WorldCat.org, Google Books and more...

WorldCat.org is a major international connection to over 10,000 libraries worldwide and catalogs over 1.5 billion items. Google Books contains over 10,000,000 digitized books and magazines. WorldCat.org and Google Books are now interlinked. If you search for a book on Google Books and find the item, one of the options is to find the item in a library. Clicking on this option gives you a link to WorldCat.org. The WorldCat search for the item gives you the full citation, a reference to every edition of the item and by entering your zip code, a list of libraries that have the item, including the distance from your own location. Quoting from the OCLC Website:

The WorldCat link appears within all four available Google Book views:

• the Full View offering access to the full content of a digitized title;
• the Limited Preview that lets you read only several pages of the book;
• the Snippet View that contextually presents passages of the book which contain your search terms; and
• the basic record view which does not feature a content preview.

Google Books Advanced Book Search also has a Library Catalogs option that allows you to limit a search to "Library Catalogs." The searches in a vast number of library catalogs is a result of a project starting in 2005 called the Online Computer Library Center or OCLC. Wikipedia.

OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) in the world. WorldCat has holding records from public and private libraries worldwide. WorldCat is available through libraries and university computer networks. The Open WorldCat program makes records of library-owned materials in OCLC's WorldCat database available to Web users on popular Internet search, bibliographic and bookselling sites. In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record.

OCLC describes itself as a "nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 86 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials."

Now, what does all this have to do with genealogy? Plenty. A search in WorldCat.org on the term genealogy brought up 474,804 items. If I find a reference to a book or other publication that I would like to use for research, the first place I go to search is WorldCat.org because I will then know if I can find the book through a library or through Interlibrary loan. If the book is located in a participating library, I can use my own library card at my local library to have a copy sent to my library for checkout. Essentially, almost the entire world of research is available to me at my own city's public library. I also not limited by the collections at a the nearby university libraries either.

New FamilySearch Questions finally get public airing

An article in Mormon Times, opens the door for almost the first time, to a main stream airing of some of the most glaring problems with New FamilySearch. Although the article is low key, it points out some of more difficult issues with the program. If you have been following the development of the program at all, you will immediately recognize the fact that this is one of the first times this many issues have been acknowledged in a very public manner, even if the Mormon Times is somewhat removed from the normal channels of communication about the program.

In Mesa, Arizona we have been using New FamilySearch since October of 2007. During the past two plus years it became apparent that there was a disconnect between the reality of NFS and official introductory materials. Many sophisticated users with extensive genealogical experience were dismayed at the tremendous limitations of the program in such areas as the inability to correct obviously incorrect or inaccurate information. The overwhelming amount of inaccurate information was daunting to even the most dedicated users. Even simple issues, such as wrong gender identification of an ancestor are very difficult to correct and dates and places that have no real relationship to an individual are impossible to correct. Disputing information just caused a domino effect of even more problems.

Over time, the problems seemed to get worse rather than better. New users, as they came online, merely added more inaccurate information. In presentations about New FamilySearch, many of the presenters taught that NFS would replace individual computer based programs (it might someday) and that the program was a way to "research" your ancestors and find people ready for LDS Temple ordinances. Large groups of people were told repeatedly to "go to the program, click on the green arrows and instantly have people ready for Temple work."

It is apparent that people can enter information directly into the program by uploading a GEDCOM file, and then, without doing anything more, qualify all or most of the names for Temple work, even if all the names entered are duplicates of those already in the program. Over time, warnings and additional steps in the qualification process have made this more difficult but it is still possible is someone is determined to have a set number of names for a Ward or Stake Temple day.

The Mormon Times article points out that there are a number of problems. All of these problems have been extensively discussed by many of us for the past two years or so and by the way, there are a number of other problems not mentioned in the article. It is a very positive move to see this article in print. Please take time to read the article. Here is another link to the same article.

The Ordnance Survey Ireland

The Ordnance Survey Ireland is the national mapping agency of the Republic of Ireland. Their primary product is mapping services. They produce a very comprehensive range of urban, rural, tourist and leisure maps at a variety of scales. These maps are produced in digital form as well as on paper. The base data used to create the map series is also used to produce other products such as aerial photography and digital terrain models.

Their Website includes an entirely interactive map of the country, with historic layers. Between 1829 and 1842 the Ordnance Survey completed the first ever large-scale survey of an entire country. Through the Website you can view and download this data or place an order for delivery by mail.

The new archive currently comprises the following series of maps:

6 inch mapping series (1:10,560) color 1837-1842

6 inch mapping series (1:10,560) grayscale 1837-1842

25 inch mapping series (1:2,500) grayscale 1888-1913

The above historic maps, originally surveyed on a county basis, now make up Ordnance Survey Ireland's digital image archive. Every image in the archive has been captured from an original print and each digital map image is now a seamless map title within the archive.

The site also contains the Lewis Topographical Dictionary. As the site notes, "Samuel Lewis first published his two volumes of The Topographical Dictionary of Ireland in 1837. His main aim, along with his previous topographical dictionaries and maps of the United Kingdom, was to give in ‘a condensed form’, a reliable and unbiased description of each place. Arranged alphabetically by place (village, parish, town, etc.), it provides a comprehensive description of all Irish localities as they existed at the time of publication. Lewis gives details about every parish, town and village in Ireland, including numbers of inhabitants, the economy, history, topography, religion and parish structures, administration and courts, schools, and much more. He also gives the names of the principal inhabitants (generally landlords, merchants and professionals). Lewis's dictionary is the first detailed study of its kind for Ireland, and since it was published just prior to the Irish Potato Famine (1845-49) it is a valuable resource used widely by historians and genealogists alike."

Genealogical resources of the National Archives of Ireland

The National Archives of Ireland holds a wide variety of records relevant to Irish genealogy. Foremost among the records becoming available is the entire 1911 Irish Census including all counties now available online. In addition, the 1901 Census material will be made available during 2010 with all data transcribed. For a detailed description of the project, click here. The Census site also contains a very interesting presentation of photographs depicting Ireland in 1911. The picture above is from the Ulster Museum and shows the Titanic in the final stages of construction in May of 1911.

Contrary to the trend in England charging for record copies, the Irish records are being made free online. In addition to the Census records, the Website has an extensive online index of other government databases which include government departments, agencies and other national records. There is a combined search for all the databases. Members of the public can also use their in-house Genealogy Service which offers a free, short personal consultation service by professional genealogists to visitors to the National Archives who are researching their family tree.

In addition to the Census returns, the Archives also has the Primary Valuation records (also known as Griffith's Valuation) for people living in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s. For earlier records, the Tithe Applotment Books are also available for people living in the 1820s or 1830s. However, an online source for these records has yet to be compiled. A CD-ROM index to the Tithe Applotment books for counties Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone is available as Tithe Applotment Books, 1823-1838 while a CD-ROM index to the Primary Valuation is available as Index to Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland, 1848-1864 (both from Genealogical Publishing Co Ltd, Baltimore, USA).

The Archives holds many other records including the following:

• Wills and testamentary records
• Ireland-Australia transportation records (1791–1853)
• Estate records
• Private source records
• Parish records and marriage licenses
• Crown and Peace records

Of great value to finding locations within Ireland is the Ordnance Survey digital map of Ireland for putting the NAI's record collections in their geographical context. With the exception of the Ireland-Australia transportation database (1791–1853), the records themselves are not searchable on the Archive site and must be consulted in person in National Archive Reading Room.

Researching genealogy at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress, now over 200 years old, is recognized as the largest library in the United States and has claims to being the largest library in the world. Its collections are described as follows:

In 1992, the Library acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include approximately fifteen million books, thirty-nine million manuscripts, thirteen million photographs, four million maps, more than three-and-a-half million pieces of music, and more than half a million motion pictures. The Library's collection of more than 5,600 incunabula (books printed before 1500) is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and its collections of maps, atlases, newspapers, music, motion pictures, photographs, and microforms are probably the largest in the world. In addition, the Library holds newspapers, prints, posters, drawings, talking books, technical reports, videotapes and disks, computer programs, and other audio, visual, and print materials.

The collections are especially strong in American history, politics, and literature; music; geography; law and particularly foreign law; economics; genealogy and U.S. local history; U.S. public documents; publications of learned societies from around the world; the history of science; libraries and librarianship; and bibliography in all subjects. In addition to the personal papers of American presidents from Washington through Coolidge, the Library's manuscript holdings include the papers of eminent figures, mostly American, in government, the arts, and the sciences.

Each day about thirty-one thousand items arrive at the Library; approximately seven thousand of these items will become part of the permanent collections. See Jefferson's Legacy. In 2008, the Library had the following collections:

• Total of 141,847,810 items in the collections, including:
  
• 21,218,408 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system.
  
• 11,599,606 books in large type and raised characters, incunabula (books printed before 1501), monographs and serials, music, bound newspapers, pamphlets, technical reports, and other printed material.
  
• 109,029,796 items in the nonclassified (special) collections. These included:
• 3,005,028 audio materials, such as discs, tapes, talking books, and other
  recorded formats.
  
• 62,778,118 total manuscripts.
  
• 5,357,385 maps.
  
• 16,086,572 microforms.
  
• 5,674,956 pieces of sheet music.
  
• 14,388,175 visual materials, including:
  
• 1,207,776 moving images.
  
• 12,536,764 photographs.
  
• 98,288 posters.
  
• 545,347 prints and drawings.

So what can the Library of Congress do for your genealogy? Try the Local History & Genealogy Reading Room. The Library has over 50,000 genealogies and 100,000 local histories. Volumes from the Library's general collections may be paged from and used in the LH&G Reading Room. In addition to these works, there are some 6,000 guides and other reference works available in the LH&G Reading Room. Most special catalogs and indexes are arranged by family name.

Digitized materials on U.S. history from the Library of Congress collections. Includes first-person accounts of 19th-century California, the Upper Midwest from 1820 to 1910, the Chesapeake Bay area from 1600 to 1925, and other resources for genealogy research. Online resources are found at American Memory.

JAWS support available for New FamilySearch

JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader, a software program for visually impaired users, produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group at Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA.Wikipedia. FamilySearch's New FamilySearch (NFS) software now offers increasingly extensive support for blind users in conjunction with JAWS. From the Help Center document No. KD 109349, NFS indicates that standard JAWS commands to read HTML can be used to access data on the New FamilySearch. There are over 100 JAWS commands for reading HTML. For instructions on signing into the new FamilySearch, searching for ancestors, viewing information about the person in the main position, combining duplicates, and viewing and submitting temple ordinances, refer to KD 109354, KD 109356, KD 109357, KD 109358, and KD 109360 respectively.

Additional thoughts on the revolutionary challenge of New FamilySearch

New FamilySearch (NFS) is much more than a simple database of names, it is a revolutionary way of presenting genealogical information that has far reaching and even revolutionary consequences to the way family information is stored, displayed and maintained. One aspect of the program (if you can call it that) is the extensive help system. The NFS Help Center is interactive in the sense that any question the user wishes to ask will be answered either through the existing accumulation of previously answered questions, E-mail support or in person telephonic support. Because FamilySearch has trained volunteers answering questions from all around the world, support is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

At the time NFS was first released, there were a few volunteers and many of the most common questions had yet to be answered. Over the past two years the reserve of answered questions has become monumental, there is practically no question about the program, the data or any other special circumstance that cannot be answered through the Help Center. In talking to many users, the biggest problem is not a lack of information to answer questions, but the fact that many users have no idea that the Help Center even exists. To my knowledge, there is no other online program that even approaches the amount of support offered to the users of NFS.

In addition to the Help Center, FamilySearch also has online Forums for each of its support areas. A NFS user can sign into the FamilySearch Forums and ask questions of the FamilySearch community and also receive answers in real time. This support system extends to all of the aspects of NFS including the Indexing program and all of the other products. The Forum includes geographical sections where anyone can seek help on specific genealogical research issues. Unlike NFS, the Forum is open to everyone who wishes to register.

The revolutionary aspect of the Help Center and the Forum is that users will become accustomed to having this extensive help system and will be able to easily compare that level of support to other programs and products online. How will third party programs compete with a world wide system of trained volunteers? Especially if NFS develops more extensive capabilities to store individual information such as media and/or sources?

In addition, FamilySearch is being taught and supported by the thousands of Family History Centers around the world. In each Ward and Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there are people who are supposed to teach and answer questions about NFS. By the end of 2010 it is predicted that NFS will be open to all genealogists, not just members of the LDS Church. This event alone will exponentially expand the influence of the program.

As can be seen from the FamilySearch Affiliates and Product Certification program, there are also many aspects of the program that benefit third-party developers. FamilySearch also continues to accelerate its efforts to expand online resources through Record Search and the Indexing program. Presently, compared to the larger subscription Websites, FamilySearch does not seem have that many resources, but goal of digitizing approximately 2.5 million rolls of microfilm could easily put FamilySearch in a dominant position in the genealogical community.

Just an additional small example of the extensive development of NFS, is support for blind patrons using the JAWS screen reader from Freedom Scientific. JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader, a software program for visually impaired users, produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group at Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Think about it. Have you ever seen anything from any other genealogy program aimed at helping blind users?