging at the best of times, has been a headache. A couple of weeks ago I was lucky, found parking in a one hour zone and was able to submit an order. Having waited to take the order form into the fishbowl the clerk looked at me, pitifully, and told me, with strained regulation civility, that I should put it in the box outside. This didn't seem to allow for delivering the material to a storage locker, but I didn't worry as I believed I could come back and collect the material during the new open hours on a Saturday.

I made it in last Saturday, but when I got to the 3rd floor found there was no retrieval service, even for pre-ordered materials which are presumably waiting behind locked doors on the same floor. The only Saturday service available is digital copying self-service and microfilm reproduction.

If you scrutinize the service and opening hours on the LAC website here, and your eye doesn't zoom past the asterisk, you can read that limitation on Saturday service. My eye was moving too fast.

Why does it have to be that way? It would be really helpful if the asterisk note stated explicitly, and clearly, the parts of regular service that will not be provided on Saturday as well as those that will. Asterisks make sense in black and white printed material, but it doesn't cost extra to add colour on the web so why not highlight the limitation in service in colour.

Better yet would be to provide that Saturday service.

Ancestry England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005

Helping Celebrate Genealogy Gripe Week

I`m not sure whether to gripe, cheer or stay quiet about this one!

On January 28th Ancestry announced on their recent genealogy database page the
England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005. I tried it and found my own birth index entry by a direct search -- no scanning through a page, or series of pages, it might be on.

A little later I tried again and the same search didn't work. I even tried contacting Lesley Anderson, Ancestry guru, who couldn't get it to work as a direct search.

It now appears to be working again - somewhat! Will it remain so?

This should be, a very nice facility. It's like they completed the task for FreeBMD.

Your search should be able to include the mother's maiden. Then finding index entries for siblings should be easy, if one of the father's or mother's surname isn't too common, especially if you can limit the date range and location. You need to go to the advanced search to force an exact match.

Unfortunately at last try the system was still flaky. I found a birth, but could not find it again when the mother's maiden name was entered even though it showed up on the digitized record.

Naturally if the entry is missing in the original GRO record, as for one of my brothers, you're out of luck.

Genealogy Gripe Week

Most people in Ottawa are getting pretty fed up. January saw no thaw this year. There were several dumps of snow. No public transit made things difficult for everyone, and virtually impossible for some. Even with the strike settled it will takes weeks for bus service to return to normal.

Having a full load of gripes, what better time to vent!

So.

With the authority invested in me, by the powers that be, I declare this

Genealogy Gripe Week