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September 27, 2007

Excellent Reference for Photographic Processes

I ran across this EXCELLENT reference from the Library of Congress today about photographic print processes (limited to what’s in their collection - but really? What are they missing?). Each process is put in a time line, has a brief explanation of it and then sends you off to examples in the collection plus some other good solid links about that process. This is a fantastic resource and I highly recommend that you bookmark it somehow (del.icio.us works for me!).

posted by Kay at 9:49 am | Comments (0)

September 21, 2007

Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections

I couldn’t let this announcement from The Hague about Medieval manuscripts in Dutch collections go by unnoticed! They just launched a website portal which inventories all Medieval manuscripts held by Dutch libraries, archives and museums. I’m hoping they expand on it by adding more images of the manuscripts! But, for now, there is a description of each manuscript with an image from it, along with its location and how you can visit it. You can zoom in fairly decently on the images they have up (look in the highlights, unless you know something to search for!). Anyway, I think it’s a nice collaboration between libraries, archives and museums over there which serves the purpose nicely, so take a look!

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

August 16, 2007

Genealogy/Digitization News

Apparently good things are coming out of the FGS Conference. The Allen County Public Library (ACPL), Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, and FamilySearch’s Family History Library announced a joint digitization project. It appears to be city and county histories as well as published family histories. All 100,000 or so items will be available at: http://www.familyhistoryarchive.byu.edu.

For the full story…

posted by Kay at 3:43 pm | Comments (0)

August 6, 2007

Holocaust Records to be Sent to Washington & Jerusalem

Last week the New York Times ran a story about the International Tracing Service, which is administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and located in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Later in August, about the Tracing Service will transfer about 10 million documents to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. The files include information from over 51 concentration camps & prisons, and include transportation lists, medical reports, entry documents and Gestapo prison records.

posted by Kay at 1:12 pm | Comments (0)

June 28, 2007

Genealogy of the Cat

You know my love for kitties of all shapes and sizes by now, I’m sure, so you shouldn’t be too terribly surprised to see me posting the news about cats’ roots! Genetic testing has determined that all domestic cats and several species of wild cat came from the near Eastern wildcat, known scientifically as Felis silvestris lybica. There are two articles (one, two) in my feeds about this discovery and that domestic cats date back a long long ways.

Enjoy!

posted by Kay at 3:13 pm | Comments (0)

April 18, 2007

PBS and Library of Congress Oral History Collaboration

I just read the press release from the Library of Congress about how they are going to work with Ken Burns and PBS to preserve oral histories of veterans. Apparently there is a 7-part Ken Burns documentary coming out this Fall called “The War.” Something to keep an eye on, if you are considering starting your own Veteran’s History Project. For the full press release, you know what to do…

posted by Kay at 11:05 am | Comments (0)

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)

February 26, 2007

Digitization Project: English Medieval Stained Glass

I heard about this new project, the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi which is dedicated to publishing medieval stained glass. This site is dedicated to that found in Great Britain. Being a nosy little medievalist, I had to pop right on over to check it out. It’s a nicely put together and easy-to-navigate site with lots of photos! You can search by county, location or keyword. So, I had to go check out Cornwall and there it is! Poundstock! Had to see what they had for there since that’s where the Trebarfootes (the family I have back the furthest, which is late 1400s, early 1500s) were. Two photos of stained glass in St Neot’s! Yeay! Not sure if this was the church they attended or not, but it is the Parish church. If you click on the “full record” you also get the floor plan of the church, as well as the stained glass. Very cool - maybe you can find something your ancestors may have seen too! But note, digitization folks, this is a project you could start in your community too - photos of existing buildings and landmarks.

From there I stumbled upon the English Heritage site which has a bunch of photos. I decided to explore the “Viewfinder” and searched for Trebarfoote, nothing, but Trebarfoot in Cornwall brought up an older photo of the manor and the gates. This is the best image I’ve seen of the manor so far…I’ve seen the gates before (and reported here, if you’ll remember) but a glimpse of the buildings! I, of course, had to go check out animal photos too and there are some amazing photos of hunts, stables, farms, etc. You can search by keyword, category, county, place name and area. I also found a lot of photos of Poundstock beyond the Trebarfootes and Penzance and Tintagel and Redruth and…

posted by Kay at 9:00 am | Comments (1)

January 11, 2007

Footnote - NARA Digitization Project

Gees, it’s just a busy news day for me!

The National Archives and Footnote, Inc have announced a non-exclusive agreement to digitize a significant amount of NARA’s holdings. They already have 4.5 million objects up and are working on many more. By February 6, everything will be available free-of-charge at the NARA Research Rooms and in 5 years all materials will be free through NARA’s website but for now, if you’re doing your work at home, you have to pay. You can search for free though. Some items currently available:

Papers of the Continental Congress (1774-89)
Mathew B. Brady Collection of Civil War Photographs
Southern Claims Commission
Name Index to Civil War and Later Pension Files
Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908-22

This is an interesting digitization project to watch and the interface is nicely done as well. For the full press release…

posted by Kay at 1:55 pm | Comments (0)

Dante News

If you’ve been around me long enough, you know that I am a huge Dante fan. You’ll know that I studied Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio with one of the foremost experts out there, Dr. Anthony Cassell, at the University of Illinois. You’ll know that I had a cat named Dante - a black & white longhair with the colors splitting down his nose - who died of renal failure and the next cat we got was named Petrarch (he’s still with us, he’s a Norwegian Forest Cat). You may also know that I keep an eye out for anything Dante related and how excited I was when I stumbled across the book “Dante in Love” by Harriet Rubin and the Disney comic recently released #666 “Mickey’s Inferno” (which I talked about in this blog about a year ago).

So, imagine my excitement when Dante appeared in my Yahoo! News feed today! They’ve reconstructed his face using a secretly-made plaster model of his skull from 1921. If you’ve looked at many images of Dante, he’s always portrayed with a very prominent nose, for example, this one from the German Project Gutenberg site. Through this research, using all the up-to-date technologies available, they’ve found that he didn’t look quite that way, but more like the guy-next-door. I have yet to find a photo of this reconstruction (if you find one, drop me a comment below), but if you’d like to read more about “Dante gets posthumous nose job”, you know what to do.

posted by Kay at 1:25 pm | Comments (0)

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