New BYU Family History Library Videos up on YouTube.com

The Brigham Young University Family History Library has regular class room instruction and genealogy training videos are regularly uploaded to YouTube.com to the BYU Family History Library channel. There are presently 77 videos with more being added regularly. Here is a list of some of the more popular ones:

• Autosomal DNA for Genealogy
• Organizing Genealogy Files
• Relative Finder Training
• Organizing Genealogy Files
• Puzzilla Training
• Find a Grave Training
• Facial Recognition and Photo Organization with Picasa

These are some of the shorter videos. Almost all of the classes I have been teaching during the week at the BYU Family History Library are also recorded and available on the same website. 

The University of Utah and BYU Libraries

A comment made to my last post about the BYU Family History Library pointed out that the entire BYU Library collection was outstanding. In Salt Lake City area and 45 miles south in Provo, there are two major universities, each with outstanding collections of historical books, photographs and manuscripts.

The collection of historical records and documents in the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library is outstanding and has nearly 500,000 square feet of building space. In 2006, the Library had over 2 million volumes. The Manuscripts Division houses more than 1600 unpublished historical collections of the University of Utah. These fully processed materials are accompanied by detailed finding aids. Collections are available for on-site use by students, researchers and members of the local community. The collections include personal and business papers, diaries, autobiographies and correspondence. The digital collection has 5.7 million files with 350,000 newspaper pages in 40 titles. Other digital collections include over 200,000 objects. One of the most useful is the Utah Digital Newspapers project, a completely indexed collection of Utah newspapers dating back to the earliest settlers, free and online for searching.

The Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University has over 9 million items, including over 3,700,000 books and over 3,000,000 microforms. Over 3 million people a year use the library. The L. Tom Perry Special Collections holds 375,000 rare books and print matter, over 1.2 million photographs and 11,000 unique manuscript and archival collections. The library also offers numerous exhibits, lectures, tours and conferences related to its holdings.. The current library has about 98 miles of shelving for the more than 6 million items in its various collections. In addition to the increase in collection space, the library also has a seating capacity of 4,600 people and is the equivalent of 2½ football fields from North to South. With over 10,000 patrons entering the building each day, the Harold B. Lee Library has grown significantly from the small collection that began in Principal Maeser’s office.

With the huge collection in the Family History Library, Salt Lake and Provo have a massive amount of historical material for study.

Need help with old handwriting?

There doesn't seem to be an end to all of the wonderful online helps available somewhere in the vast world of the Internet. Brigham Young University has an active involvement in all aspects of family history and if you need help with old handwriting there is a very extensive and useful site to give relevant assistance. The site, called Script Tutorials, contains help suggestions, examples, lists of abbreviations and forms with digitized examples and many more resources. To quote the site:

This website offers guidance in the deciphering of manuscripts and other old documents that were printed in old typefaces or written in old handwriting styles. Languages covered here include English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The content of this website may be useful for genealogical, historical, and literary research.

Another helpful Website comes from the National Archives in Great Britain. It is called Palaeography and contains an interactive tutorial developed in partnership with the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (SLAIS), University College London. You can also learn Latin with their online tutorial for beginners. The interactive tutorial is structured from easiest to the most difficult.

In both sites there are valuable links to many other useful resources.