Experience with LAC's New Digitization Project-by the Public, for the Public

I blogged the basic information about this Library and Archives Canada pilot project on March 26. Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to try it.

On Monday I ordered a file to be produced by LAC relating to British children evacuated to Canada during the Second World War. I was informed the record was available at noon on Tuesday and made an appointment to meet with Carol-Ann McColgan, the Project Officer, on Wednesday morning.

It took a few minutes to retrieve the file box, complete the normal LAC paperwork involved with making copies using digital cameras, and to find the dedicated project area. A work area was already set up with a digital camera and tripod. I found the specific file I was interested in, about 200 pages, and removed the metal binding. The process of placing an original, aligning it properly, zooming in or out as necessary, and pressing the button to take the photo with a short time delay to avoid movement of the camera in doing so, proceeded quite quickly once I got accustomed to it. The major problem was the lighting. Standing in front of the camera put me between the window and the original. I was advised to move to one side to obtain a better image. That was an inconvenience, and only mildly aerobic!

I completed the imaging process in under two hours. The images in jpg format were loaded onto a Mac computer and I was given a copy on a USB flash drive I brought with me.

On examination a few of the images were out of focus and had to be redone.

The most tiresome part of the exercise was rethreading the metal binding.

The system definitely has potential. It's convenient not to have to bring your own digital camera and to know that [one-day] the images will become available on the LAC website.

Any pilot project it's expected to reveal problems. The biggest is the physical setup of the scanning station and the need to move so as not to obstruct light from the window. If the project gets beyond the pilot stage LAC should invest in properly ergonomic scanning stations so you can remain seated without obstructing the light source, have a large screen to align the document and ensure it is in focus, and conveniently placed controls instead of having to reach up to the camera.

Not being familiar with Mac equipment there's also a learning curve in transferring the images from the camera to the computer. Hopefully a proper scanning station would have that step built-in.

However, even with the present setup I wouldn't hesitate to take advantage again should the need arise.

A final comment, LAC call this a digitization project. It is if by that you mean photographing with a digital camera. Digitization also means to make the text computer searchable which this project does not aim to do. Am I the only one confused by the twin uses of the terminology?

North West Kent Family History Society

The North West Kent Family History Society just started a blog which mentions free searchable indexes presently available on the NWKFHS web site.

Highlighted is an index of deeds and other documents of the area that were rescued from a solicitor's office and obtained by the Society. http://www.nwkfhs.org.uk/searchable.htm will take you to the web page where you can download a pdf file giving the details of 863 entries from the 1800's through to the 1900's.

The same link will lead to a transcript and name index of some 13,700 gravestones at Ladywell & Brockley Cemetery, with the names of nearly 37,000 individuals buried there.

Getting social

Have you noticed the grey rather inconspicuous row of icons now found at the bottom of each blog post? It's for people who would like to post on the item to friends and social networks. Run your cursor over an icon, it springs into colour and up pops a small balloon with information on what it represents: email, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz. Click it and proceed.

I can legitimately say I've added this thanks to a request, although it did take a while and meant cutting and pasting some html code when the automated process didn't work. Enjoy.

Uninteresting people in your family tree?

According to a press release for ancestry.ca, 10% of Canadians have royalty or links to royalty in their family tree. Curious about the source of the information I contacted Jeri Brown of Media Profile, ancestry.ca's publicity company. Jeri kindly sent me the following survey result from May last year based on responses from more than 1,000 people.

11. Based on your current knowledge of your family history, which of the following have you found in your family tree? (check all that apply)
War hero		17%
Pirate		2%
Bigamist		1%
Criminal		6%
Someone very wealthy / a lost fortune		10%
An adulterer		5%
A politician		6%
A renowned artist / author / poet		4%
Sports person of note		3%
Royalty or links to royalty		10%
A living relative I wasn’t previously in contact with		15%
None of these		58%

Taking the numbers at face value, I'm surprised. The majority have nobody of note (positive or negative) in their family tree.
85% have not found a previously uncontacted living family relative, which doesn't say much for genealogical social networking.
The percent who have a criminal and a politician in their family tree is the same (don't go there!)

I confess I'm doubtful about the statistics. Am I wrong, or only partly wrong? Please take the simple survey below with much the same questions, except a bit more definition for royalty. If I get sufficient responses I'll blog the results in a few days. Thank you

99,717 new Wiltshire baptism records at findmypast.co.uk

Continuing the addition of parish records at findmypast.co.uk, from the Wiltshire Family History Society come indexes to baptism records from 1538-1867.

The parishes included are: Ansty, Collingbourne, Kingston, Devizes, Draycot Cerne, Easton Royal, Ebbesbourne Wake, Foxley, Fugglestone St Peter, Garsdon, Hankerton, Hardenhuish, Heytesbury, Langley Burrell, Lea & Cleverton, Leigh, Leigh Delamere, Little Langford, Littleton Drew, Longbridge Deverill, Maiden Bradley, North Newnton, Nunton, Ogbourne St Andrew, Ogbourne St George, Overton & Fyfield, Patney, Rollestone, Rushall, Salisbury, Seagry, Sedgehill, Shalbourne, Sherrington, Slaughterford, South Newton, South Wraxall, Stanton St Bernard, Stanton St Quintin, Stapleford, Stockton, Stourton, Stratford sub Castle, Sutton Benger, Teffont Evias, Tytherton Lucas, West Dean, West Grimstead, West Harnham, West Kington, Westport, Westwood, Wilcot, Wilsford, Winsley, Yatton Keynell

Reveling in revealing royalty

The following is a press release from Media Profile on behalf of Ancestry.ca. My comment follows.

April 14, 2011 (Toronto, ON) With the royal wedding a mere two weeks away and counting,Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website[i], is offering free access to its complete collection of Canadian marriage records. For fans of all things royal wedding related, Ancestry.ca has also uncovered a Canadian connection to the family of Catherine Elizabeth Middleton.
Historical records reveal that Miss Middleton’s Grandfather, Peter Middleton, spent some of his formative years in Calgary, where he was stationed during the Second World War while training with the Royal Air Force at #37 SFTS (Service Flying Training School). He was first posted to Canada as a flying instructor and it would be more than two years before he finally saw military action, joining 605 Squadron at Manston, Kent, in August 1944.
Peter also visited Canada when he was 17-years-old, arriving with a group of fellow students for a “School Empire Tour Party” in August 1939. Peter is found on a passenger list arriving in Quebec from Liverpool on August 11, 1939 on the SS Andania.  Coincidentally, it was Peter Middleton’s death in November 2010 that delayed the announcement of Miss Middleton and Prince William’s engagement. 
Royal Weddings Galore...If this isn’t enough to get Canadians excited about the royal wedding, recent Ancestry.ca data suggests that this year in Canada, more than nine thousand ‘royal’ weddings will take place, in which either the bride or groom (or both) can claim ties to some form of royalty in their family tree.[ii]  These findings from the family history website were gathered by comparing current marriage rates for Canada with the proportion of the population that can claim royal ancestry (10 per cent).
Canadians looking to see if they have ancestral ties to royalty can visit www.ancestry.ca/royal to check out the complete collection of royal family history records. The Royal Collectiondetails half a million people born into or descended from royalty, the peerage, nobility and the landed gentry and highlights royal and noble family trees, coats of arms and family crests, lineage, titles and more.
To help Canadians discover their royal links, Ancestry.ca has compiled a list of tips for discovering the royal blood in one’s family history.
1.     Explore surnames: cross-reference surnames in your family tree with those found in The Royal Collections on Ancestry.ca. Look for names like Windsor, Stuart, Plantagenet.2.     Seek out wealth: look for evidence of wealthy ancestors through domestic  staff listings on census records, property and businesses documented in wills and probate records and  ancestors who were extensive travellers listed in immigration records travelling in First Class.   3.     Look for titles: titles like “Sir” “Count” “Duke” etc mean your ancestors had some connection to royalty, familial or otherwise. If any of your ancestors had titles, explore the age and origins of those titles.4.     Look for places: for surnames in your family tree that are also the name of a place – for example a town or parish – do further research to establish any connection between that ancestor and significant ownership in that location.5.     Find the Normans: investigate whether any of the surnames in your family tree has Norman origins and if so, research that particular branch of the family as far back as you can as many early Normans had direct royal connections.  
Lesley Anderson, Ancestry.ca family historian, comments: “I would encourage every Canadian to begin researching their family tree if they haven’t done so already. With the Royal Wedding coming up, it’s a great time to try to discover if you have a royal tie and there may be many Canadians out there now who have connections with the royal family without even knowing it.”
Free Access to Canadian marriage RecordsTo celebrate the royal wedding, Ancestry.ca is offering free access to the complete collection of Canadian marriage records, from April 20 until May 1.
These collections, available at www.ancestry.ca/marriage, contain more than 8 million records and more than 4 million original images from marriages across Canada, dating as far back as 1621.
Marriage records contain information about both spouses and help Canadians discover not only the details around a major milestone in the lives of their ancestors, but can also provide information on the newlyweds’ parents; allowing family history fanatics to take their research back another generation.
To discover their royal connections, Canadians can visit Ancestry.ca for a 14-day free trial.
About Ancestry.caCanada’s leading family history website, Ancestry.ca has 128 million Canadian records in such collections as the complete Historical Canadian Censuses from 1851 to 1916, Ontario and British Columbia vital records from as early as 1813, Quebec Vital Records (The Drouin Collection), Canadian Passenger Lists and U.S. / Canada Border Crossings.
Ancestry.ca was launched in January 2006 and belongs to the global network of Ancestry websites (wholly owned by Ancestry.com Operations Inc.), which contains six billion records. To date more than 20 million family trees have been created and 2 billion names and 50 million photographs and stories uploaded. (Figures current as of 5 March 2011).

My Comment

The 10% figure above, incidentally, the same percentage quoted for Canadians who have a home child ancestor, comes from a survey which asked "Based on your current knowledge of your family history, which of the following have you found in your family tree?" A non-exclusive option was "Royalty or links to royalty". 

This is rather different than "the proportion of the population that can claim royal ancestry" in the press release. I queried a friend who has a relative who was a royal coachman who said she would have claimed a link to royalty if answering the question. How many of the 10% had a by employment link, not a blood or by marriage relationship, that can be documented?

Statistically we all have royal blood relationships, which mostly can't be reliably documented. 

New Zealand military resources on Ancestry

Ancestry.com has made available a mass of New Zealand military information from published sources. The largest part is for WW1.

Approximately 124,000 served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, NZEF, during WW1. About 100,000 were sent overseas, nearly 17,000 died of wounds or sickness while on active service, another 35,000 were wounded.

New Zealand Army WWI Nominal Rolls, 1914-1918 contains: enlisted person's name, rank, regimental number, unit or regiment, name, address, and relationship of next-of-kin. It may also contain: last New Zealand residence, marital status, occupation, recruiting district, name of the body or reinforcement draft.

New Zealand Army WWI Reserve Rolls, 1916-1917 is an index of men enlisted into compulsory military service in the NZEF Reserve. There are two rolls, the first compiled in September 1916, the second from August to October 1917. Each record contains the name of the reservist,  occupation, place of residence at time of enlistment. The second roll also includes a classification for each record based on the number of children of the reservist.

New Zealand Army WWI Casualty Lists, 1914-1919
New Zealand Army WWI Roll of Honour, 1914-1919

New Zealand WWI Military Defaulters, 1919-1921

A list of about 2,000 men, including 160 objectors who were in prison. Defaulters were deprived of their civil rights: they could not vote, hold office, or be employed by any public authority for ten years after (until 1927). Information is: name, number, occupation, place of residence.

Chronicles of the N.Z.E.F., 1916-1919
Published twice a month in London from 1916 to 1919 this magazine provided reports on service life in the NZEF, including stories, entertainment, and information about sporting and social events. Each issue also contains obituaries and casualty lists for soldiers who died while serving in the NZEF, as well as hospital reports of wounded troops. The database is page images which are not computer searchable.

The release includes databases with scope beyond WW1.

New Zealand Army Medal Rolls, 1860-1919

This dataset includes New Zealand volunteers and militia who fought during the New Zealand War of 1860 to 1870, ten contingents from New Zealand who were sent to South Africa to fight with British forces during the Second Boer War of 1899-1902, and members of the NZEF.  As is often the case with medal rolls, the information is sparse.


The Defenders of New Zealand
Comprises short biographies of certain colonists who distinguished themselves during the New Zealand War of 1860–1870. It also contains tales of the Maori, a list of volunteers and militia who received the New Zealand Medal, and a list of officers and men of the colonial force who were killed in action during the war. The list of medal recipients has been indexed and is searchable in the New Zealand Army Medal Rolls, 1860-1919 collection.

New Zealand Army WWII Nominal Rolls, 1939-1948
This is a valuable, if incomplete, later period database with information on: embarkation date, surname of enlisted person, rank, army number, unit, marital status, place of enlistment, occupation, last residence, next of kin, address of next of kin, relationship with listed next of kin.

FTDNA special for DNA day

This is a very limited time special.

Because this is such a short run sale, please contact Family Tree DNA customer service right away with any problems.

Phone: 1-713-868-1438

E-mail: info@familytreedna.com
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166119860113271

Coupon Code: DNADAY2011

Time
Today at 12:00pm - Saturday at 12:00am
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Created By
Family Tree DNA
More Info
DNA Day is April 15th! Starting at 12:00 PM on April 14th, join the celebration!

New customers:
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To take advantage of these promotional prices use the coupon code: DNADAY2011

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Payment must be received at the time of the order. Valid only on products listed. No substitutions. This promotion was announced in advance, therefore no adjustments will be made on previous purchases. Offer valid from 12:00 PM CST on Thursday, April 14, until 11:59 PM CST on April 15, 2011.

This promotion is not valid in combination with any other promotions. Family Tree DNA reserves the right to cancel any order due to unauthorized or ineligible use of discounts and to modify or cancel these promotional discounts due to system error or unforeseen problems. Subject to change without notice.

Chinese family history online

We don't read much about family history in non-English-speaking  cultures, so I was interested to see this article, Rooting out one's family history online, from the China Daily. It mentions mobile genealogy apps and two websites, http://ourroots.nlc.gov.cn, a genealogy portal co-established by the National Library of China, and Jiapu.com which it characterizes as arguably the largest online resource for Chinese family histories.

Genealogy traffic rank

Using the services of alexa.com, what are the most popular genealogy/family history websites?

Ancestry`s various sites are top ranked in the US. UK and Canada.

I was surprised at the relative popularity of the social network sites myheritage and geni (both well behind facebook).

Library and Archives Canada could not be ranked as Alexa only ranks the top level site gc.ca.

In software related sites familyreemaker ranks above legacyfamilytree and rootsmagic.

Americanancestors, site of the NEHGS, is the top society site.

The high ranking of genealogyintime, Ottawa based, surprised me.

Included is jiapu.com, the largest online resource for Chinese family histories

And the low rank of bifhsgo.ca was also a surprise, substantially down from previous rankings, likely the result of it having been recently offline. There are quite a few lower ranking genealogy sites which are omitted.

ancestry.com 984
myheritage.com 3,886
geni.com 8,086
familysearch.org 9,120
genealogy.com 12,190
ancestry.co.uk 17,243
archives.gov 18,209
nationalarchives.gov.uk 18,550
23andme.com 41,700
ancestry.ca 42,325genesreunited.co.uk 46,279
familytreedna.com 80,397
findmypast.co.uk 81,411
cyndislist.com 86,990
eogn.com 150,226
familytreemaker.com 161,170
jiapu.com 168,666
worldvitalrecords.com 175,547
genuki.org.uk 193,436
familytreemagazine.com 201,288
freebmd.org.uk 212,655
legacyfamilytree.com 273,131
americanancestors.org 276,418
automatedgenealogy.com 296,376
rootsmagic.com 372,173
geneabloggers.com 438,407
genealogywise.com 525,834
cwgc.org 527,236
sog.org.uk 708,746
ngsgenealogy.org 770,719
genealogyintime.com 784,440
globalgenealogy.com 830,338
whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com 994,049
genealogicalstudies.com 1,093,695
ffhs.org.uk 1,267,779
ogs.on.ca 1,289,655
rootsuk.com 1,340,610
bcgcertification.org 1,601,646
deceasedonline.com 1,648,569
family-tree.co.uk 1,836,425
familychronicle.com 1,881,611
arcalife.com 2,356,437
anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.com 2,418,382
lostcousins.com 2,677,921
internet-genealogy.com 3,234,636
bcgs.ca 3,313,414
archivecdbooks.ca 6,533,165
qfhs.ca 6,654,860
bifhsgo.ca 7,145,992

Genealogy on CTV

Canada AM had a segment on morning of 13 April called "A woman finds a royal connection using Ancestry.ca"
It had a woman speaking about her Plantagenet ancestors and then Lesley Anderson doing a promo on Ancestry. Unfortunately a video version was only briefly available on the CTV website.


Thanks to Linda Reid for the tip.

Crisp's London Marriage Licence Index at Ancestry.co.uk, plus

According to the Institute for Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, which Ancestry cites as their source, this is an index to more than 10,000 original marriage licenses of over a dozen major London parishes. These include "St Martin in the Fields 1765-1837; St Mary Putney 1822-1837; Holy Trinity Chelsea 1832-1837; St Leonard Shoreditch 1774-1837; St Dunstan in the West 1731-1837; St Paul Deptford 1779-1833; Christ Church Spitalfields 1757-1780; St John Hackney 1779-1837; St Paul Covent Garden 1734-1837; Kensington, Deptford, Whitechapel (some) etc. 1707-1837." 

The collection is name indexed. There is also a browse file by year. Missing years are 1716, 1717, 1753, 1755. The last year is 1892 after which there is a collection of 105 poor quality pages, many torn, categorized as "Not Stated." From 1713 to 1733 the entries are handwritten in Latin with the early years difficult to read. Thereafter the language is English with a printed form used from 1759.

Perhaps like me you're curious about Crisp whose name is in the collection title.

Genealogy Hub has a list of publications of Frederick Arthur Crisp, 1851-1922, with surname lists of contents and links to several of his texts in the Internet Archive. Crisp became wealthy in the patent medicine business in London. When he died his estate was nearly 164 thousand pounds.

An interesting coincidence is that Butler and Crisp, wholesale medicine company, had offices at Charterhouse Buildings which now houses the Society of Genealogists.

Findmypast.co.uk adds transcribed Cambridgeshire parish records

Findmypast.co.uk has added a total of 1,100,105 new parish record transcriptions provided by the Cambridgeshire Family History Society in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Type of  records	Number of  records	Date  range	Parishes covered
Baptisms	418,635	1538-1950	Click to see list (PDF)
Marriages	242,732	1538-1950	Click to see list (PDF)
Banns	103,552	1653-1950	Click to see list (PDF)
Burials	335,186	1538-1950	Click to see list (PDF)

Not much here for me, but those researching regional names like Thurgood should finds something to chew over.

Archives of Ontario customer satisfaction survey, and LAC

Browse over to the the Archives of Ontario homepage and you have the option of taking a 15 minute survey about your use, or lack of use, of the facility. Perhaps, like me, you find the AO is putting insufficient effort into placing resources online for the benefit of those across the province, and around the world, for whom a trip to North York is a significant expense. If so its your chance to tell them, they aren't mind readers!

Kudos to AO for doing the survey.

The other day I was asked by a manager at Library and Archives Canada about how they should go about determining their client views. LAC at present gives little evidence of wanting to learn client views, That leads to the type of unsolicited feedback they received in an editorial by Penni Stewart in the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Bulletin which is grist for the mill as Canadians contemplate a trip to the polling station in early May.

Ignatyev and Ignatieff

I'm not one who believes the sins, or triumphs, of our ancestors should reflect on later generations. It's one reason I'm not very keen on the likes of lineage societies, or "Australian royalty."

Reading East End 1888, by William J Fishman, I was brought up short by a sentence in the middle of page 142:

"On 10 August (1888) the Jewish Chronicle, quoting from correspondence from St. Petersburg, confirmed that mass expulsions from Southern Russia ('the outcome of Count Ignatieff's aim to make life in Russia impossible for the Jews'), affected 100,000 - 200,000 of the miserable victims."   

It stuck in my mind, and came back to me when Andrew Hunter, blog reader, sent a reference to a Wikipedia article on Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev which notes that his great-grandson Michael Ignatieff is the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Quoting from that item:

"Shortly after the accession of Alexander III in 1881, he was appointed Minister of the Interior on the understanding that he would carry out a nationalist, reactionary policy. After a period of intense, violent, destructive antisemitic rioting, known as pogroms, which some accused Ignatyev of fomenting, he issued the infamous "May Laws" in May 1882. Other sources suggest he in fact followed a government policy (not always enforced by local authorities) of strict suppression of rioters and protection of the Jewish population:

Nikolai Ignatiev, installed as Minister of the Interior in May 1881, decided on a policy of firm repression, although it was made difficult by the unforeseeable character of the outbreaks and his limited forces. Nevertheless, he ordered his men to fire upon rioters. In the towns of Borisov and Nezhin this resulted in fatalities. In Kiev, 1400 arrests were made. Many in the government felt this was still inadequate. The police chief of Kiev wrote apologetically to the Tsar that the local military tribunals had been too lenient with the rioters; Alexander III wrote in the margin: “This is inexcusable!”^[1]

He retired from office in June 1882 .... after that time he exercised no important influence in public affairs."

There's a gap between 1882, when Nikolai Ignatiev was in office and the 1888 Jewish Chronicle items. Can anyone enlighten me?

I've previously blogged about Michael Ignatieff's ancestry.

Guess the relative

The following is a press release, via Dick Eastman's blog

Dragonfly Film and TV in the UK is making an exciting new game show featuring families and long-lost relatives. And we're searching for people from all over the world, who think they might have British ancestry who they've never made contact with.

Whether your Great Great Grandfather was born in England or your Great Aunt lived in Scotland... If you think you, or anyone you know, may have British relatives you've never yet met, we want to hear about it!

More at http://apply.shinegroup.tv/GuessTheRelative/index.apply

Royal Navy Officers Medal Roll 1914-1920 on FindMyPast

The following is compiled from an announcement by findmypast.co.uk

Royal Navy Officers Medal Roll 1914-1920 records comprise a transcript of the complete WWI Campaign Medal Rolls to 53,000 officers of all branches of the Royal Navy taken from The National Archives document classes ADM/171/89 to ADM/171/93 (inclusive) and ADM/171/139

Added to the transcript are service details for a large number of officers, particularly those killed in action or died of wounds during WWI. In many cases, post-war deaths and WWII deaths are noted.

The medals that the rolls cover are: The 1914 Star, the Clasp to the 1914 Star, the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

Pre-DNA Day special from 23andMe

The Your Genetic Genealogist blog is reporting, and now confirmed at the company site, that direct to consumer genetic testing company 23andMe has a special offer starting at midnight Pacific Time, Monday 11 April. It's only for 24 hours, or until sold out. It's a real deal at $108 for 12 months service and no other upfront cost, presumably aside from shipping.

Check it out at www.23andme.com The service includes both health and ancestry service and the ability to download raw results in case you don't want to continue the service, and monthly fee, after 12 months.

British history online: ConnectedHistories

Connected Histories, enables users to search for British names, places and dates, as well as save, connect and share resources within a personal workspace across 11 major digital resources for the period 1500-1900, including British History Online, British Museum Images and Old Bailey Online.

Some of the resources are free to view, some require a subscription unless you are within a British higher education facility.

There is a short video guide to introduce you to the key features

You can limit your search in several way, including by source, time period, and the nature of the search term (person, place). However, I found a person search missed many occurrences. 

The site is a university cooperative project funded by JISC which is a consortium of funding agencies, the likes of which Canada lacks, pity.

Use Connected Histories at www.connectedhistories.org.

Ottawa city and area directories

I've mentioned Ottawa city directories online before, but noticed several additions of late 19th and early 20th century Ottawa city directories to The Internet Archive collection this past week, check at http://goo.gl/JwSzd. It's a good source from the mid 1890s, and for the 1910s, plus editions for 1901,  1909 and a 1923 directory.

There's good coverage for directories from the early 1880s to 1900, with a few earlier editions, at Library and Archives Canada's site where you can search at http://goo.gl/KMig8.