Saturday, July 19, 2008

NARA

Resources for Genealogists and Family Historians: "The National Archives of USA offers insight into the lives of people, their families and our history. Because the records at the National Archives come from every branch of the Federal government, almost all Americans can find themselves, their ancestors, or their community in the archives. Knowing how a person interacted with the government is key to a successful search."

Naming Patterns

Naming Patterns: "General Naming Pattern ...
First son was named after the father's father.


Second son was named after the mother's father."etc etc . . . but many exceptions

Friday, July 18, 2008

FamilySearch.org

James W Anderson wrote to fsindexing:-
(
on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FSIndexing/)

There were two significant updates to the old FamilySearch site and the Indexing site today.

1. http://www.familysearch.org/ has an entirely new look. New search interface, although someone found some bugs already and the word has already gotten back about that. You'll also ind an 'index' tab which will take the person clicking on that to the Indexing site.

2. The familysearchindexing.org indexing site has a more streamlined tutorial page now. Click on 'help' at the top. The publications have been moved to an area for administrators, etc., but they should still be able to be printed to hand out to indexers, etc.


FamilySearch.org - Family History and Genealogy Records: "Resources from Around the World
Search Records for Your Ancestors in Online birth, marriage, death, census, church and other indexes."

FamilySearch.org - News: "Official news releases from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"

FamilySearch.org - Education - SEARCH THE FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY CATALOG

Thursday, July 17, 2008

DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog

DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog: Comparisons: WVR& Ancestry: "Ol' Myrt here is confident that with the invention of new internet tools, genealogists will have a great time putting them to good use to spread the word about our ancestors.

As for me, I'm thankful for sites like Ancestry and WVR, making it possible to view more in the way of scanned original source documents."

Basically old technology like film and fiche is only being used for long term back up in the professionally run archives

World wide the trend is towards digital access to catalogues and images, and the fiche and film readers are destined for the museums of technology together with the Hollerith machines used for managing census data on punch cards about a 100 year s ago.

see also scanstone - Google Search: eg "Digital Microfilm Frame Detection." for more about the transition in progress

Historical Record Access USA

Pennsylvania Historical Record Access: "Currently, all death certificates recorded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania since 1906 have restricted access regardless of how long ago a person died. Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records regulations require the requester to supply several pieces of information (including when and where the person died), spend $9 and wait 5 weeks or longer for each and every death certificate. A requester is also required to have a direct relationship to the deceased in order to obtain a copy of a death certificate. Often a requester doesn’t know if the person is related and needs the death certificate to find out. This is especially true when compiling family histories and trying to find the descendents of a common ancestor. The information a requester is expected to supply is quite often the very information a requester is looking for and the very reason for wanting a death certificate.

Many of us have experienced the frustration of either being told the death certificate could not be found or being sent the wrong certificate. Yes, a requester can pay $34 for an extended search of up to a ten year window with the charge of an additional $25 for each extension to that search window. To say the least this is quite costly to the requester and very time consuming for the Division of Vital Records. Sadly it doesn’t always result in a successful search and the fee is not refunded.

Also Pennsylvania doesn’t have a publicly accessible index to see if the person even died in Pennsylvania. So it becomes an expensive guessing game that doesn’t always result in finding a death certificate even when the person actually died in Pennsylvania. Because of the many burdensome and counterintuitive restrictions, the public is not able to use these historic records as much as they should be able to.

We understand the concerns about privacy. However, there is no practical reason to keep all of these records restricted indefinitely. Therefore, our basic proposal is that the death certificates that would be accessible online by the public would have to be at least 50 years old. Currently that would mean only the death certificates of persons who died before 1958 would be made accessible. As each year passes the next year in line would be made accessible online to the public.

Several states have already made their older death certificates available online, including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and West Virginia. The states of Louisiana, New Hampshire and Vermont are in the process of doing so. For numerous other states there are online indexes. However, Pennsylvania has no publicly accessible index and continues the outdated and costly manual processing of each of its older death certificates one at a time. Click here to see links to the databases for these other states

The Social Security Death Master File (with names, dates, places and numbers, and better known as the Social Security Death Index), which is updated weekly, is a death verification database used proactively to thwart identity theft and fraud. We understand government agencies, banks, insurance and credit card companies use it all the time to verify deaths and to stop the misuse of a deceased person's Social Security number. Expanding our proposed database to include all of Pennsylvania's death records (but with the same limited public access as outlined above) could be used in a similar manner by law enforcement and government agencies. The Division of Vital Records would itself be able to fill requests using the expanded database."

In England and Wales acording to a law effective from 1 July 1837 all birth, marriage and death certificates are publically available - only census and medical reords are restricted.

genuki civil registration - Google Search



Wednesday, July 16, 2008

YouTube - HelpDesk - danske undertekster

YouTube - HelpDesk - danske undertekster: "HelpDesk - danske undertekster"

Deceased Online test site

Deceased Online: "The central database for UK burials and cremations

Search registers by Country, Region, County, Burial Authority or Crematorium free of charge.
Register as a Deceased Online user and gain access to

* Computerised registers
* Digital scans of registers and books of remembrance
* Photographs of graves and memorials
* Cemetery maps showing grave locations
* Other occupants in the same grave"