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February 28, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

Tuesday again, already? Anyone up for the Circus? Well as I was digging around, I found this great photo from the Rockford Public Library’s Digital Past collection. It’s when Barnum’s Circus came to town in 1896. How fun is that?

For a larger image and more information…

Anyone got some peanuts?

posted by Kay at 2:00 pm | Comments (0)

Sue…Jane…Leonardo?

Ok, so this goes a bit beyond my normal fare here on Illuminated Heritage but I thought it was worth mention. I try to keep up on the news in the paleontological world because, well, I’ve always been interested in it. I was thrilled with the discovery of Sue and ecstatic to go meet her in person at the Field Museum. If you haven’t been, you need to, she’s incredibly impressive. The subsequent discovery of Jane was just beyond hope and I look forward to meeting her on one of my trips over to Rockford. Jane has a personal touch for me since a) she has the same name as my sister, which always cracks me up and b) one of the people who helped dig her up was one of my brother’s best friends in school. However, somehow I missed the discovery of Leonardo, or perhaps I wasn’t aware of his name, but Leonardo is known as “The Mummy Dinosaur” as much of his soft tissue was fossilized along with the bones. They even know what his last meal was. Leonardo is going to unravel a lot of questions we’ve had about dinosaurs but there’s still so much we don’t know. The exhibit they have planned for Leonardo sounds fantastic…I’m just not sure where it’s going to be. He was found in Montana, but the contact us information is Las Vegas. Perhaps he’ll be living on the Strip, who knows?

If anyone from the Field or Burpee Museums is reading this blog – ever think of putting Sue & Jane in Digital Past? I’m sure you have photos of every piece up close, we could just digitize those…nothing could ever replace seeing the girls in person, but there’s no way us normal folks on the street would ever get to see each piece so close except online…

posted by Kay at 9:37 am | Comments (0)

February 27, 2006

Wisconsin Magazine of History to go Online

The Wisconsin Historical Society announced this week that they are preparing to scan and transcribe all 150 years of the Wisconsin Magazine of History which has run since 1855. Here’s the full story, right from the horse’s mouth.

posted by Kay at 10:14 am | Comments (0)

National Archives films online via Google

If you read much about the internet, you’ll know that digitization is the big wave now. Here at NSLS we’ve been preaching that for the past 8 years with our digitization project, Digital Past. Only recently though has digitization really become mainstream with the massive projects (and ensuing issues) run by Google and Yahoo. ZDNet reports is that Google is working with the National Archives to digitize their video holdings…a worthy goal since they are deteriorating as we speak. As of this moment, they have several films available on their Video site…take a few minutes out of your busy day and check out some history!

posted by Kay at 8:59 am | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Maps of Scotland

For those trying to hunt down where their Scottish ancestors came from, have you check the National Library of Scotland? They have a nice selection of maps (searchable by geographic region as well as maker) from 1560-1928. They also have some military maps (searchable by all sorts of things) and ordnance survey town plans from the 19th century. There is a nice zooming capacity that I think you’ll find quite useful!

They also have a lot of other resources to look at including rare books and various collections. It’s a nice digitization project to look over. Enjoy!

posted by Kay at 3:16 pm | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Norwegian Genealogy Dictionary

Hey, for those researching Norwegian ancestors, this site offers a genealogy dictionary for common words you might find in the records. Nicely arranged and easily navigated…

posted by Kay at 1:30 pm | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

Find Your Black Sheep!

I recently came across Blacksheep Ancestors while looking up some other genealogy tidbit. They have access to prison records, court records, executions, biographies of famous criminals, etc to add some color to your family tree!

At first it looks like another gateway to Ancestry where you have to pay and if you put your family name in up top, that’s where you end up. However, you have to go through each of the resources linked to below to search…that box won’t help you so much! It looks like a lot of good material once you dig down into the site!

Have fun finding YOUR Black Sheep! I can’t say I’ve found any…yet!

posted by Kay at 1:09 pm | Comments (0)

February 21, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

Today I thought, perhaps, we could see what we could find on Pres. Lincoln. Fortunately, the Lake County Discovery Museum had in their Digital Past collection this fantastic postcard of him. The picture is considered one of the best without a beard, according to itself. It’s a nice look at one of the thousands of postcards they’ve digitized from the Curt Teich Archives (which contain over a million cards, no joke, I’ve seen the place…easily a million).

For a larger image and more information, follow the link…

posted by Kay at 2:00 pm | Comments (0)

Historical Maps Online

This entry will actually cover several of my categories – Genealogy, History, Digitization…

The University of Illinois along with the University of Illinois Press and the Newberry Library have made a very nice selection of maps, as they say, “charting the last 400 years of historical development in Illinois and the Northwest Territory” online. If you look closely enough, you’ll notice they are also using the OCLC CONTENTdm package like we use for Digital Past, our’s just looks different since we’ve tried to give it our own “look”. There are lots of interesting maps and documents in here although I wish some zoomed in further so you could really get a good look at them. Others, however, like the Warner & Beers Atlas of Chicago in 1873 you can zoom into street level with no difficulties. I encourage you to take a little trip and check it out!

posted by Kay at 9:51 am | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Small Town Papers

While flipping through the Jan/Feb ‘06 copy of Online magazine, I ran across an article about Small Town Papers going online with the challenges they face. They are digitizing many small town newspapers that haven’t even been archived to microfilm but have been stored – as originals – in the archives, perhaps bound. They have dates back to 1824 and best of all, it’s free to individual private users. So, them out!

posted by Kay at 1:41 pm | Comments (0)

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