Month: July 2023

One project report progress among the Library and Archives Canada’s Co-Lab Challenges; 14 report no progress.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary is 26% complete, was 15% complete last month.

Expo67 remains 2 % complete.

Summiting Mount Logan in 1925: Fred Lambart’s personal account of the treacherous climb and descent of the highest peak in Canada remains 13% complete.

Women in the War remains 1% complete.

Arthur Lismer’s Children’s Art Classes remains 0% complete.

John Freemont Smith remains 93% complete.

Canadian National Land Settlement Association remains 98% complete.

Molly Lamb Bobak remains 94% complete.

Diary of François-Hyacinthe Séguin remains 99% complete.

George Mully: moments in Indigenous communities remains 0% complete.

Correspondence regarding First Nations veterans returning after the First World War remains 99% complete.

Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 remains 96% complete.

Legendary Train Robber and Prison Escapee Bill Miner remains 99% complete.

Japanese-Canadians: Second World War remains 3% complete.

The Call to Duty: Canada’s Nursing Sisters remains 93% complete.

Projects that remain 100% complete are no longer reported here.

Other unidentified Co-Lab activities not part of the Challenges have seen progress. There are currently 3,710 items in Collection Search identified as Co-Lab only contributions, an increase from 3,689 last month.

That’s how Library and Archives Canada characterizes the return of its renewed and improved Government of Canada Web Archive (GCWA).

“The GCWA is a discovery and access portal for LAC’s collections of preserved web content from the Government of Canada as well as private websites. It launches with the following curated collections:

• COVID-19. No other organization in the world has documented the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canada to the depth and breadth that LAC has. This collection shows the response from public health agencies, governments, charities and other groups. It also documents the impact of the pandemic on life in Canada.
• Government of Canada. This collection provides access to most of the Government of Canada web resources captured from 2005 to the present.
• Truth and Reconciliation. This collection gives access to copies of the websites of organizations involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. The collection is the result of LAC’s collaboration with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, the University of Winnipeg Library, and the University of Manitoba Libraries.”

How well does it’s url web search capture website history of interest for genealogy?

ogs.on.ca had 30 captures, one in 2006, the remainer since 2017. A link to the Internet Archive (IA) web collection shows there it was saved 2,014 times between June 15, 1998 and July 8, 2023.

bcgs.ca had 2 captures, 2019-07-09 to 2021-11-19, the IA captured it 359 times between January 29, 2003 and July 1, 2023.

cangenealogy.com was not captured by the GCWA, although found 281 times between October 8, 2006 and July 7, 2023 in the IA.

This small sample also shows that the IA captured the sites in greater depth so you were able to follow links from the main page.

What about government websites?

gg.ca has 382 captures, 2006-01-31 – 2023-07-01. The IA had 3,510 captures between January 24, 1998 and July 8, 2023.

weather.gc.ca had 112 captures, 2007-11-16 – 2023-07-01; the IA 2,588 captures between February 22, 2007 and July 1, 2023.

What about COVID-19?

ottawapublichealth.ca had 128 captures, 2020-04-07 – 2022-11-04. The IA 1,264 captures  between June 14, 2013 and July 3, 2023, the vast majority in between 2020 and 2022.

My conclusion is that while it’s useful to have an LAC backup, GCWA is not as comprehensive as the Internet Archive. Compliments to LAC for including a link to the IA from GCWA web search result pages.

 

You may have seen press reports that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces have confirmed that the grave of an unknown soldier in Bois-Carré British Cemetery in Thélus, France, is that of Sergeant Arthur Melvin, a Canadian soldier of the First World War.

The DND press release is here.

Contributing to the identification was the Canadian Forces Forensic Odontology Response Team. According to the website Casualty Identification Program “Teeth and jaws can be unique to an individual and used to identify remains. If dental records are available, the forensic odontologists are able to make comparisons that may lead to identification.”

As in this case the remains were buried, and disinterrment for identification is not permitted, one wonders how comparison of teeth and jaws were made.

 

The 225,711 records in this Ireland collection on Ancestry between 1865 and 2023 “were created by PlotBox for the purpose of mapping cemeteries around the globe. The burial records are a secondary historical source housed on the Everafter website.” Information returned is name, death age, death date, burial date, plot number,  cemetery, and burial place.

The free Everafter website has data for a wider range of countries: Australia (18 cemeteries), Canada (13), Ireland (61), New Zealand (53), UK – England (99), UK – Northern Ireland (158), UK – Scotland (1), UK – Wales (14),  United States (155).  Find out which cemeteries here. 

 

 

 

 

The British National Bibliography (BNB) is not a catalogue of the British Library’s collections, it consists of descriptions of:

• books and journal titles published or distributed in the United Kingdom and Ireland since 1950, and electronic publications since 2013
• forthcoming books, registered through the Cataloguing-in-Publication (CIP) service

You can read more about the content and ambition of the larger project, which is in beta, at https://bl.natbib-lod.org/. That’s also the address to search which is what I did rather than trying to understand the minutiae.

Search a surname, place or topic of interest and see that turns up. For recent publications restrict the year range to 2022 to 2023. I did find some interesting new-to-me books for places in my family history

I did find the system a bit quirky, perhaps owing to my misunderstanding, perhaps because “The system might be unstable. We are updating our dataset to improve your experience.”

Of the 823 English newspapers in the newspapers.com collection, 60 received updates in the past month.

Title	Pages	Years
Evening Standard	2,372,907	1897–2023
The Guardian	1,130,809	1821–2023
The Independent	1,025,874	1986–2023
Derby Evening Telegraph	636,521	1933–1990
Evening Chronicle	463,097	1885–1995
Cambridge Evening News	429,877	1888–2002
Evening Express	126,118	1874–1955
The Tamworth Herald, etc.	101,650	1870–1999
The Staffordshire Sentinel, Daily and Weekly	89,013	1882–1929
The Fulham Chronicle	86,316	1888–1997
The Gloucester Journal	75,670	1730–1992
Derby Daily Telegraph	74,867	1881–1932
The Coleshill Chronicle, etc.	71,283	1874–1999
Atherstone Herald	65,778	1886–1999
Hull Daily News: The Hull Express, Grimsby Express, Hull Morning Telegraph, and Evening News	65,018	1884–1914
Wokingham Times	57,058	1931–1999
The Bath Chronicle	55,999	1770–1925
Folkestone Herald	54,427	1986–1999
Peterborough Standard	52,370	1931–1989
The People	51,864	1986–1998
The Surrey Mirror and County Post, etc.	50,438	1901–1970
Stockport Advertiser and Guardian, etc.	42,464	1880–1952
Isle of Thanet Gazette	40,728	1986–1999
Middlesex County Times	39,859	1866–1941
Macclesfield Express Advertiser and Times and Courier	38,190	1986–1997
Cambridge Daily News	36,727	1888–1955
Ellesmere Port Pioneer	35,281	1945–1999
Liverpool Post and Mercury	33,547	1916–1934
The Kensington News and West London Times	33,232	1869–1972
Bedworth Echo	31,994	1979–1999
Salford City Reporter	30,166	1986–1997
The North Devon Herald	29,496	1870–1941
Ealing Gazette	26,798	1900–1988
Staffordshire Newsletter	25,048	1993–1999
The Long Eaton Advertiser and Ilkeston and Erewash Weekly News	22,261	1882–1954
Stafford Newsletter	22,251	1987–1993
The Ramsbottom Observer	19,802	1891–1950
Chronicle	18,843	1994–1999
Surrey Times and County Express	16,941	1893–1920
The Coventry Times, and Warwickshire Journal	15,009	1879–1914
The Birmingham Journal and General Advertiser	14,147	1825–1860
The Hull News	13,303	1852–1884
Long Eaton Advertiser and South Derbyshire Chronicle	12,945	1947–1971
Stockport Advertiser, and Cheshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire Weekly Journal	12,352	1822–1878
Chase Post	12,184	1989–1994
Stockport County Borough Express	11,176	1889–1927
Walton and Weybridge Leader	10,911	1994–1999
The Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial and General Advertiser	10,086	1854–1881
The West Surrey Times, etc.	9,566	1855–1889
Macclesfield Express	9,008	1997–1999
The Coventry Times, Nuneaton, Warwick, and Leamington Journal	5,752	1865–1879
Paddington Mercury	4,165	1888–1997
The Hounslow and Twickenham Informer	3,326	1979–1982
Crediton Gazette, East Devon Herald and County Press	2,050	1944–1951
Pope’s Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette	1,363	1761–1768
The Nottingham Journal	1,256	1821–1826
The Bath and Bristol Chronicle	473	1768–1770
Archer’s Bath Chronicle	298	1768–1769
The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette	188	1760–1761
Boddely’s Bath Journal	4	1762

The number of pages are totals in the collection, the number added in the update, be it 1 or 10,000, is not specified.
The papers with dates in the last 100 years (or therabouts) require a premium Publishers Extra subscription.

Choose from selected free online events in the next five days. All times are ET except as noted. Assume registration in advance is required; check so you’re not disappointed. Looking for more options? Additional mainly US events are listed at https://conferencekeeper.org/virtual.

Tuesday 18 July

9 am: Using Discovery, the online catalogue of the National Archives (UK), by Sarah Castagnetti for TNA.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/using-discovery-tickets-636504460977

2:30 pm: Hopping the Pond: Researching in Germany:
What You Need to Know and Websites to Help – Part 2, by Carol Carman for Allen Country Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8689680

8 pm: Andiamo! Finding Your Italian Family, by Margaret R. Fortier for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/andiamo-finding-your-italian-family/

Wednesday 19 July

10 am: Women’s Lives and Writings: Online Resources for Everyone, for the National Library of Scotland.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/womens-lives-and-writings-online-resources-for-everyone-tickets-662822980377

2 pm: I Hate Conflict! Mediating Sources that Don’t Agree, by Elizabeth Williams Gomoll for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/i-hate-conflict-mediating-sources-that-dont-agree/

Thursday 20 July

6:30 pm: The New California Pioneer Certificate Program
Honoring Early Settlers of the State, by Colin Whitney for Allen Country Public Library Genealogy Center.
https://acpl.libnet.info/event/8689681

Friday 21 July

Saturday 22 July

 

Of the 57 Scottish newspapers in the newspapers.com collection, nine, all from the Lowlands, received updates in the past month.

Title	Total Pages	Year Range
Dumfries and Galloway Standard	48,141	1843–1998
The Strathearn Herald	42,020	1860–1997
The Bridge of Allan Gazette	29,205	1884–1952
Irvine Herald and Ayrshire Advertiser	21,960	1888–1968
The Hamilton Advertiser	19,669	1862–1920
Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser	19,457	1845–1952
Irvine Herald	11,062	1971–1980
The Irvine Herald, and Cunninghame Advertiser	4,823	1875–1888
Dumfries and Galloway Saturday Standard	1,408	1882–1897

The number of pages are totals in the collection, the number added in the update, be it 1 or 10,000, is not specified.

Dan Gardner’s recent article makes a point about how celebrating their history is vital for maintaining morale in the military. There’s a term for it — Espirit de Corps. It’s also used in sports  — Every team, in every sport, around the world, hangs banners for its victories and tells tales of legends. “This is who we are,” the stories say. “And this is what we will do. Each of us is part of something much bigger than ourselves.”

Does your family history society celebrate its past achievements? Would doing so help it thrive?

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

What’s the best thing about Switzerland?
The flag is a big plus.

Celebrating 2,000 Legacy Family Tree Webinars! Plus 10 tips you can use today. Congratulations to Geoff Rasmussen on reaching this milestone.

The New Poor Law and an early example of information management. A TNA blog post.

Lost in the gutter: mitigating text loss for digitisation projects. A TNA blog post.

50 facts about the British Library

When charities engage in ‘brand activism’, research shows they must demonstrate bravery to attract donations

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Anonymous, Brenda Turner, gail benjafield, Glenn Wright,  Ken McKinlay, Nick Mcdonald, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown.

NEW: Fife, Scotland, Police Records, 1858-1947
The 4,957 records are a mix. Some, especially the early ones, are indexes. Later ones are more complete and may include parents’ and spouse names. Some are appointments as special counstables on the occasion of civil unrest.

UPDATED: Fife, Scotland, School Admissions and Discharges, 1867-1922
215,160 records

UPDATED: Fife, Scotland, Criminal Registers, 1910-1931
1,051 records

UPDATED: Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, Poorhouse Records, 1888-1922
7,547 records

TheGenealogist just released a range of records that will appeal to those with seafaring roots. Fully searchable by name or keyword from TheGenealogist’s Master Search. The new additions include records from a variety of sources, including:

● The Navy List 1914
● The Navy List January 1916
● The Navy List April 1918
● The Navy List August 1937
● The Navy List October 1937
● The Navy List July 1943
● The Navy List April 1945
● Return Showing the Losses of Ships of the Royal Navy 1914-1918
● Merchant Adventurers 1914-1918
● Merchant Shipping Losses 1914-1918
● British Merchant Vessels Lost or Damaged by Enemy Action During Second World
War 1939-1945

Ancestry and Findmypast have more extensive collections of The Navy List.