Saturday, September 06, 2008

Findmypast.com

Family Tree, Family History, Find Your Past, UK | Findmypast.com: "The county of Surrey, comprising over 748,000 records, has been added to the 1901 census. Search for your ancestors in the 1901 census today."

Search Parish Records Collection 1538 - 2005: "Our exclusive Parish Records Collection is an ongoing project to collate records of baptisms, marriages, burials and related records registered across England and Wales within a single online database. This unique record set has been made available on findmypast.com in association with the Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) member societies and other organisations and contributors."

OVER 13,000 OVERSEAS MARRIAGE PARISH RECORDS GO LIVE ON FINDMYPAST.COM

Findmypast.com has added more than 13,000 marriage records for British subjects overseas, some dating back to the seventeenth century at http://www.findmypast.com/parish-records-collection-search-start.action?redef=0&event=M. The records have been transcribed by Cliff Webb from originals housed at the Society of Genealogists in London.

The exotic collection includes Japan Embassy Marriages (1867-1899), Tobago marriages (1788-1816), India Calcutta marriages from 1713 and Jacobite Registers from the court of St Germain en Laye dating back to 1690, among others.

Docklands baptisms

Among the newly added records are nearly 346,000 baptisms for London’s dockland areas, covering much of East London (Whitechapel, Stepney, Limehouse, Shadwell etc.) through to Bermondsey.

These records were compiled by various researchers and are made available in association with Docklands Ancestors.

Parish records and extending your research before 1837 civil registration: "see their Knowledge base"

Friday, September 05, 2008

NetLibrary eAudiobooks

NetLibrary eAudiobooks [OCLC - Content and collections]: "eAudiobooks integrate seamlessly with a library's existing NetLibrary eContent collections, providing library users with a single point of access. Users can access their library's eContent from NetLibrary in a variety of ways including their library’s website or OPAC, the NetLibrary user website, and through OCLC WorldCat."

NetLibrary eBooks [OCLC - Content and collections]: "With content spanning hundreds of subject areas, NetLibrary offers a growing catalog of more than 150,000 eBook titles. And every day, we add more new content from the world's leading scholarly, trade, STM and reference publishers.

Whether you're supporting an academic research library, a multi-branch public library system, a global workforce, you'll find something for every library and every library budget. We offer comprehensive collections in all core subject areas including social sciences, humanities, science, technology, medicine, the arts; thousands of front list and bestselling trade titles; ready reference materials including encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, and handbooks; resources for students, teachers and faculty; and much more."

Ancestry Database Card Catalog - Ancestry.com: "with Complete Ancestry Title Listings currently 26333 databases" IF ONLY THEY WERE INTEGRATEDWITH THE LIBRARY CATALOGUES FOR Ancestry Database Card Catalog - AncestryLibrary.com

Thursday, September 04, 2008

500 YEARS OF LONDON HISTORY

Genealogy, Family Trees and Family History Records online - Ancestry.co.uk
from my email via Canada

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) is the largest local authority record office in the United Kingdom. It manages and provides public access to 80KM of archives, photographs, plans, audio-visual and printed material dating from 1067 to the present day - an enormous amount of information about the capital and its people. LMA is the premier destination for family historians tracing their roots in the London area and for learning about any aspect of the capital’s past.

The Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library is the local record office for the City of London (the "Square Mile"). Its holdings date from the 11th Century and include the archives of the Diocese of London, St Paul's Cathedral, the City wards and parishes, and around 80 of the City livery companies.

London, UK 4 September, 2008 The most comprehensive collection of historical London records, covering 500 years of the city’s history, is to be made available online for the first time. Following a lengthy tendering process, Ancestry[i] has secured the exclusive online rights to digitize and host key records from London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and Guildhall Library Manuscripts.

LMA’s historical record collection, which is owned and managed by the City of London, is considered to be of international importance, particularly given London’s prominence at the centre of the British Empire for almost 300 years from the mid-1700s.

As the City of London’s official partner, Ancestry, which has a global network of nine family history websites, will be responsible for providing access to The LMA Collection. Original record images and more than 77 million names searchable using key information such as name, date and place, will be available on Ancestry.ca, Canada’s No.1 family and social history website.

Dating from the early 16th Century through to 2006, the collection details the lives of both princes and paupers. Included are parish records, school records, electoral registers, wills, lists of workhouse labourers from the Poor Law ledgers and a comprehensive list of those granted ‘Freedom of the City’ .

Ancestry.ca spokesperson Karen Peterson comments: “This collection is particularly exciting for the family history research industry because it breaks what we call the ‘1837 barrier’, which is the year official record keeping began.”

“Again, advances in technology will enable so many people, who previously were not able to physically find and search through these rare records, the ability to do so with ease.”

The collection will take several years to index and image. Until now, those wishing to view records have had to visit LMA or the Guildhall Library, both based in Central London.

Online access to LMA records has long been anticipated by family history enthusiasts around the world: it will allow millions of people with ancestors who lived in or passed through London at some point in time to trace their roots, whether it be to the City’s slums or its more affluent boroughs.

The first records will launch on Ancestry.ca in early 2009, with the following prioritised for launch in the coming year:

· Parish records – records from more than 10,000 Greater London parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials dating from the 1530s to the 20th Century

· Poor Law documents - relating to the administration of poor relief, including workhouse registers from 1834 onwards

London school admissions – records from 843 individual London schools dating from the early Victorian times through to 1911, providing admission and personal details for millions of London students

Dr Deborah Jenkins, Assistant Director of the City of London’s Department of Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Library, comments: “It has always been the City of London’s goal to make these important collections available to the wider public through digitisation and so we are delighted to announce Ancestry as our official partner in bringing 500 years of London’s history online.”

The records will be available to Ancestry’s World Deluxe Members. Many genealogical societies and local libraries will also have access to the records through their organisational membership.

Footnote dot com

Footnote - The place for original historical documents online
a bad url turned up in another blog

Share your own knowledge and research about historical documents. Stuff like Footnote makes the internet what it should be - an affordance for collaborating on stuff you would never in a million years be able to do by yourself. Crowdsourcing at its finest.

Merlin Mann

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Bristol and Somerset Bunfight

The Carpenters Arms | Country Pub | Restaurant | Fine Ales | Carefully Selected Wines | Places to eat | Stanton Wick | Somerset: "Converted from a row of charming miners' cottages, the Inn has become a popular retreat over the years for those appreciating good food, fine wines, real ales and delightful en-suite accommodation."

This year's Bunfight will be held on the 20th of September 2008 at The Carpenters Arms, Stanton Wick, Somerset
Doors will open at 11:30 am and lunch will be a little later. We have a private room there until 5:00 pm.

Bristol and Somerset Bunfight - Google Search

The room has six tables, each seating six people. No matter what you choose, you will be able to sit down to eat. There is power for laptop computers, and wi-fi is available at the cost of 2 GBP per laptop. There should be lots of room to mix and mingle, look at each other's genealogy and have a great time.

Bunfight Co-ordinator for 2008 is Nancy Frey

Newcastle, Ontario, CANADA

在线家谱和家族历史记录 - 家谱网

在线家谱和家族历史记录 - 家谱网

Ancestry launches Chinese family history website – www.jiapu.cn

For many in China, which is home to one fifth of the world’s population and is also its biggest internet market, jiapu.cn will provide their first opportunity to access jiapu (family histories) online. They have been made available through an exclusive long-term partnership with the Shanghai Library, which holds the largest collection of Chinese family history records in the world. Jiapu.cn has been developed exclusively in the local language to allow users to search records and build family trees in Chinese, and is fully supported by a Beijing-based team. When complete, the collection will include 36 million pages and more than 181 million names contained in 181,600 volumes covering 22,700 Chinese family histories. The family history of the famous Chinese thinker and social philosopher Confucius is one the 1,450 family histories now online - 270 surnames were made available at launch. Confucius came from the Kong clan, for which records exist of members dating back to the 6th Century BC. The most recent printed jiapu featuring in this collection is from 1949 and the earliest from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644); most were printed in the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China Period (18th to 19th Centuries). Jiapu.cn’s collection includes most of the top modern-day 200 Chinese surnames.

World Names Profiler

World Names Profiler

About the names

What can you tell me about my specific name?

The maps, tables and information presented about names on this website are derived from the analysis of large databases of name records across the world. We do not have intimate knowledge of each name, and as such we cannot comment on the origins or locations of specific names beyond the information presented on this website.

What are the most popular names in a specific area or place?

This is one of our most frequently asked questions, and we have added a facility to create the most popular surnames and forenames by many different areas in the world. Simply click the “Area Search” tab at the top of the page and search for a city, a region or a country to find out the most popular names in this areas.

How many names do you have information for?

We hold data for approximately 300 million people in 26 countries of the world, representing a total population of 1 billion people in those countries. In our database there are 8 million unique surnames and 5 million unique forenames.

What countries do you have data for?

We have data for 26 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Oceania


Tuesday, September 02, 2008

blogging from the library

means that I don't have the speed of the blog this button of the google toolbar
but there is a nice note about FTM 2009 here on the GENEALOGY INSIDER blog:-

"Several patches are planned for Family Tree Maker 2009 that'll add book-building, better integration with the subscription data service Ancestry.com, an improved relationship calculator and more.

Senior product manager Michelle Pfister says planning these patches will let TGN stick to a regular schedule of new releases (which retail distributors require) while putting final touches on what's covered in the patches. It also lets Family Tree Maker fans look forward to more features throughout the year.

Are there Family Tree Maker fans left after the problems many users had with version 2008? Yes, say Pfister and the software's development manager Mark LeMonnier. More than 300 users beta tested version 2009—an increase over version 2008 testers—and you can expect better functionality as a result, says LeMonnier. “Performance and stability have been our main focus,” he adds.

The 2009 version will read Family Tree Maker files back to version 4 (which takes you to the mid-1990s). To learn more about it, see FamilyTreeMaker.com. "