Do you have at least some Chinese ancestry? If so, you will be interested in the following article written by Huang Wei and published in the SixthTone web site:

Last fall, when the Shanghai Library opened a massive new branch in the city’s Pudong District, headlines tended to focus on two things: its size and architect Chris Hardie’s design, which included exhibition, performance, and event spaces in addition to the customary stacks.

Somewhat lost in all this was the library’s collection, one of the driving reasons for the expansion in the first place. (Full disclosure: As an employee of the library, I am responsible for some of that collection.) In particular, the Shanghai Library is home to arguably the world’s top collection of Chinese genealogies, including more than 300,000 volumes of nearly 40,000 different genealogies, totaling 456 surnames.

A genealogy is a historical document that records the lineage of a blood line descended from a single ancestor, the blood relationship between family members, and a family’s assets and customs. They can include depictions of famous family members from history, textual research on the origin of a family’s surname, clan rules and regulations, information on the construction of ancestral halls, even poems. Genealogies of famous families often contain archives of special records, including imperial edicts, orders, and letters given by emperors to officials in the family. (One thing they do not typically include are records pertaining to female members of the family.)

Last fall, when the Shanghai Library opened a massive new branch in the city’s Pudong District, headlines tended to focus on two things: its size and architect Chris Hardie’s design, which included exhibition, performance, and event spaces in addition to the customary stacks.

Comment by Dick Eastman: I visited the Shanghai Library's genealogy collection 38 years ago. That was long before the expansion to the Pudong District location. While somewhat impressive at that time, the collection has since been expanded greatly and I am hoping to make a return visit to the new location before long.

Somewhat lost in all this was the library’s collection, one of the driving reasons for the expansion in the first place. (Full disclosure: As an employee of the library, I am responsible for some of that collection.) In particular, the Shanghai Library is home to arguably the world’s top collection of Chinese genealogies, including more than 300,000 volumes of nearly 40,000 different genealogies, totaling 456 surnames.

A genealogy is a historical document that records the lineage of a blood line descended from a single ancestor, the blood relationship between family members, and a family’s assets and customs. They can include depictions of famous family members from history, textual research on the origin of a family’s surname, clan rules and regulations, information on the construction of ancestral halls, even poems. Genealogies of famous families often contain archives of special records, including imperial edicts, orders, and letters given by emperors to officials in the family. (One thing they do not typically include are records pertaining to female members of the family.)

It may seem curious, given the long history of genealogies in China, that so many would wind up in Shanghai — not a city known for its connection to traditional culture. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the collection of genealogies largely paused. Except for 1950 and 1951, when a small number of genealogies compiled before 1949 were printed, the genealogical record went blank for more than two decades. Genealogies were labeled “feudal” accomplices to the patriarchal system, those who compiled them ran the risk of being accused of nostalgia for the old China, and many volumes were sent to pulp mills.

With thousands of years of history at stake, a Shanghai librarian named Gu Tinglong took a risk and organized a team to rescue as many genealogies as they could from being chemically pulped or thrown into landfills. Their work accounts for two-fifths of the Library’s current collection, with the rest coming from acquisitions made since the 1960s.

You can read the full article by Huang Wei at: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1012694.

A DNA sample contains a person’s entire genetic makeup. This genetic information is deeply private. It can reveal intensely sensitive information about us, including our propensities for certain medical conditions, our ancestry, and our biological familial relationships. Raising the specter of eugenics and other discredited theories, some researchers have theorized that genetics could help explain human behaviors such as aggression, addiction, criminal tendencies, and even political views. Private companies claim they can use our DNA to predict whether we are introverted or extroverted, averse to cilantro, excel at running, or are afraid of public speaking. One company, regularly used by law enforcement in cold case investigations, even claims it can predict a person’s physical facial appearance from their DNA, including “skin color, eye color, hair color, freckles, ancestry and face shape.”

DNA has been used in criminal cases since the late 1980s, but DNA technology and research have advanced significantly since then. Where once, a useful forensic sample could only be obtained from blood, semen, or other bodily fluids, today, forensic investigators can detect, collect, and analyze trace amounts of DNA from objects merely touched by a person. DNA collection is now mandatory from those convicted of or arrested for many crimes, and the national CODIS DNA database, maintained by the FBI, contains nearly 16 million offender profiles and 5 million arrestee profiles.

Despite these technological advances, some crimes continue to have no suspects. In an increasing number of these cases, police are turning to a relatively new investigative technique: forensic genetic genealogy (FGG). Through FGG, police access consumer-facing genetic genealogy websites to try to identify the source of crime scene DNA samples. These consumer sites allow people to upload their own genetic information and use the sites’ proprietary algorithms to search through other users’ data to identify long lost relatives and build a family tree. Several of these sites also allow police to search through the same data to try to find suspects. FGG has been gaining interest after one site, GEDmatch, was used to find the “Golden State Killer,” a man responsible for a series of brutal rapes and murders that plagued California in the 1970s and 80s. By the end of 2021, FGG had been used in well over 500 criminal cases.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, has worked on several cases where law enforcement used FGG, and now the Foundation has published a "Primer For Defense Attorneys And Policymakers" based on that work. This article discusses how genetic genealogy works, law enforcement’s use of FGG, and how FGG can both misidentify suspects and, in rare cases, help to clear wrongful prosecutions and exonerate wrongfully-convicted individuals. It will also discuss new statutory restrictions on the use of FGG and what policymakers need to know to place appropriate guardrails on these searches. Finally, it will discuss what defense attorneys should look for if FGG is used in their cases and how to challenge FGG as an unconstitutional search.

While written for "Defense Attorneys And Policymakers," I suspect the article will also be of interest to many genealogists working on their own family trees. The article may be found at: https://www.eff.org/document/forensic-genetic-genealogy-searches

On Shamshu Deen’s desk in his home office are notebooks, documents stacked one on top the next, a flash drive and, of course, his trusted laptop. To see Deen at his desk is to see a detective at work, except that he is not inves­tigating crimes but helping families trace their roots and reunite with long-lost blood relatives.

For a quarter of a century, the genealogist has helped hundreds of descendants of indentured labourers find their loved ones, and at 77, he has no plans of retiring anytime soon.

“If I’ve contributed to genealogy in Trini­dad, especially East Indian genealogy, then Munradin has to take a lot of the credit,” said Deen.

Munradin was Deen’s great-great-grandfather who left India for Trinidad in 1858. He was also the reason why Deen, whose extraordinary story was recently featured on BBC Outlook, became a genealogist.

You can read the full story in an article by Kimberly Wallace published in the Trinidad Express web site at: https://tinyurl.com/ynmcdfux.

Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Walter J. Brown Media Archives’s fourth collaboration with the DLG and is available here: https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ugabma_wwlaw.

The content for this project consists of oral history interview videos with W. W. Law and other Savannah, Georgia, community members involved in the Civil Rights movement. The tapes were shot just prior to Mr. Law’s death and are the longest and most detailed interviews he did on his life and career as a Civil Rights activist.

The footage was shot in 2001 by Lisa Friedman with the help of the late oral historian Cliff Kuhn for the purpose of creating a documentary on the life of W. W. Law. Although that project never came to completion, it still managed to yield important historical content about Savannah civil rights workers and community leaders, including Aaron Buschbaum, Dr. Clyde W. Hall, Edna Branch Jackson, Ida Mae Bryant, Rev. Edward Lambrellis, Richard Shinholster, Tessie Rosanna Law, Dr. Amos C. Brown, Mercedes Arnold Wright, Carolyn Coleman, E.J. Josey, Walter J. Leonard, and Judge H. Sol Clark.

W. W. Law was fired from his job working for the post office in 1961 because of his civil rights work but was reinstated after an intervention by NAACP leaders and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. As with all civil rights movements in American towns and cities, stories of lesser-known activists in the Civil Rights Movement and the historical impact made by community leaders like Law and the others interviewed in this project are invaluable for researchers interested in the history of civil rights in Georgia.

You can read more in an article by Mandy Mastrovita published in the Digital Library of Georgia web site at: https://blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu/?p=8557. 

From a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office of the District of Massachusetts:

A nearly 500-year-old manuscript signed by Conquistador Hernando Cortés in 1527 has been returned to the Archivo General de la Nación de México – Mexico’s national archives located in Mexico City. On July 19, 2023, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, along with representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, participated in a formal repatriation ceremony at Mexico’s national archives, where the manuscript is believed to have been unlawfully removed from sometime before 1993. In November 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a civil forfeiture action against the manuscript to ensure its lawful return. It is a violation of federal law to transport or receive stolen goods valued at more than $5,000 that have traveled in foreign or interstate commerce.   

“After missing for decades, thanks to incredible international collaboration and persistence the Cortés manuscript is finally where it belongs back in Mexico, where it will remain a treasured part of Mexico’s history and heritage,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy. “I want to commend the asset recovery prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office whose hard work and dedication led to the return of this priceless and historically important artifact. We were honored to have assisted in this effort.”

The manuscript is a payment order signed by Cortés on April 27, 1527 authorizing the purchase of rose sugar for the pharmacy in exchange 12 gold pesos. It is believed to be one of several documents unlawfully removed from a collection of documents concerning a Spanish expedition to Central America in 1527 that is housed in Mexico’s national archives. 

According to the civil complaint, in early 2022, an individual consigned the Cortés manuscript for online auction at a Massachusetts auction house. Mexican authorities alerted federal authorities in the United States that the manuscript being auctioned appeared to have been stolen. In turn, the auction house removed the manuscript from the upcoming auction and the manuscript was recovered. 

The United States Attorney’s Office obtained a final order of forfeiture on February 27, 2023, and thereafter the Department of Justice authorized the manuscript’s return to Mexico.

“We are incredibly honored to be able to assist in the return of this national treasure to the people of Mexico. This manuscript, which is nearly five centuries old, preserves an important part of Mexico’s history, and reflects the FBI’s ongoing commitment to protect cultural heritage, not only in the United States but around the world,” said Christopher DiMenna, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston Division. “The recovery of this priceless artifact is a direct result of our close and ongoing collaboration with the government of Mexico, and we are very thankful for their partnership.”

Anyone with information on stolen art and cultural property are encouraged to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL FBI (1-800-225-5324). Tips may also be submitted online at https://tips.fbi.gov/. 

You can read more at: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/united-states-returns-manuscript-signed-conquistador-hernando-cortes-1527-mexicos. 

Genealogy is a fascinating way to take a look back at our family’s background and heritage. Knowing where we come from is a fundamental way of knowing who we are, allowing us to develop a deeper appreciation for the ancestors who came long before us. Whether you’ve been studying your family tree for years or know next to nothing about your heritage, there is always more to learn when we dive into the past. Over the last several years, genetic testing with a genealogy-focused approach have gained immense popularity due to their accessibility and profound insights, empowering thousands to trace back their family heritage to near prehistoric times. If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about how this technology connects us with the past, join the NJ State Library for their latest upcoming webinar, “Diving Deep into Genetic Genealogy”.

On Wednesday, August 2nd, the New Jersey State Library will be hosting a deep dive on all things genetic testing and genealogy. The webinar will be held virtually on Zoom from 12:00pm through 1:30pm. This event is free to attend, although advanced registration is required. If you plan on attending, you can register by visiting the link here: Register – Webinar. Once you are registered, just sign onto the portal the day of the webinar and you’ll be ready to learn!

Reminder: You can join a webinar from anywhere in the world. However, pay attention to time zones!

You can also learn more in an article by Angelica Stern published in the Trenton Daily web site at: https://www.trentondaily.com/explore-genetic-genealogy-with-the-nj-state-library/. 

Under a Canadian Supreme Court ruling, transcripts will be destroyed by 2027 unless survivors want them archived.

Geraldine Shingoose was shocked when she opened a report probing what should be done to protect potential unmarked grave sites at former residential schools for Indigenous children.

Of the thousands of former students who detailed the abuses they suffered to an adjudicator tasked with determining their eligibility for compensation under the historic Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, only about 30 have sought to have copies of their words archived.

Shingoose — an Indigenous elder and residential school survivor — is among that small group. She said she's heartbroken to think thousands of records will be destroyed within five years unless more survivors also request their preservation, an option she fears most are not even aware of.

"That's history," she said in a recent interview. "Those are sacred stories."

The debate surrounding the future of these records has gained momentum since more First Nations began seeking answers about what happened to the children who died and disappeared from residential schools.

You can read more in an article by Alessia Passafiume and Stephanie Taylor published in the CBC News web site at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/residential-school-records-potential-burials-1.6915983.

OOOOPS! This can create a problem:

A man's entire world has been flipped upside down after discovering he is actually engaged to his cousin. He explained how he bought his 28-year-old fiancé a DNA testing kit for fun after noticing them on sale for half price. 

He thought it would make a fun and interesting gift - but never expected the results to 'change their lives forever'. Taking to Reddit, the man said: "My fiancé and I are getting married in a few months. We're extremely happy and in love.

"I'm super into ancestry and have been building out my tree. I saw a promo on Ancestry.com for a 50 per cent DNA kit and I bought one for my fiancé." A few hours ago, on a flight, he got his DNA results back. In the 'view DNA matches' section was my picture.

"It says we're third cousins. His dad, who I guess did a test years ago, came up as well. We don't know how to feel. We just landed and are now on vacation with a large group." As they're a same-sex couple, there's no concern about this impacting their future children but they're worried how their families will take it. 

"We're also both Jewish, and I know our gene pools are already shallow. But third cousins? That is a little too close for comfort. There's no scenario where we’d break up or anything, but I just feel so so weird about it. I don't know how to feel or how to process this. Is it insane? Is it no big deal?”

You can read the full story in an article by Paige Freshwater published in the mirror.co.uk web site at: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/mans-life-flipped-upside-down-30538442 

The images from the Skip Gandy Collection of Aerial and Commercial Photography chronicles key moments in local history, from the 1950s to 2010s.

A project to preserve decades of Tampa Bay area history is in the works.

The University of South Florida Libraries are digitizing nearly 80,000 photo negatives that document the life and landscape of the Tampa Bay region from the 1950s to 2010s. The images are part of the Skip Gandy Collection of Aerial and Commercial Photography and chronicle key moments in local history.

A fundraising project aims to raise $41,300 to digitize the entire collection and make these never-before-seen images available to the public under a Creative Commons license. Up until now, a few dozen photos have been available to view online. USF Libraries’ Digital Collections have raised $30,000 so far.

Skip Gandy

Skip Gandy Commercial And Aerial Photography. Image 57. Https://Digitalcommons.usf.edu/Gandy/57

Some of these film negatives are starting to degrade, making their preservation all the more urgent, according to Tampa-based photographer Chip Weiner.

“We cannot let this history disappear,” said Weiner. “It’s 100 years of visual history that so many cities don’t have and we are completely blessed to have that available to us.”

You can read more in an article by Nancy Guan published in the WUSF web site at: https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/arts-culture/2023-07-17/photo-archive-documenting-tampa-bay-area-history-being-digitized-public. 

The following is a press release from the Digital Public Library of America, striking a blow for freedom:

Let freedom read and join President Barack Obama in protecting intellectual freedom with DPLA's The Banned Book Club. 

NEW YORK, July 20, 2023 -- The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has launched The Banned Book Club to ensure that readers in communities affected by book bans can now access banned books for free via the Palace e-reader app. The Banned Book Club makes e-book versions of banned books available to readers in locations across the United States where titles have been banned. The e-books will be available to readers for free via the Palace e-reader app.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) presents The Banned Book Club and is fighting back against book bans.

"At DPLA, our mission is to ensure access to knowledge for all and we believe in the power of technology to further that access," said John S. Bracken, executive director of Digital Public Library of America. "Today book bans are one of the greatest threats to our freedom, and we have created The Banned Book Club to leverage the dual powers of libraries and digital technology to ensure that every American can access the books they want to read."

Utilizing GPS-based geo-targeting, DPLA has established virtual libraries in communities across the United States where books have been banned. When a reader is within a community served by a library that has been forced to ban a book, they can visit TheBannedBookClub.info to see the exact books that have been banned in their area. Then, they can download those books for free on any handheld device via the Palace e-reader app.

To access The Banned Book Club now, download the Palace app, and choose "Banned Book Club" as your library, then follow the prompts to sign up for a free virtual library card. For more specific instructions, click here. For more information on The Banned Book Club, readers can visit TheBannedBookClub.info.

DPLA's The Banned Book Club is supported by FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding) Chicago and Current Global.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) amplifies the value of libraries and cultural organizations as trusted sources of shared knowledge. DPLA fulfills its mission by collaborating with partners to accelerate the adoption of innovative tools and ideas to empower and equip libraries in making public information more accessible. DPLA's e-book work is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. To learn more, visit www.dp.la.

The Palace Project is a suite of content, services, and tools for the delivery of e-books, audiobooks, and other digital media to benefit public libraries and their patrons. Funded by a multi-year, multimillion-dollar investment from the Knight Foundation, The Palace Project is a division of Lyrasis, working in strategic partnership with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). To learn more, visit thepalaceproject.org.