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Illuminated Heritage

September 26, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

I couldn’t resist sticking with the Oktoberfest theme. This is so perfect for this theme I couldn’t resist! My great aunt (who had a large collection of this type of postcard) would have loved this one! She lived in Wisconsin and her husband was Swiss…the brats, pretzels, beer…she would have fallen off her chair with that big belly laugh of hers! “OH Man! What a Party!” says it all (from Lake County Discovery Museum)…

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

September 25, 2006

Free Until Oct 4 – NY & Boston Passenger Lists

In case you haven’t heard the news, Olive Tree Genealogy and Ancestry.com are marking NY & Boston Passenger lists free through Oct. 4th. You have to go through Olive Tree Genealogy to access them though. I got this off the Genealogy BLog – here’s the rest of the story…

posted by Kay at 9:02 am | Comments (0)

September 22, 2006

POW Dog

This is a wonderful story for a gloomy Friday about a man and his dog. They survived through POW camps and slave labor together. Judy, the dog, saved Frank’s and other POWs lives several times, learned to stow away on ships and through a long series of fortunate events was able to move around to different POW camps with her best friend. Judy was eventually awarded PDSA Dickin medal, known as the Victoria Cross for animals. She was also the only registered animal POW. It’s a heartwarming story..enjoy.

posted by Kay at 8:46 am | Comments (0)

Off World Preservation

Well, this is interesting. Remember yesterday when the topic was using digization to preserve the information in items that are falling apart? Well, today I find a proposal by a NASA scientist to create a lunar library to store information off world. Talk about a disaster plan…this tops the cake!

posted by Kay at 8:33 am | Comments (0)

September 21, 2006

Digitization to the Rescue

W e see examples of digitization helping preserve items every day – it keeps them safe from handling and preserves the actual objects for future generations. So much of digitization and Digital Past is to increase access to the items outside the institution holding them but it also helps to preserve them. Locally we have many examples, including the Civil War Diaries from Arlington Heights – digitized and fully transcribed through a partnership between the Historical Society and the Library. If you haven’t checked them out, you are missing a treat. The diaries are now in archival storage to protect their fragile selves. Today in the news, I read of this 700-year-old palm-leaf sacred Hindu text known as the Sarvamoola granthas which they have digitized to get a useable copy. It sounds even more fragile than our local Civil War Diaries but by digitizing this work and running it through certain image-processing algorithms using, yes, Adobe Photoshop, and their own custom software. The manuscript is so degraded it can’t be read in the physical world anymore but through digital manipulation information that was once lost is now available again. Think about your institution – do you have some valuable information crumbling to dust? Unavailable for public consumption because it’s falling apart? Have you considered digitizing it? Maybe you should think about joining Digital Past, we can help!

posted by Kay at 8:40 am | Comments (0)

September 19, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

With Oktoberfest coming up fast (it is properly celebrated at the end of September, not October), I thought we might look at a few of those Ray Walters cards I’m so fond of, as was my great aunt. “You should have seen this!” is a great one with a lovely sea monster…just how much have they had? It’s from the Lake County Discovery Museum.

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

September 15, 2006

DNA-Genealogy Database to open

My co-worker, Anna, just sent over this article about a mitochondrial DNA database that is going to try to make it easier to make connections by opening to amatur genealogists.

posted by Kay at 2:11 pm | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Change in CGS Program Time

A while ago I posted about the upcoming Tour of the Belgian Community being held by the Chicago Genealogical Society. Today I got a new flyer saying the time had changed from 1:30 to 11:45am. Please take note if you were planning on attending…

posted by Kay at 1:02 pm | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE stained glass, so I found this nice image of a round stained glass window from St. Matthew Lutheran Church east of Lake Zurich. It’s from the Ela Area Public Library.

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

European Archive

You are most likely familiar with the Internet Archive which houses the WayBack Machine (always entertaining!) plus other internet sites and cultural artifacts. Well, the Europeans now have their own European Archive. Keep in mind that not everything is available over here (like Recordings) but there are some interesting movies and other things on there. It will officially launch on Sept 27th.

posted by Kay at 10:02 am | Comments (0)

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