Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700 course starts Jan 15th

The University of Edinburgh's Scottish Handwriting 2: 1500-1700 course starts on January 15th. Here's the course summary:

This course aims to enhance your research skills by intruducing you to the transcription of documents from the period of 1500-1700. The course will focus on how to read old handwriting of the period and develop archival research methods.

This course aims to test and enhance the skills learnt from Term 1, using different source material. However, students are welcome to enrol into this course without having completed Term 1. An additional £5 fee is to be paid to the NRS for the use of facilities.

This course is held at the National Records of Scotland, General Register House, Princes Street. Please report to the side door, located to the west side of the building. Please bring identification.

For further details, and to book, visit https://www.course-bookings.lifelong.ed.ac.uk/courses/HS/history/HS191/scottish-handwriting-2-1500-1700/.

If you can't make it, the Scottish Handwriting website at www.scottishhandwriting.com can help you to learn how to read older documents also.

(With thanks to @NatRecordsScot on Twitter)

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.

London Metropolitan Archive - June events

Some forthcoming events at London Metropolitan Archives:

The Londoners - portrait of a working city, c1447-1980
Exhibition runs until 5 July 2017

Hundreds of thousands of faces - images of born Londoners and more transient visitors - are preserved forever in our collections.
Winners, losers, the famous or the forgotten, countless Londoners have been recorded as they went about their work in the capital.
From studied portraits to casual snapshots, from 15th century drawings to recent colour photographs, the archive brings them all together and presents them as the history of our capital city.

Free - during normal LMA opening hours.

The Londoners: Exhibition Tour with the Curator

Join us for a tour of our current exhibition of images of Londoners. Encounter artists and aldermen, loungers and labourers, at home, in the street, or in the studio.

Free - drop in sessions will be running on the following dates:

Thursday 8 June, 6 - 6.30 pm.
Tuesday 13 June, 1 - 1.20 pm.
Thursday 22 June, 1 - 1.20 pm.


A visit to Conservation
Thursday 22 June, 2 - 3 pm.

Meet members of the Conservation team and find out about the essential work which preserves our records for future generations.

Free - booking essential.


Deciphering Old Handwriting (Advanced)
Thursday 15 June, 5.30 - 7 pm.

This practical session gives expert help in reading different types of handwriting from the 16th and 17th centuries. You will practice with copy documents from LMA's collections and get tips for deciphering early historical writing. Some experience of reading historical documents is required.

£8 - booking essential. See https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/deciphering-old-handwriting-advanced-tickets-32619444637


Making the most of your trip to LMA

Every month, we run a selection of training sessions for LMA users to enhance your research. Whether you're new to archives or a seasoned visitor, you may still find these sessions useful!

We run sessions most months on the following topics:

• Getting started at LMA
• Handling documents
• Family History starter sessions
• Understanding old handwriting

LGBTQ History Club
Wednesday 7 June, 6 - 7.30 pm.

A regular monthly meeting to explore lesbian, gay, trans, bisexual and queer histories.

Keep up to date with the programme here: www.facebook.com/lgbthistory.


Photography and Film in the Archives Group
Tuesday 20 June, 5.30 - 7.30 pm.

Join us for a monthly series of talks, document viewings and discussions about photographic archives, collections and histories.

Free - drop in session.


More details on the above, plus further events, are outlined at http://mailchi.mp/cityoflondon/may-events-at-london-metropolitan-archives-812969

Chris

My next 5 week Scottish Research Online course commences Sept 11th 2017 - details at https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102.
For details on my Scottish & Irish genealogy guide books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.
For my genealogy research service, please visit http://www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk.

National Records of Scotland catalogue services still offline

The National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.gov.uk) catalogue and other services such as the SCAN catalogue, the National Register of Archives for Scotland catalogue, the Scottish Handwriting website and the Scottish Documents platform, are all still offline, after more than two weeks. To say this is frustrating is an understatement, and no doubt may well be causing many genealogists problems, not least those who work as family historians for a living. I tweeted the archive earlier to ask for an update and possible timescale for its restoration, and received the following response:

Apologies - we are making every effort to enable access ASAP but cannot yet offer a timescale.

The archive has its status updated at www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/catalogues-and-indexes to say the following:

Please note that we are currently experiencing technical issues with our catalogues and indexes.
We hope to restore all services as soon as possible and we apologise for any inconvenience.

It should also be noted that for those hoping to seek any advice from the archive that neither the NRS nor ScotlandsPeople appear to be included in the vendors list for this week's Who Do You Think You Are? Live event in Birmingham.

Chris

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. To commission me for genealogical research, please visit my research site at www.scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk.

Mocavo attempts to create OCR for handwriting

The Mocavo genealogy search platform (www.mocavo.com) is attempting to create a system of optical character recognition that can interpret old forms of handwriting. Optical character recognition, or OCR, is a software programme that can allow a computer to read text included within a digitised image, something that allows us, for example, to search historic newspapers that have been digitised and placed online. It's an interesting challenge - some would say an impossible challenge! - but they seem to be making quite a bit of progress on it, with the team having already achieved the ability to differentiate between handwriting and printed text on the same page.

There's a progress report on its efforts via its latst nesletter at http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=952c099c101b4a6eb04bdc42a&id=8b01cc2a9e&e=65eb341d94 - definitely one to keep an eye on.

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/. My next Pharos Scottish course, Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the OPRs, starts Nov 13th - see http://pharostutors.com.