WDYTYA announces Transcription Tuesday on Feb 4th

From Who Do You Think You Are? magazine (www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com):

For the fourth year running, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine will be running its Transcription Tuesday event, encouraging family historians to take part in a transcription project and give something back to the hobby they love. Transcription Tuesday 2020 will be held on Tuesday 4th February.

Four projects have been chosen this year including projects transcribing West Midlands police records, Royal Navy service records from the First World War and German internees at a British internment camp. This year, FamilySearch are uploading a range of non-conformist registers specifically for Transcription Tuesday. Thousands of family historians took part last year and it is hoped that even more will join in this year for a global ‘transcribathon’.

Although most transcribers will be working from home, this year, for the first time, volunteers will be able to join others and get support in their work at various sites. The National Archives in Kew, Surrey, will be hosting the Royal Navy First World War project (free ticketed event) while the Internment Research Centre, based at the Heritage Hub in Hawick will be open to transcribers all day. Some Family History Centers will also be hosting Transcription Tuesday events.

To find out more information, visit: http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/transcriptiontuesday

(With thanks to Sarah Williams)

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

World Archives Project will return late October/early November

I've just noticed that Ancestry's World Archives Project is offline. Here's the message on its page:

World Archives Project

We'll be back soon.

The Ancestry World Archives Project (AWAP) in collaboration with the publisher of Family Tree Maker are working on upgrades to the AWAP program including development of an improved Keying Tool. This site will be offline until the improvements are completed. The AWAP service will be inaccessible and you will not be able to use the Keying Tool application. All your data and results of keying are safe and will be available again once the service is turned back on.

We expect to be up and running with Keying Tool 2.0 in late October or early November. Please check the blog for updates.

This follows a recent beta test for its new platform in March - see https://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2019/03/ancestrys-new-wap-keying-tool-now-online.html.

The project's blog is at https://blogs.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject/. Its last post from May 19th notes the following:

We are working on getting many more projects in the tool but for now the next two coming soon are New South Wales, Australia, Government Gazettes, 1853-1899 (Part 3) and Bedfordshire, England, Workhouse and Poor Law Records . An announcement will be posted when the projects become available in the keying tool.

Chris

Pre-order Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) for just £11.99 at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Family-History-on-the-Internet-Paperback/p/16483. Details of my genealogical research service are available at www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk. Further news published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

WDYTYA magazine announces Transcription Tuesday event

From Who Do You Think You Are? magazine:

Volunteers needed to transcribe an Edwardian book of railway accidents in a day

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth, the Modern Records Centre and the National Railway Museum (NRM) are looking for volunteers to help transcribe a book of railway worker accidents spanning 1901–1907 in just 24 hours. The project is one of three that have been chosen as part of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine’s annual Transcription Tuesday event, which this year takes place on 5 February 2019.

Transcription Tuesday was launched in 2017 by Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, to encourage family and local historians to get involved in transcription projects. “The internet has transformed family history,” said editor Sarah Williams, “but the documents that are going online need to be transcribed or indexed to make them searchable, and for many projects the only way that is going to happen is with the help of volunteers.”

One of the projects chosen for Transcription Tuesday this year is the Railway Work, Life and Death project (railwayaccidents.port.ac.uk), and its organisers have set a challenge to the Transcription Tuesday volunteers – to transcribe an entire 119-page volume of railway worker accidents in a day. Each page has, on average, 18 accidents reported, meaning that by the end of the day about 2,150 records could be available for future family historians to discover details of their railway worker ancestors.

“Accidents to railway workers were sadly common at the start of the 20th century, with around 15,000 deaths and injuries each year,” said Dr Mike Esbester of the University of Portsmouth, co-leader of the project. “This volume was created by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the biggest railway trade union [known today as the RMT], to record accidents and legal cases involving its members. Until Transcription Tuesday it was only available in hard copy, at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, which meant it was rarely consulted. Transcribing it will hugely increase its use.”

Other records being indexed on Transcription Tuesday are Warwickshire witness statements from the county’s quarter sessions with Warwickshire Bytes and a range of parish registers in association with FamilySearch. “This year we want to make Transcription Tuesday the biggest yet,” said Sarah Williams. “We hope to see hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers from across the world join together and give something back to family history.”

To find out more about the day, the projects and how to get involved visit: www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/transcriptiontuesday

Sample page from the railway accidents book that volunteers will transcribe on 

Transcription Tuesday 2019 

(Modern Records Centre)

Chris

For my genealogy guide books, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html, whilst details of my research service are at www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk. Further content is also published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES.

Letters of 1916 Belfast launch at PRONI

An interesting event taking place at PRONI (www.proni.gov.uk) in Belfast on May 28th:

Letters of 1916 Belfast Launch
SFI Discover Community Engagement Event on Thursday 28th May 2015

EXPLORE life in Ireland a century ago
CONTRIBUTE to a crowdsourced history project
LEARN about how a digital archive is created
DISCOVER hidden stories of 1916

Bring in your family letters written between 1 November 1915 - 31 October 1916 to digitize and add to the Letters 1916 archive.

5.30 - 6.30 PM OPEN SESSION
LETTERS 1916 DIY MEET THE TEAM DEMO / TRANSCRIBE / DIGITISE

6.30 - 7.45 PM A YEAR IN THE LIFE:
A series of talks exploring life in Ireland a century ago highlighting letters from PRONI’S collection

Professor Susan Schreibman (Maynooth University)
Ian Montgomery (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)
Stephen Scarth (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland)
Jason Burke (East Belfast & The Great War)

7.45 - 8.30 PM RECEPTION

To view more information please visit http://www.proni.gov.uk/l1916-sfi-belfast-v2-2.pdf

WHERE: PRONI
WHEN: Thursday 28th May 2015, 5.30pm to 9.00pm
Admission is FREE, Please contact PRONI to secure your place:

E: proni@dcalni.gov.uk
T: 028 90534800

PRONI is approximately 1½ miles from Belfast City Hall
By bus, please take the Metro 26 route

Chris

The latest British GENES podcast is available at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/podcasts.html. For details on my latest book Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, and my other genealogy guide books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Smithsonian Institute launches Transcription Centre site

This one is interesting, courtesy of the American magazine, Family Tree (not to be confused with the British one of the same name!). It concerns the Smithsonian Institution's new Transcription Centre website at https://transcription.si.edu/ to crowdsource a volunteer effort to make its records even more accessible. The article is available at http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/insider/2014/08/22/SmithsonianLaunchesWebsiteToCrowdsourceOldDocumentTranscriptions.aspx.

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And please consider purchasing the great new version of Caledonia by The Libations at 79p via www.caledonia2014.com - all profits go to help fund Scottish foodbanks

FamilySearch launches new indexing platform online

FamilySearch has launched a new dedicated indexing platform for its records at https://familysearch.org/indexing/, designed to encourage collaboration in the indexing of its vast genealogical records collections.

The FamilySearch blog has a post detailing the new layout at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/familysearch-launches-indexing-website-2/

Chris

My latest genealogy books are Tracing Your Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, and Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet. My next Pharos course is Scottish Research Online, which commences Feb 27th 2014, 5 weeks, price £45.99.

Letters of 1916 project

I've just come across an interesting Irish crowd sourcing humanities project entitled Letters of 1916 at http://dh.tcd.ie/letters1916/. From the site:

The Letters of 1916 project is the first public humanities project in Ireland. Its goal is to create a crowd-sourced digital collection of letters written around the time of the Easter Rising (1 November 1915 – 31 October 1916).

The first two months of the project were very successful! Over 500 letters has been uploaded from both, national Institutions and private collections. The Letters 1916 team is identifying, photographing and preparing hundreds more for upload.

The letters themselves, of which there are hundreds awaiting transcription on the site, are not necessarily about the Rising, but about all aspects of society in Ireland in this period - a genuine 'slice of life' from the country at that period. Some concern the First World War, others are love letters, many concern last letters before death, and so on. A fascinating resource from Trinity College Dublin, with support from the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the European Commission and many others.

From a press release issued at the end of September:

Ireland’s first crowd-sourced humanities project, The Letters of 1916: Creating History, aims to create a large scale digital collection of letters written for the six months before and after the Easter Rising. The project will lead to the creation of an online archive of letters created by the public for the public, which will be launched in 2016. 

Members of the public are being invited to include their family history in this important archive by uploading pictures of letters and related photographs hidden away in boxes, cupboards and attics to the database on the website . All letters written between 1 November 1915 and 31 October 1916 no matter what the theme romance, local politics, literature, gossip, the Rising and the Great War – can be contributed to this digital collection. 

People can also get involved in uncovering hidden stories by transcribing some of the 400 letters already contributed to the archive by public institutions, including, the National Library of Ireland, the National Archives of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin as well as the Medical Missionaries of Mary.

(The full release is at http://dh.tcd.ie/letters1916/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1916-Letters-Press-Release-27-September-20131.pdf)

The project also has a Twitter account at @Letters1916.

(With thanks to @Letters1916 and @learnaboutarchives)

Chris

My latest book, Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, is now available from http://www.gould.com.au (print) and http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html (ebook), whilst Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet is available at http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/.

ScotlandsPlaces transcriber project

I was asked to keep schtum on this for a bit as a few bits and bobs were tested, but as I've seen a few tweets and blog posts about it elsewhere, suspect it is OK to mention now!

The ScotlandsPlaces website at www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk has recently had a bit of a revamp and has also initiated a new volunteer transcriber programme, essentially a crowdsourcing project to essentially have all of its records transcribed and made fully searchable. To facilitate this new initiative ScotlandsPlaces will be hosting a series of workshops across the country for those wishing to become transcribers, with guidance on how to get the best of the site, tips on palaeography and more - there will also be public lectures to tie in.

For further details on the transcriber project visit the ScotlandsPlaces news page at www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/news, whilst for details of workshop events in your area visit www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/transcribe/workshops.

The site has also added new records, as supplied from the National Library of Scotland:

• The Scottish Bridges collection includes 131 historical images of the Tay (in 1879) and Forth (during 1886-1887) Bridges.
• The Photographs of the South Side of Edinburgh include 137 black and white images taken in 1929 by Alfred Henry Rushbrook on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Improvement Trust.
• The Slezer engravings from 1693 are the first ever pictorial survey of Scotland and were done by John Slezer (a military engineer).
• The "Word on the Street" collection include 1,800 Scottish broadsides between 1650 and 1910.

Chris

My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. My Scottish land and church records ebooks are available at http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html, whilst my next Pharos Scottish course, Scottish Research Online, starts Sep 4th - see http://pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Time to smash a few brick walls...!

FamilySearch Indexing hits one billionth record

Congratulations to the FamilySearch website, which has now indexed one billion records since September 2006 - the full story, along with the latest collections being worked on by the FamilySearch Indexing community, is accessible at http://view.familysearch.ldschurch.org/?j=fe4e1074726702757c1c&m=fe6315707166057a711d&ls=fdf31c737263027475147374&l=fe611770746d007e7d16&s=fe2413767760037a771676&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe2016787262057b731778&r=0

Chris

My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.