The University of Louisville has received a new grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a public digital archive of artifacts revealing local history.

Researchers from the UofL Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, or CACHe, say this searchable archive is meant to showcase and expand access to anthropological findings from Louisville and surrounding counties in the lower Ohio River Valley. The archive will include pictures, descriptions and 3D scans of artifacts from pre-contact Native American settlements and colonial life as Louisville was founded and grew. 

“With this digital archive, we can preserve and share that history,” said Ashley Smallwood, a project lead and associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences. “These artifacts reflect what people ate, the tools they crafted and used, their culture — it’s a snapshot of what life was really like.” 

CACHe has collected many artifacts from digs in and around the Ohio River Valley, such as the one held last year in partnership with the Kentucky School for the Blind. 

Thomas Jennings, a project lead and center director, said CACHe works hard to include the community in discovering history and hopes the digital archive will help further that goal. 

You can read more in an article by Baylee Pulliam published in the University of Louisville News web site at: https://tinyurl.com/yty9hk2x.

I am not sure if this works with really old family photographs or not (probably not) but it still can be a very useful tool. 

How can open source investigators determine when a photograph or video was taken?

Observing the length of shadows visible in an image or clip and employing tools like Suncalc offers one useful method.

But this process of “chronolocation” – determining when a picture was taken rather than just where (which is known as geolocation) –  isn’t always feasible. For a start, it has to be daytime and there must be a shadow cast somewhere in the video or image of interest.

If these options aren’t available, looking for other clues in a “source” image that can be cross-referenced with contextual “reference” images or other related information can also help narrow down a date range.

Bellingcat has used such chronolocation techniques to determine when undated photos in a museum archive were taken and to find out when a Czech politician’s son (who claimed to be kidnapped) had been photographed. 

Clues to look for in a source image may include:

Essentially, any aspect of a source image could be of use, provided that it has changed over time. Sometimes clues will be so obvious that it’s possible to immediately figure out the rough date of the source image from one detail alone.

You can read a lot more in an article by Youri van der Weide published in the 

bellingcat.com web site at: https://tinyurl.com/bda5vpt3.

Today I stumbled across the web site of a genealogy society I probably shouldn’t name. What caught my eye was a listing of ebooks of local records the society sells on CD-ROM disks. I started thinking, why don't more genealogy societies do the same? Even better, why don’t they sell the books online as ebooks?

A Challenge

Does your genealogy society publish and sell printed books of local records of genealogy interest? If so, does your society also sell them as ebooks? If so, kudos to your society! If not, then I have to ask: "Why not?" 

If your society is not selling ebooks, the result is lost sales and also not serving genealogists around the world who could benefit from the information in the society's publications!

One More Thing

Actually, I would make one additional suggestion to any genealogy society: sell the ebooks not only on CD-ROM disks but also as downloadable ebooks that the buyer can read within seconds after purchasing, all without requiring any additional labor by the society.

There are several benefits to the instant online sales:

1. Obviously, the customer receives better service. The ebook is available immediately without waiting for someone to receive the order, stuff a CD-ROM disk into an envelope, mail it, and then wait for the postal service or UPS to deliver it.

2. Many of today's laptop computers and more than a few desktop computers do not not include CD-ROM disk drives. (The desktop computer I am using at the moment to write this article is about 4 months old and does not include a CD-ROM disk drive.) Such drives are rapidly becoming obsolete. You could offer ebooks on flash drives, but even that is only a partial solution. For instance, are you going to use flash drives with the older USB connectors or the newer, smaller, high-speed USB-C connectors? Most of today's flash drives still use the older USB connectors, but the world is moving to the newer USB-C connectors. Publishing on flash drives with the older USB connectors almost guarantees that they will become obsolete within a few years (just like publishing on floppy disks). 

Switching to downloadable files bypasses these hardware issues.

3. Accepting orders, creating CD-ROM disks (or flash drives), stuffing them into envelopes, and mailing the products is a waste of man-hours and money. Creating safe and secure online sales with credit card payments requires a bit of labor to create the order process. However, once created, using online sales will SAVE many man-hours over a period of time. Once customers can use this process to both order and receive your ebooks, you will likely see impressive reductions in expenses (buying CDs or flash drives) as well as labor (mailing them to buyers), not to mention postage. I suspect you may also see an increase in sales as well as traffic to your website. 

Sales of downloadable ebooks can be accepted and fulfilled (product delivered) without anyone's involvement, even at 3 AM in your local time zone. The buyer then receives the ebook within seconds after making payment, regardless of the time of day. Even better, you can "farm out" the labor to a company that will handle all this for you, such as to Amazon, Lulu.com, Apple, or others. 

For more information about having a company sell your ebooks for you with almost no labor required on your part, see 20 Websites to Sell and Publish Your eBooks at https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/websites-sell-publish-ebooks/ as well as the articles found by DuckDuckGo by starting at https://duckduckgo.com/?q=publish+books+online&atb=v132-2_j&ia=web.

COMMENT: Some people seem to think that placing genealogy information online means giving it away for free. Not so! If you or your society expended money, time, labor, and perhaps some materials in gathering and publishing the information, it is entirely reasonable to charge a modest fee to the genealogists who appreciate your labors. Even better, any revenue received can be used to pay the expenses of time, labor, and materials in gathering and publishing future information!

“If you are good at something, never do it for free” is the most famous dialogue from movie The Dark Knight.

With today's solutions of having a company sell your ebooks for you, the issues of collecting credit card payments becomes almost trivial. Simply sit back and let someone else do all the complicated stuff while you or your society only need to deposit the payments into a bank account. (Oh yes, the company that handles the online sales will even automatically deposit the money into your society’s bank account!).

Summation

In short, it's time to upgrade your society's publications to modern publishing formats. The result will be less labor required, lower expenses, more customers, and more distribution of the local information that is important to genealogists worldwide.

I'd call that a win-win-win-win solution.

Saturday, 24 June 2023

We hope you will join us for an informative and fun-filled day viewing presentations, asking questions, and visiting vendor and society booths!

FamilySearch personnel will present sessions about the extensive, free resources available online at FamilySearch.org and answer your questions!

In addition, a variety of genealogy and history related organizations and vendors will have booths to help attendees explore genealogy tools, resources, organizations, and educational opportunities.

The Virtual FamilySearch Expo is FREE and open to the public!

Register HERE

FamilySearch Expo Schedule

Each presenter / exhibitor will be in a virtual Breakout Room at the scheduled time.

Time (ET)	Session Information
10:00 – 10:15 a.m.	Expo Orientation
10:15 – 10:45 a.m.	FamilySearch Overview | David Rencher, AG, CG
10:15 – 10:45 a.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
10:45 – 11:00 a.m.	Break
11:00 – 11:30 a.m.	FamilySearch Library and FamilySearch Centers Introduction | Lynn Turner, AG
11:00 – 11:30 a.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
11:30 – 11:45 a.m.	Break
11:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.	FamilySearch.org – Overview of Website | Beth Taylor, CG
11:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
12:15 – 12:30 p.m.	Break
12:30 – 1:00 p.m.	The FamilySearch Catalog | Alyssa Gamble
12:30 – 1:00 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
1:00 – 1:45 p.m.	Lunch
1:45 – 2:15 p.m.	Tips and Tricks for Discovering Your Ancestors in FamilySearch’s Historical Records | Debbie Gurtler, AG
1:45 – 2:15 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
2:15 – 2:30 p.m.	Break
2:30- 3:00 p.m.	FamilySearch Digital Library – Uncovering FamilySearch’s Digital Book Collection | Becky Loveridge
2:30- 3:00 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
3:00 – 3:15 p.m.	Break
3:15 – 3:45 p.m.	FamilySearch Wiki – Genealogy’s Hidden Gem | Amber Larsen, AG
3:15 – 3:45 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming
3:45 – 4:00 p.m.	Break
4:00 – 4:30 p.m.	FamilySearch – Online Research Help and Resources | Becky Adamson, AG
4:00 – 4:30 p.m.	Exhibitor Information Forthcoming

Exhibitor Links coming soon!

Thank you, FamilySearch, for generously sponsoring the Family History and Genealogy Expo!

About Our Sponsor

FamilySearch International is the largest genealogical organization in the world. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the primary benefactor for FamilySearch services. The commitment of FamilySearch to help people connect with their ancestors is rooted in their beliefs—that families are meant to be central to our lives and that family relationships are intended to continue beyond this life.

From cbsnews.com:

Facebook says it is not dead. Facebook also wants you to know that it is not just for "old people," as young people have been saying for years. From a report:

Now, with the biggest thorn in its side -- TikTok -- facing heightened government scrutiny amid growing tensions between the U.S. and China, Facebook could, perhaps, position itself as a viable, domestic-bred alternative. There's just one problem: young adults ... have moved on.  

Today, 3 billion people check it each month. That's more than a third of the world's population. And 2 billion log in every day. Yet it still finds itself in a battle for relevancy, and its future, after two decades of existence. For younger generations -- those who signed up in middle school, or those who are now in middle school, it's decidedly not the place to be. Without this trend-setting demographic, Facebook, still the main source of revenue for parent company Meta, risks fading into the background -- utilitarian but boring, like email.

It has been 70 years since a new monarch was crowned in the UK. As we bear witness to a new era of the British monarchy and reflect on its role within the UK, the UK Web Archive is recording and preserving this momentous occasion by capturing websites in a special collection about King Charles III. Work started in earnest on this collection on 8th September 2022 when the late Queen, Elizabeth II, passed away and Charles became King, however, it also forms part of a larger series of collections about the British monarchy in the early 21st Century, curated by staff in the UK Legal Deposit Libraries.

Through this series of special collections, we can trace how the Royal Family has adopted the internet to communicate more efficiently with their supporters, members of the public, and other stakeholders as well as to promote their charitable causes and connect with younger generations who are more likely to engage with social media. As well as ‘official’ information, the UK Web Archive is also capturing user-generated content from a wide range of publishers including the general public, as recorded in websites, blogs, and social media posts, much of which is not available through traditional historical records.

the official website of Charles, Prince of Wales, published in his former position as heir apparent, no longer exists on the internet and is only available in the web archive.

You can read more in an article by Nicola Bingham published in the British Library web site at: https://blogs.bl.uk/webarchive/2023/05/regal-reflections-exploring-a-new-uk-web-archive-collection-on-king-charles-iii.html.. 

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com: 

(+) How to Preserve Newspaper Clippings

How to Get Mexican Citizenship by Descent

New Project Explores Lives of Afro Mexicans in the U.S.

Dutch Archives on Accused Nazi Collaborators to Open to the Public in 2025

Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Reveals Identities of Hundreds of People in Early 19th-Century Portrait Album

Using Genealogy to Teach Inclusive History Pilot Program

Police Confirm ID of Woman Reunited With Her Family 51 Years After Her Abduction

Release of Regulations for Digitizing Permanent Records

PHMC Archival Grant Now Accepting Applications

Most Common Surnames in Ireland in 1901

IAJGS Solicits Nominations for the 2023 Achievement Awards and the Stern/Stedman Grants

Library to Assist in Creating Portal for UK Collections of Holocaust Testimonies

Augusta, Georgia Genealogical Society Virtual Genealogical Program: “Searching For Ancestors When You Were Adopted”

Webinar on Open Scholarship in GLAMs through Research Repositories

Blackrock's Purchase of Ancestry.com Doesn't Mean They Can Be Sued for Obtaining Illinoisans' Genetic Info

Vivid-Pix Recognizes May’s National Photo Month & Mental Health Awareness Month

TheGenealogist Adds New War Memorial Records and Property Records for Hitchen

Findmypast Announces New Records Online: Search all things Sussex

Recently Added and Updated Collections on Ancestry.com

Interactive 3D Model Recreates the Old Man of the Mountain

ChromeOS: The AP Guide to Google's Desktop Operating System

How to install Chrome OS Flex on Windows, macOS, Chromebook, and some Linux Systems

‘May the 4th be with you’ Explained

Fake Books Are a Real Home Decor Trend

If you work in the galleries, libraries, archives, or museums (GLAM) sector and want to learn more about research repositories, then you might want to join the British Library on 18th May, Thursday for an online repository training session for cultural heritage professionals.

This event is part of the Library’s Repository Training Programme for Cultural Heritage Professionals. It is designed based on the input received from previous repository training events (this, this and this) to explore some areas of the open scholarship further. They include but are not limited to, research activities in GLAM, benefits of research repositories, scholarly publishing, research data management and digital preservation in scholarly communications.

Who is it for? 

It is intended for those who are working in cultural heritage or a collection-holding organisation in roles where they are involved in managing digital collections, supporting the research lifecycle from funding to dissemination, providing research infrastructure and developing policies. However, anyone interested in the given topics is welcome to attend!

You can find a lot more information at https://tinyurl.com/5ejrb2fa.

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

In fact, there are several things you will want to do to preserve the information:

1. Avoid exposure to sunlight, moisture, and extreme temperatures, which causes these newspapers to deteriorate quickly. Unheated garages and humid basements are poor places to store clippings. The best place is in a closet or bookcase in the interior of your home. Never store valuable items on or near an outside wall as temperature variations will cause the paper to deteriorate faster. Ideally, all paper documents should be stored at 60-70 degrees F and 40-50% relative humidity. Those numbers also should be steady, not varying widely.

2. Turn out the lights! Light causes a reaction with the acid in the paper that darkens it. Keep the paper in an envelope or, even better, in an acid-free box with a cover.

3. Do not fold the clipping. Folding causes undue wear and also allows two surfaces of newsprint to come in contact, which shortens the newsprint's life. When examining newspaper clippings that have been stored for years, you will notice the first place that crumbles is the fold.   

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: 

https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13193049.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo! From an article published in the nomadcapitalist.com web site:

Mexican citizenship by descent presents a distinctive opportunity for individuals seeking to reconnect with their heritage. This unique path allows people to embrace their ancestral roots while enjoying the many benefits that come with being a Mexican citizen.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into the steps of acquiring Mexican citizenship through your ancestral roots. 

We’ll discuss topics such as eligibility requirements, application procedures, and essential documentation. By the time you finish reading, you’ll have a solid understanding of what it takes to embark on this exciting path.

As you explore the possibility of obtaining Mexican citizenship, it’s also important to consider the safety and charm of the region.

Latin America can be a safe and welcoming region if you exercise caution and stay informed, despite the common perception of it being dangerous. Mexico, specifically, boasts a diverse mix of cultural treasures, historical landmarks, and breathtaking landscapes. These qualities make Mexico an attractive destination for living and traveling alike.

Securing Mexican citizenship comes with a variety of benefits, one of the most notable being improved travel opportunities. A Mexican passport grants visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to over 150 countries, allowing for seamless exploration across the globe. 

In fact, the Mexican passport ranks high on the Nomad Capitalist passport index, demonstrating its strength and prestige. So, without further delay, let’s embark on the journey towards Mexican citizenship by descent. 

You can read more at: https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/mexican-citizenship-by-descent/.