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Illuminated Heritage

March 27, 2007

Various News for the Day

There’s a couple stories out that I wanted you all to know about, in case you missed them in your own feeds today.

- The Chinese government will soon be releasing, on-line, a database of Chinese family trees. It will cover 335 common and 90 rare surnames. It is reported to go back 1000 years. Wow! That’s from Dick Eastman, so click to go to his full article.

- The Library of Congress and NEH said that the “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” is debuting with over 225,000 pages. This project includes of public-domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. This, of course, follows the NDNP standards they have set for newspaper digitization, so if you’re at all interested in that, I suggest you check it out. Directly from LOC, so…full article.

- And finally, a good reminder that there is a cost to digitization with links to some good articles on the topic. This is from Digitization 101, Jill Hurst-Wahl

Hope you find these useful!

posted by Kay at 3:26 pm | Comments (0)

Tuesday’s Treasure

Continuing from last week, I had to share this photo of a cavalry horse all ready to go on a march. This is for all my reenactor and model horse costume makers out there…the kind of photo showing all the details you could ever want! Again, from the Ft Sheridan collection from the Lake County Discovery Museum.

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

March 20, 2007

Tuesday’s Treasure

I really love looking through these photos from Fort Sheridan – just the sheer number of photos of horses, alone or with their soldiers is amazing. You can really see how much these guys loved their horses and how much they depended on each other to get through war. Some of the photos can be really touching and some really funny, but their importance and the realtionship is always quite evident. I picked this almost artsy shot of a soldier bringing a horse into the barn from the Lake County Discovery Museum.

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

Protect Your Pets! Pet Food Recall

Ok, this has nothing to do with genealogy or history, but if you know me at all, you know I’m a major pet person. I have a horse, a dog, several cats and fish and I used to have house rabbits too. So, I’m sure you’ll forgive me this off topic post!

I heard about this over the weekend but was just reminded that maybe not everyone has heard. And even though I know you may not have cats or dogs, I bet you all know someone who does have one.

Anyway, there is a massive recall on “wet” pet foods right now from a large variety of brands, both “top shelf” brands like Iams and Eukanuba and local store brands. Both cats and dogs are dying of kidney failure caused by, latest word is contaminated wheat gluten, in these products. Kidney failure is awful awful stuff, we lost our cat Dante to that years ago. You’ll find the recall notice and list of foods all over the place, but since I have ABC News open, that’s what I’ll reference you to:

Story: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2963443&page=1
Cat Food: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_cat.html
Dog Food: http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html

Be sure to pass along the word.

posted by Kay at 9:14 am | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Nova Scotia Vital Records Available TODAY!

Nova Scotia Historical Vital Statistics has launched a database of one million historical birth, marriage and death registrations in Nova Scotia dating back to 1864. I went to try it out, but it’s a very busy site today and is responding very sluggishly – I’m sure everyone is there checking it out! It looks like you can read the records online and then buy copies at $9.95 for e-copies and $19.95 for paper copies. You also have to agree to their Terms & Conditions before seeing anything, but overall I’m sure it’s going to be a fantastic resource for anyone researching in Nova Scotia!

posted by Kay at 9:25 am | Comments (0)

LDS Digitization Going The Speed of Light

Well, not quite, but what they originally thought would take 120 years and then 30 years, they are now thinking it might be as little as 10 years. That’s amazing…to think of all those genealogical goodies coming to light through digitization. Read all about it in the news from the Church.

posted by Kay at 9:20 am | Comments (0)

Ancestry.com Discontinues Free Access at FHCs

In case you haven’t heard yet, Ancestry.com has decided to discontinue free access to their product at the local Family History Centers. For this, I refer you to Dick Eastman’s blog…

posted by Kay at 9:18 am | Comments (0)

March 15, 2007

Limited Time: Free Access to Irish Records

Dick Eastman gives the low-down on the free access to Irish records from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Sounds like it’s available only until Wednesday, March 21st so you better hurry on over!

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

Wanna Buy A Mammoth?

I couldn’t resist this bit of news that came across the feeds today – Farmer wants to sell mammoth skeleton. It’s known as the Hebior Mammoth and was found on Hebior’s farm in 1994 which is in Kenosha County, WI – yea, just over the border! The Milwaukee Public Museum is hoping to buy the bones for their museum. There seem to be a lot of mammoths and mastodons found in Kenosha County. If you haven’t been up to the Kenosha Public Museum, you should make a trip. It’s in a beautiful location along the Lake, has the Schaefer Mammoth and it’s FREE! It’s a gorgeous new museum with lots of interesting things for young and old alike. They’re building the new Civil War Museum next door too. While looking at their site, I see there’s the Dinosaur Discovery Museum up there too (and also free).

Anyway, if you want to buy a mammoth, now you know where to get one…

posted by Kay at 9:58 am | Comments (0)

March 12, 2007

Few Articles on Mass Digitization Efforts

As we hear more and more about Google and Microsoft and their respective mass digitization efforts, we’re learning a lot more about what various groups are doing. In today’s feeds I found a good article on what UIUC is doing with the Microsoft group (Open Content Alliance) .

Also, the New York Times just published a lengthy article called History, Digitized (and Abridge) discussing the Library of Congress, the National Steinbeck Center, some of the copyright issues, the chronic lack of funding for digitization, and a whole lot more.

I’d recommend setting aside a few minutes to read both of these…with mass digitization becoming the wave of the future more and more cultural organizations are going to find themselves facing these same type of issues.

posted by Kay at 9:03 am | Comments (0)

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