The following is an announcement from the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania:

Fraktur, or the iconic German American “fractured” manuscript and print folk art style, has historically been lauded as an emblematic regional style in North America. This talk highlights instead the global implications of the oeuvre of a specific scrivener, Friedrich Krebs. Krebs, a former Hessian soldier and the most prolific of all known fraktur artists, embellished many of his illuminated certificates with embossed and gilt papers cut from elaborate brocade sheets imported from Germany. The effect was an intricate, decoupage-like fraktur that linked the German American home with both international trade and global styles, challenging traditional interpretations of fraktur as a typically “regional” American tradition. Presenter: Trevor Brandt Cost: FREE When: Thursday, Apr. 18, 2024 at 7 p.m. ET Where: Zoom About the speaker: Trevor Brandt is a PhD Candidate in art history at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on devotional material culture, connecting German American fraktur with the folk arts of German-speakers in Central and Eastern Europe. He previously served as the curator of the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia and is currently the managing editor of Americana Insights, a nonprofit publication dedicated to early American folk art. Trevor holds an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and a BA from the Pennsylvania State University. Register Now There is limited seating. Register now while spots are still available! Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania Email Phone: 267-686-2296 Become a member Donate

First, they found a way to release the “trapped” data from the Canadian census over the last 70 years. 

Then, Western researchers translated the information into an easy-to-use format by creating an online map and portal illustrating the changes across the country. 

The potential is immense.  

Professor Zack Taylor (Christopher Kindratsky/Western Communications)

Click on a neighbourhood, and you can find population details on everything from age to household income to religion to transportation choices. The UNI-CEN Canadian Neighbourhood Change Explorer allows researchers to track shifts in census areas dating back to 1951.

“There’s all kinds of trapped data that people can’t really use, because it’s stuck in ancient formats, practically back to the punch card. All that information is just sitting there,” said Western political science professor Zack Taylor, who led the project. 

The census is conducted every four years by Statistics Canada. 

The new platform was created by researchers at Western’s Network for Economic and Social Trends (NEST), an umbrella group for eight research centres within the Faculty of Social Science. The team partnered with Esri, a geographical analysis software company and Mitacs, a non-profit research agency that works to connect academics, government and public and private sectors. 

To create the new digital tool, Taylor and his team had to grapple with a major challenge: Each census release isn’t necessarily compatible with the one before it.  

The questions posed to Canadian households change from one census to the next. So do geographic boundaries, like those of cities or individual neighbourhoods. Those tweaks, even when minor, make direct comparisons difficult. To further complicate analyses, census data is often shared in different formats. 

A screenshot showing one elment of the UNI-CEN Neighbourhood Change Explorer platform. 

“While it is possible to join things up across time, to a limited degree, it’s really hard to do over a long period of time,” Taylor said. 

“With support of the Faculty of Social Science dean’s office, we started to convert this data that’s there but rarely used, because it’s so inaccessible in a common format. But then we thought, ‘how do we help people understand the potential of this? How do we dramatize the use of it?’”  

Not just for researchers 

Taylor hopes the UNI-CEN Canadian Neighbourhood Change Explorer will be used well beyond the university environment. It can provide key details to government departments, high school students and non-profit organizations seeking data on the people they serve, he said. 

Taylor also wants to see teaching materials developed to encourage use of the tool. 

Among the population data that can be mined: 

You can read more in an article by Megan Stacey published in the westernu.ca web site at: https://news.westernu.ca/2024/04/neighbourhood-census-data/

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the National Archives presents “Perspectives on History: AAPI Voices in the American Story” on Wednesday, May 1, at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT. The event will feature leading voices in the AAPI community as they discuss the role historians and media have played in our nation's cultural storytelling and the impact AAPI voices have and will continue to have on that narrative in the future. 

“The American story is most fully told when we incorporate the voices of every community that makes up our great nation,” said Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan. “As we celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I’m glad we can come together to explore cultural storytelling and its effect on how we understand our nation's history.”

This conversation will be moderated by MSNBC/NBC journalist and author Richard Lui, with panelists:

“As the nonprofit partner of the National Archives, we are proud to provide vital support for programming that illuminates these powerful and lesser known stories from history,” said Rodney Slater, National Archives Foundation Board Chair. “This program illustrates the positive indelible impact the AAPI community has made and continues to make on our country—this story needs to be told.” 

Leading up to the event, the National Archives is featuring rare documents in the Rotunda recognizing the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Unit—the most decorated unit for its size and length of service—composed of 12,000 Japanese American volunteers.

The event will be held in the William G. McGowan Theater in the National Archives Building, located at 701 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC.

The program will be livestreamed on the National Archives YouTube channel. In-person attendees should use the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue at 7th Street NW. Metro is accessible on the Yellow and Green Lines at the Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter station. 

This program is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Verizon.

For press information, contact the National Archives Public and Media Communications staff at public.affairs@nara.gov.

About the National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent federal agency that serves American democracy by safeguarding and preserving the records of our government so people can discover, use, and learn from this documentary heritage. The National Archives ensures continuing access to the essential documentation of the rights of American citizens and the actions of their government. From the Declaration of Independence to accounts of ordinary Americans, the holdings of the National Archives directly touch the lives of millions of people. The agency supports democracy, promotes civic education, and facilitates historical understanding of our national experience. The National Archives carries out its mission through a nationwide network of archives, records centers, and Presidential Libraries and online at www.archives.gov.

About the National Archives Foundation
The National Archives Foundation is an independent nonprofit that increases public awareness of the National Archives, inspires a deeper appreciation of our country’s heritage, and encourages citizen engagement in our democracy. The Foundation generates financial and creative support for National Archives exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, introducing America’s records to people around the U.S. and the world. Learn more at www.archivesfoundation.org.

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan is pleased to announce that Dr. Pearl Ponce will serve as the Director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Texas, effective June 2, 2024. Dr. Ponce will lead the planning, directing, and administration of all Library programming and activities.

“I am excited Dr. Ponce is joining the National Archives team. With her deep knowledge of the presidency and foreign relations, and her passion for American democracy, she will be an excellent steward for the George W. Bush Library and a strong voice for archival research and public engagement,” said Shogan. “The Presidential libraries provide an important framework to better understand the complexities of our democracy and the decisions that shape our nation.”

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Photo courtesy of Dr. Pearl Ponce

Dr. Pearl T. Ponce has a long and distinguished academic career. As a professor at Ithaca College, she served as chair of the history department for six years. During this time, she  operated in a leadership role overseeing curricular revision; accreditation and program reviews; and mentoring peers, colleagues, and students at the college and beyond. Dr. Ponce is a political and diplomatic historian with a specialty in the Civil War era, having taught a wide range of courses in United States history, such as the American Civil War and Reconstruction, The House Divided: The United States in the Long 19th Century, 1800-1914, and the History of United States Foreign Relations.

She is the author of "To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis in Territorial Kansas” and the editor of “Kansas's War: The Civil War in Documents.” Her main research interests have centered around the presidency, governance and democracy, the exercise of federal power, and the territorial system. Her latest project, "’A Strange System of Terrorism’: Federal Power and the Fraying of Democracy in Utah, Washington, and Kansas Territories in the 1850s,” brings these threads together. 

She earned a master of arts and doctorate in history from Harvard University, a master of arts in history and certificate in contemporary history from Ohio University, and a bachelor of arts in international relations from Pomona College. 

"The George W. Bush Foundation is thrilled to welcome Dr. Pearl Ponce as Director of the Bush Library in Dallas," said Ken Hersh, president and CEO of the Bush Foundation. "Her tremendous academic credentials and scholarship on the presidency will make her a great asset for historians, researchers, and educators. The presidential archives at the Bush Library are a national treasure, and I know she will steward them well."

The George W. Bush Presidential Library is one of 15 libraries in the Presidential Library system operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, representing Herbert Hoover through Donald J. Trump. Presidential Libraries and Museums are repositories for each administration's papers and records and preserve and provide access to historical materials, support research, and create interactive programs and exhibits that educate and inspire.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com: 

The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

A new state-of-the-art digitization center at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, is allowing the agency to provide greater public access to the country’s most important historical federal government records faster than ever before. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, Representative Steny Hoyer, and Representative Glenn Ivey joined Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan today for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to formally celebrate the center’s launch.

The new center’s equipment fleet includes high-speed scanners and overhead camera systems that can handle a variety of record types and formats. Thanks to this equipment, the National Archives will be able to digitize up to 10 times as many records per year. This will provide Americans with access to millions of additional records each year. With more than 13 billion paper records in its holdings, being able to speed up digitization is critical to the agency’s mission of providing access to federal records.

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From left; Representative Steny Hoyer, Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan, Senator Chris Van Hollen, and Representative Glenn Ivey cut the ribbon at a ceremony to celebrate the launch of the new digitization center at Archives II in College Park, Maryland, today.

“With new high-speed scanners and a dedicated team of digitization staff, this new Center is a game changer for the National Archives,” Shogan said. “It provides us a ten-fold increase in our in-house scanning capacity and will help us make millions of original records accessible online for Americans everywhere."

“Our mission at the National Archives is to preserve, protect, and share our nation’s records,” she added. “And this will actually help us achieve all three of those goals.”

Senator Van Hollen underscored the importance of digitizing records to provide access for future generations of Americans. 

“Preserving—and learning from—our history plays a key role in our democracy. NARA is critical in this effort—archiving our nation’s treasured documents to ensure they’re accessible for generations to come. That’s why I worked to secure funding to support NARA’s new digitization center. Through this center and their expanded digitization efforts, Americans will be able to quickly and conveniently gain online access to more of the deep history that NARA holds.” 

Representative Hoyer, who was instrumental in getting funding for the construction of the National Archives at College Park, which opened in 1994 and is home to the new digitization center, spoke during the ceremony.

“This is the best archival institution in the world,” said Hoyer. “It is the best, most stable archival institution in the entire world. It is the largest and also one of the best. And this digitization capacity will make it even better.”

Representative Ivey spoke to National Archives employees gathered for the ceremony. He shared his own story of researching his family history as an example of the impact of their work  on millions of people around the world. 

"The record is there… It's critical that people like you and an institution like this are making sure we track that [U.S.] history because this is a history that's going to make a difference. It already does. It inspires people around the world,” said Ivey. “So thank you for the work that you do. Keep it going, keep it up."

Employees began working in the 18,000-square-foot center when renovation of the space was completed in October 2023. The center’s opening is the first phase of a multiyear renovation project to support the mass digitization of enormous volumes of textual, photographic, and microfilm archival records and allow the agency to better meet its goal of providing access to its holdings digitally online. 

“By far, the biggest change in our digitization capacity is the addition of three high-speed conveyor belt scanners that will enable the National Archives to safely scan fully prepared archival materials on a much larger scale than we have been able to do in the past,” Digitization Division Director Denise Henderson said. “As part of our digitization strategy, we are developing our in-house digitization expertise and expanding our digitization capabilities. The digitization center is expected to digitize thousands of cubic feet per year, producing millions of new digital images per year of archival records that are currently only available for viewing in person at National Archives facilities.”

The digitization center is tasked with priority digitization projects and supporting partner and donor projects. Current projects include the Alaska Digitization Project, which covers a wide range of records relating to Alaska; the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection; and the City Survey Files, textual records associated with the racially discriminatory practice of redlining maps. 

Staff also digitize accessioned microfilm and microfilm publications in the digitization center, like the more than 41,000 microfilm rolls of the 1960 Census. Initial work has begun on that collection and will be accelerating in preparation for the 2032 release.
The next phase of the evolution of the digitization center is already underway and will include constructing new, modern labs for digitizing motion picture and audio-visual archival records. This phase is expected to be completed by September 2024. 

Future plans for the center include additional records storage space and cold storage space for the agency’s most fragile records.

The National Archives will continue to post new digital images to the online National Archives Catalog, where they will be available to the public for free viewing from any location. The latest additions are regularly updated on What’s New in the Catalog on the National Archives website. The Catalog currently offers more than 270 million digital records. 

“We are committed to expanding free, online public access to our holdings through the National Archives Catalog,” Shogan said. “This new digitization center will help us meet our strategic goal to digitize and make available 500 million pages of records by September 30, 2026, and even larger numbers after that.”

Historically, African Americans have faced significant challenges with discovering their ancestral history due to lost or difficult to find genealogical records. Now, the Center for Family History (CFH) at the International African American Museum (IAAM) is helping to bridge that gap. Recently the CFH launched its new Genealogy Research Area and Reference Library. These resources give visitors access to millions of online genealogical records, including more than 1,300 books, and offers them the benefit of real-time expertise from onsite CFH genealogy experts.

“Conventional wisdom has been that African Americans cannot trace their ancestry in the U.S., prior to 1870,” said CFH Director Brian Sheffey. “With the addition of these resources to the Center for Family History, the museum is making significant strides to change that misperception.”

The tech forward CFH Research Area features iPad stations where visitors can search 32 popular genealogy and African American historical websites to begin or further the journey of uncovering their family history.

Visitors are asked to bring a USB-C or a standard USB flash drive to save generated genealogy documents to help maintain the center’s paperless environment.

Nearby, the CFH Reference Library is home to over 1,300 books covering a wide range of genealogy topics. Books reservations are available online at www.libib.com/u/iaamcfh for registered library patrons only. To become a patron of the Research Library, visitors must email their interest to cfh@iaamuseum.org along with their first and last name.

The CFH offers free digital resources on family genealogy. Those seeking additional guidance on uncovering the history of their ancestry can register for a virtual one-on-one consultation. The cost is $79 for a 45-minute session. Consultations are offered Monday–Friday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Reservations can be made online.

You can read more in an article published in the postandcourier.com web site at: bit.ly/3W0zA50. 

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

NOTE: This article describes a technical solution to the problem of being blocked from accessing videos of interest being broadcast on web servers in foreign countries.

In recent months, a number of genealogy television programs that sound interesting have become available on the Web in England and in the U.S. Specifically, episodes of the U.K. version of Who Do You Think You Are? are available online. Many of us in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere would love to watch these programs, but access is blocked by the networks. The U.K. networks do not have licensing rights for other countries, so the web sites block access by any non-U.K. viewers.

Of course, it is a two-way street. Episodes of the U.S. versions of many programs also block users from other countries from viewing the programs. Netflix is probably the best-known video service that blocks foreign viewers but there are many more examples. Many viewers in Canada and overseas would like to watch these programs online but, again, are blocked for the same reason. The "problem" isn't limited to genealogy or even to videos. Some contries block access to all sorts of web sites. China is an excellent example of a country that blocks access to foreign web sites but others include the repressive countries of Russia, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and many more. 

Isn't this supposed to be the WORLD WIDE Web? Not according to the folks who write contracts!

Luckily, there is an easy workaround for all this. I recently watched a supposedly-restricted program from the BBC on my laptop computer, even though I was at home in the United States at the time. A lot of other users around the world are watching videos and listening to music that supposedly aren't available in their home countries. This week I'll tell Plus Edition subscribers how to do the same.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13342683 (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

In the Czech Republic, there are many fascinating and historically significant cultural monuments. Many are proudly listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Prague Castle and the Charles Bridge. Not far from these world-famous monuments lies another one, a unique jewel: the Baroque Library inside Prague’s Clementinum, which houses the vast and valuable collections of the National Library.

Today, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Slavonic Library, which is part of the National Library, I’m honored to announce a partnership between our institution and Google Arts & Culture. This collaboration is a harmonious fusion of cultural heritage and modern technology. Thanks to modern imaging methods and virtual tours in Street View, everyone will be able to visit the unique Baroque spaces of one of the most beautiful libraries in the world at any time, no matter where they are.

They can also view over 200 exceptional historical documents displayed on this occasion from the National Library's collections, four digital stories and a Czech National Library puzzle party for creative souls. The virtual experience on Google Arts & Culture also includes the exploration of significant historical manuscripts that are usually not available to the public, such as the Vyšehrad Codex — one of the most valuable manuscripts preserved in the Czech Republic — and digitized treasures like Caspar Pflieger's Star Globe and Sebastian Münster's Map of the New World.

Working with Google is nothing new for us. Nearly 200,000 old prints have already been digitized by Google in previous years. I am delighted that by working with Google Arts & Culture we can breathe new life into the Library's collections and make them available to the general public around the world in a stunning virtual presentation.

You can read more in an article by Tomáš Foltýn, Director of the National Library of the Czech Republic, at: http://bit.ly/3Qo090r.