Ed Sum­mers, whose dig­i­tal life is at http://inkdroid.org/, and who is a soft­ware devel­op­er on the Library of Con­gress’s Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca project, noticed my “Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca” blog entry of the oth­er day, where I talked about pre­dic­tive URLs I found on the site.

I am tak­ing the NGS Home Study Course in Amer­i­can Geneal­o­gy. While I am cov­er­ing ground I have cov­ered before, I get a lot out of doing this in a focused way. One method they are apply­ing is a sim­ple check­list of records, whether we are talk­ing about cen­sus records, vital records, or any­thing else… Con­tin­ue read­ing Vital Records Check­list

The Library of Con­gress’s Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca web­site has lists of news­pa­pers, search­able and nav­i­ga­ble by title, as well as tens of thou­sands of images of news­pa­pers from 1880 to 1922 from 15 states (plus the Dis­trict of Colum­bia): Ari­zona Cal­i­for­nia Dis­trict of Colum­bia Flori­da Hawaii Ken­tucky Min­neso­ta Mis­souri Nebras­ka New York Ohio Penn­syl­va­nia Texas Utah… Con­tin­ue read­ing Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca

The Nation­al Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety pub­lish­es a series of books enti­tled Research in the States. Each vol­ume cov­ers the his­to­ry, laws, records and research facil­i­ties of a state. It pro­vides guid­ance for online resources as well. Titles avail­able to this point include: Arkansas by Lyn­da Childers Suf­fridge, BSE, MSE Col­orado by Kath­leen W. Hinck­ley Illi­nois by… Con­tin­ue read­ing Research in the States

Dias­po­ra: Per­son­al­ly Con­trolled, Do-It-All, Dis­trib­uted Open-Source Social Net­work from daniel grip­pi on Vimeo. A new tech­nol­o­gy start­up is tak­ing form which might have inter­est­ing impli­ca­tions for the online genealog­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The grav­i­ta­tion­al pull of Face­book towards some source of rev­enue from the wild­ly pop­u­lar ser­vice, has had the com­pa­ny recent­ly forc­ing users to man­u­al­ly opt-out… Con­tin­ue read­ing Dias­po­ra: The Social Net­work

I may be onto some­thing with the slaves in the Gra­ham fam­i­ly of Mon­roe Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia. A cou­ple of days ago, I post­ed a piece about the slaves men­tioned in David Gra­ham’s His­to­ry of the Gra­ham Fam­i­ly (1899). These includ­ed a woman named Dian­na and called “Dine.” I not­ed: Dian­na, or “Dine” was giv­en… Con­tin­ue read­ing The Acquit­tal of the Slaves, Ira and Stu­art

How to Make and Store Dig­i­tal Back­ups of Your Audio, Video, and Pho­tog­ra­phy As a geneal­o­gist and the family’s his­to­ri­an, you have prob­a­bly gath­ered, received, and in every way imag­in­able sim­ply end­ed up with box­es of video­tapes and audio­cas­settes. Almost cer­tain­ly you have even more pho­tographs. In addi­tion to archiv­ing and pre­serv­ing these records, you want to make them avail­able to your fam­i­ly… Con­tin­ue read­ing Dig­i­tal Archiv­ing

At the age of 78, David Gra­ham wrote his His­to­ry of the Gra­ham Fam­i­ly (1899), where he apol­o­gized for includ­ing infor­ma­tion on the slaves held by his ances­tor, Col. James Gra­ham, Sr. As a man born into a slave-hold­ing fam­i­ly in 1821, David Gra­ham’s prej­u­dices are on dis­play. He was already 44 years old at… Con­tin­ue read­ing Slave His­to­ry in the Gra­ham Fam­i­ly

Fam­i­ly Search, the genealog­i­cal records arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints has post­ed on their web­site an arti­cle about their plan to dig­i­tize the 3.5 bil­lion images on the 2.4 mil­lion micro­film reels in their col­lec­tion. The reel mas­ters are stored in the Gran­ite Moun­tain Records Vault in the moun­tains above… Con­tin­ue read­ing Gran­ite Moun­tain Records Vault: The Video