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October 31, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

We don’t have a lot of Halloween images, at least that I could find, on Digital Past, so since we’re using the Lake Forest Academy’s Halloween Dance card on the NSLS site this week, I decided to opt for this postcard of a Sand Cat from the Brookfield Zoo, compliments of the Lake County Discovery Museum. Happy HOWLoween!

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

Happy Halloween!

That’s right, it’s that time of year when it seems that perhaps you aren’t alone in that cemetery after all! Perhaps you are, perhaps you aren’t? I enjoy watching all those ghost hunting and ghost stories on cable TV and I’m a first class chicken! The scariest movie I’ve watched was The Relic and I know that’s not all that scary, not like Freddy or Jason or that Chuckie Doll…you’d never see me renting those movies! I do enjoy the ghost hunting shows (Most Haunted or I think the other one is Ghost Hunters?) though…I guess it’s on the hopes that perhaps they WILL find irrefutable evidence that ghosts walk amongst us. I can’t say whether I believe in ghosts or not, I guess you can put me officially sitting on the fence, but I have seen some pretty interesting things on those shows! Some of the story type shows (like “A Haunting”) can freak me out so badly that I need to change the channel or call a cat over to distract me! And yes, I DO have a black cat. His name is Octavian and we found him around Halloween one year. I’ll add a photo at the bottom of this post.

Anyway, for your amusement this Halloween day, I thought I’d share this site I found of Haunted Cemeteries. They link to several sites, including one about Chicago Graveyards for that local flavor!

Octavian, my Black Cat

posted by Kay at 8:34 am | Comments (0)

October 30, 2006

Good Morning America Featuring Genealogy!

That’s right, in case you haven’t heard, Good Morning America will be tracing the roots of Chris Cuomo, Sam Champion, Robin Roberts and Diane Sawyer this week. They’ve already done Chris Cuomo with his Italian roots. I believe the rest will be aired Nov 1-3rd. During this time, if you follow the link on the above story, you can access Ancestry.com for free so get clicking! I’ll organize my research tonight, see who I need to find and then sign up for the 3 days. Good luck!

posted by Kay at 2:52 pm | Comments (0)

October 24, 2006

Google Books

So, after reading on Dick Eastman’s blog about the books Google has digitized, especially all the good genealogy ones, I had to go investigate. There has been so much controversy over the Google and Microsoft book digitization efforts that I have to admit I’ve stayed away. However, after reading of his finds, I couldn’t resist, I had to go check it out. So, I thought “A-ha! I shall throw them a curve, I shall search for the ever-illusive von Biebersteins!” Now, it’s true, I expected to see nothing but references to Baron Marschal von Bieberstein like I do all the time and maybe a few to the Russian botanist also, a Baron Marschall von Bieberstein. I figured maybe 3 pages of results. Well, imagine my surprise after entering “bieberstein” and getting 5,130 pages of results, nearly 30 pages of results. I see several genealogy books in there as well. I also learned about a Jewish Dr. Bieberstein (no “von” of course) who was trying to get the German army to feed the prisoners in the camps more. They were being fed 2000-2500 calories a day but with the hard work they were made to do, they really needed more like 5000. I learned not only about the Crocus flower discovered by von Bieberstein but also the Sedum and other succulent plants. Then there was a Rogalla von Bieberstein who appeared to have a lot to say about religion. There are also several references to the Bieberstein Castle and the school there.

As most of what I’ve found IS in German, it’s going to take me a while to really get the gist of everything that’s here, not to mention, time to sift through all 5000+ hits…and this is not a super-common name either. So I can see this could definitely be of use if you had a more unusual name or a better idea of place/name. If you’re looking for information on the Smith family, I wish you lots of luck! However, as Eastman mentions, if you know the name of a book, like “The Vital Records of X” (X being a town/parish/etc) you might have quite a bit of luck. I’m still using the shotgun approach with my illusive family…

As far as quality of the digitization efforts:
I noticed that most of the scans I came up with were clear and easy to read. One, which was written in the old German typeset I’ll really need to download and use the magnifying glass on. When you search for a word, it tries to highlight it on the actual page…sometimes this works, sometimes it’s off a bit but it gives you a general idea of WHERE on the page your word appears. Some pages were really dark, so again, I hope to download and zoom in, see what I can do. I have to say the Snippets are annoying – I want more! Two lines is hardly enough to let me know if this book is worth hunting down or not. Overall, I’d say definitely a good effort and worth the time to poke around.

Check it out when you have some time to spare at Google Books

posted by Kay at 3:02 pm | Comments (3)

Tuesday’s Treasure

Halloween is coming soon and makes me think of cemeteries and ghosts and ghouls. We have a lot of cemetery photos on Digital Past with complete transcriptions of gravestones. What genealogist could ask for more? I love the old unusual ones myself so I found this great tree trunk one for Vaclav Kvidera 29 Sept. 1900 Stari 68 Roku and Ludmila Kvidera S Cervence 1896 Stari 74 Roku at St John’s Church and Cemetery from the Barrington Area Library collection.

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

October 18, 2006

Buildings Found on Stonehenge Site

Now that’s interesting! Discovery Channel announced late last week that archaeologists digging around Stonehenge have discovered remains of 9 buildings from the same era. They had plaster floors and timber frames, many had central hearths and some even had excavated rings around them. Contemporary pottery and stone tools were found around the site as well. Worth keeping an eye on, for sure…

posted by Kay at 11:59 am | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

Tuesday’s Treasure

Wow, this photo comes with the whole family story! What a fantastic treasure trove of info on one of Arlington Heights’ earliest residents, James McElhose. I don’t know about you but I sure wouldn’t want to cross this guy!

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

Vote for the New 7 Wonders of the World

This is your chance to have a say in what the new 7 Wonders of the World are. The only one still standing from the original 7 are the pyramids at Giza. A Swiss group has been working with the citizens of the world to determine the new 7 through an online site. They’ve narrowed it down to 21 choices from the Acropolis to the statues at Easter Island to the Great Wall of China to the Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower. If you register on their site you can cast your 7 votes right then, otherwise they have a paper method called “certificates” (which you have to purchase) and several international phone lines you can call to cast 2 votes at a time. I’ll have to think about this for a while, which is good because they are going to announce the new 7 Wonders next July…on 07/07/07. Interesting…check it out.

posted by Kay at 9:22 am | Comments (0)

Malian Manuscripts Digitized

Thanks to Anne from MPPL for bringing this to my attention! During French colonial rule in Mali, scholars hid or buried their manuscripts to save them from being exported to large European libraries. They would build false fronts over their libraries, bury their manuscripts in metal trunks, or send them into the Sahara to save them. Recovery of these manuscripts has been slow but began in 1960 when Mali won back their independence. Abdel Kader Haidara, one of Timbuktu’s leading manuscript experts who also cares for a 9,000 volume library which includes a 10th century manuscript written on Islamic law, has recently reached out to the Library of Congress to start digitizing these ancient manuscripts. It’s been difficult for Mali, and other African countries, to trust outsiders with their manuscripts, but Haidara feels this is the best way to save them and not lose control of them to others. Check out the full article, it’s really interesting…

posted by Kay at 8:49 am | Comments (0)

October 12, 2006

UW Joins Google Book Scanning Project

That’s right, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the latest to join up with the Google Book project. They will be scanning objects from their collection as well as that from the Wisconsin Historical Society Library. They plan to focus on “…collections concerned with the history of medicine, patents and discoveries and engineering, along with the early publications of scientific societies. It will also target American and Wisconsin history, genealogical materials, decorative arts and sheet music, among other subjects, the University of Wisconsin said.” Good news for genealogists, especially those of us with WI ties!

posted by Kay at 2:39 pm | Comments (0)

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