NSLS Blogs

 Home » Blogs » Illuminated Heritage

Illuminated Heritage

March 18, 2008

79,000+ Newspaper Pages Online

The Library of Congress has recently added over 79,000 pages of newspapers to their nearly half a million already up at Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers site. It represents 61 newspapers ranging from 1900-1910.

Posted by kay at 3:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 3, 2008

Robins! I want to see Robins!

I just ran across a very cool digitization site and for those who are as desperate to see Spring's Herald, the Robin, as I am it gives hope! The University of Pittsburgh has put up the entire set of Audubon's Birds of America, along with his Ornithological Biography. The plates are gorgeous and it's very easy to search. Enjoy the art and THINK SPRING!

Posted by kay at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

Library of Congress on Flickr

That's right - the Library of Congress has put about 3000 images on Flickr and they are asking the general public to tag them From the few I looked at, it looks like it's been a popular pasttime! Of course, they have no known copyright restrictions so go for it! Very cool...

Posted by kay at 11:35 AM | Comments (1)

December 6, 2007

Amazing Dino Find

In case you haven't heard, they're researching a "mummified" dinosaur found by a 17-year old out in North Dakota. "Dakota" is a hadrosaur, a plant-eater preyed on by T-Rex, and not an uncommon find. However, it is shaping up to be the most complete dinosaur ever found. They found fossilized skin covered in scales and evidence of stripes. They are also discovering hadrosaurs were much more muscular than previously thought, walked low to the ground and could run up to 45 mph. This is an amazing find and if you're at all interested in paleontology or have kids who are, you should hop over and read up on it: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/1479288 There are numerous stories out on it now, so I'm sure a standard web search will bring up even more information.

Posted by kay at 8:13 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2007

Updated Copyright Term Map

There is an updated "Copyright Term and the Public Domain" map on the Cornell site. It includes audio-visual materials and sound recordings now. Necessary reference for anyone involved in digitization....

Posted by kay at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2007

FamilySearch Indexing Project

Last week the Genealogy & Local History Networking Group had the Family History Center coordinator for the 7-state area out to talk about what was going on with FamilySearch, the FHCs, etc. Part of the presentation was about FamilySearch Indexing which is a project YOU can become involved in. They are looking for volunteers to help index/transcribe all sorts of genealogical data including censuses (censi?), birth, marriage, and death records from all over the world. Everything is done online from their site and through the software provided AND in small (half hour or so) batches. I thought this sounded like fun so I signed up last week.

After the initial read-through/click-through training provided on the site and downloading the software, I grabbed my first batch of records. I was trying to get some records from Germany, but that didn't work so I hit the button that gave me whatever they thought was most important to get indexed at the time. I ended up with the Minnesota census, which was fine, I grew up in a town founded by the Swedish so I can read Johnson and Jorgeson just as well as the next person. I didn't even get a full page - just 27 lines! However, as it was my first and I was getting used to the handwriting, it did take me more than half an hour, but not more than an hour. I'm sure as I do more I will get used to the handwriting.

The process is very cool though - it highlights each of the fields on the original so you know where you are and what you are entering in your table. It also tries to save your typing as much as possible giving you the option of choosing what you just typed in the field above. For example, if you're doing a family and the parents were both born in Germany, it auto-selects Germany for you until you tell it something else. Very easy and really rather fun. There's also the whole "hey, maybe I'll run across one of MY relatives" treasure-hunt mentality and the feel-good aspect of knowing you're helping someone else out.

Anyway, give it a try - if you're anything like me you'll find it a challenging, fun and rewarding experience!

Posted by kay at 1:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2007

Ancestry Press Update

As promised, I found out the pricing for the printed bound heritage books you can make at Ancestry Press. A 24-page 8.5x11 book is $29.95 and each additional page costs 39 cents. Comparing that to Shutterfly, where I got my pet photo book, it's a little cheaper, especially if you add pages and it's a bit more space, since it's a larger paper size. Mine was 8x8 inches, $29.95 for 20 pages and $1 per additional page. Of course, it's not really apples and apples, since Ancestry Press is geared toward genealogists or family historians so it wouldn't really work for my pet photo book! :)

Posted by kay at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

October 9, 2007

Your Own Book

Recently through a very nice offer from Catster and Shutterfly, I was able to create this extremely cool 8 x 8 bound book of photos of my pets. Ok, that isn't THAT exciting to most of you, but pets are what I have and it was SO much fun too! I was really surprised how easy it was to put together my own book and I was even more surprised when I got it in the mail to find that it was a hardbound real book, not a scrapbook with printed pages slipped in page protectors (which is what I was expecting). It's a REAL book like one you'd find in the children's department at your library. The offer was for a free 20 page ($30 value) book with $1 for each additional page. I scoured all my photos - physical and digital - scanning in what I needed that wasn't already digital and uploaded them to the site. Originally I was just going to do the cats as we've had 10 but then I thought I should definitely add the horse and then I felt bad for leaving the 3 rabbits and 3 dogs out, so I paid a little extra and included everyone. Once I decided on my "story" and the photos I wanted to include, I was able to go through with this nice little utility to layout my pages, choose backgrounds, fonts, number of photos per page, photo borders, etc. When I was pretty happy then I was able to go through and preview the entire book on one screen, which was really nice to make it flow better. A little shipping information, a click of the mouse and a week later the book was at my door! I know other photo sites offer this service, such as Kodak Gallery.

Once I got the book I brought it in to show all my friends (you want to see buzz marketing in practice, that was it!) and we came up with even more ideas on how to use these books. You could do one a year for each child as they attend school, special BIG parties (like special anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, baptisms, etc), vacations, mementos of special people, and maybe even a family history. However, when I looked I really found the tools for family history lacking - how was I going to do a family tree or something complicated like that?

Well, today I found my answer....Ancestry now offers AncestryPress which will do the same type of service with a family history angle. You have to upload your family tree to Ancestry and I'm not sure how private you can keep that, so I'll have to look into that. Also, I have yet to see the price for this beastie and I've looked all around. I need to look more - but if you know, drop me a comment! Apparently you can print off a page at a time by yourself or order the whole book bound and printed. It appears that it only comes in 8.5 x 11 instead of the 8x8, 12x12 or 6x6 formats you can get elsewhere.

Something to keep in mind for Christmas presents and that should give me some time to really explore it! If you've already done this, drop me a comment!

Posted by kay at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2007

10-Day Free Access to Some US Census Data

News Flash! A "large portion" of US Census data from 1790-1920 will be going up on WorldVitalRecords in the next few days. These are not indexed, but they are browsable images. WorldVitalRecords is allowing free access to them for about 8 more days, so hop on over and start looking around!! From Dick Eastman's blog...full story.

Posted by kay at 2:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 1, 2007

FREE Genealogy E-Books

Well, lookie what I came across today! On the Genealogy Librarians News blog they have a new "Book of the Day" feature where every day they will put up a few PDFs of entire books which you can then download and keep! Today the features are books about Brooklyn NY, Gilmaton NH and Santa Clara County CA. Be sure to subscribe in one form or another to keep up on each day's treats! Here's the full story.

Posted by kay at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)