Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it describes the changing technology around us, a topic often of interest to genealogists. It also has to do with history, which IS a topic often described in this newsletter. Besides, I found it interesting and decided to share it.

2011 saw the last floppy disk produced. There are still individuals and organisations who use floppy disks even though new supplies haven't been available for more than ten years. Everybody has a different explanation for why they use technology that is basically from the 1970s.

Selling "new," that is, unopened, floppy disks for years, US businessman Tom Persky continues to make great profit from the business. He is the owner of Floppydisk.com, which sells disks for around US$1 (£0.80) each, however certain larger capacity models can cost up to US$10 (£8). Customers of Persky are found all over the world, and you could divide them about 50/50 between industrial users and hobbyists and enthusiasts such as Espen Kraft. The latter group includes those who utilize floppy disk-requiring PCs at work. They are basically stuck with a format that most of the rest of the world has since forgotten.

Still, Persky continues, "I sell thousands of floppy disks to the airline industry." He won't elaborate. Companies are unhappy when I discuss them. It is commonly known, though, that some Boeing 747s, for instance, load vital software upgrades into their avionics and navigation computers using floppy disks. Persky suggests that although these older planes may not be as common in the US or Europe these days, you might discover one in a developing nation. Other government systems, industrial equipment, and even animatronic figures still use floppy disks.

And the 1980-launched Muni Metro light train in San Francisco won't start up every morning unless the responsible personnel pick up a floppy disk and insert it into the computer that runs the Automatic Train Control System, or ATCS. "Every day the computer needs to be told what it's supposed to do," a San Francisco Municipal Transport Agency (SFMTA) spokeswoman said. "There is nowhere to permanently install software without a hard drive."

This computer has to be restarted in such a way repeatedly, he adds — it can't simply be left on, for fear of its memory degrading.

Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Gokhan Yazgi announced that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has read nearly 2,000 Hittite tablets – thousands of years old historical documents.  

The first phase of the project, which was initiated to read, scan and digitize Hittite cuneiform tablets in the inventory of the Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul Archaeological Museums and Corum Museum using artificial intelligence, was completed in recent months.

Within the framework of the project carried out in cooperation with Ankara University and the General Directorate of Museums with Cultural Assets of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, thousands of years-old tablets found in the Hittite capital Hattusa were photographed in high resolution and scanned in 3D.

Hittite tablets and digital library

The project's first stage involved learning 500 cuneiform Hittite tablets with artificial intelligence, which achieved 75.66% success. So far, artificial intelligence has read 2,000 tablets. The data obtained from the readings will be shared with the scientific world, and a study will be conducted by Hittitologists.

Hittite tablets containing historical documents will be opened to the world with the digital library established.

At the “On the Trail of the Hittites: New Information and Perspectives” symposium in Corum, Yazgi stated that they are making a great effort to use technology to understand the Hittite civilization better.

Yazgi added that the data obtained from the tablets will be shared with the public through a scientific study by Ankara University and the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

From the collection of over 5,000 historic photographs kept in the Campbell Room of local history, Salina Public Library has opened an online Digital Archive that provides the public with virtual access to images from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Visit salinapubliclibrary.org/local-history to view these photos in an online digital archive. More people can be better bonded to the history and culture of Salina/Saline County if these photos are preserved and made more easily accessible.

This project came to pass when Salina Public Library received a $3,800 Kansas Digital Access to Historic Records (KDAHR) grant from the Kansas State Historical Records Advisory Board (KSHRAB) to acquire a photo scanner. About 500 photos in the library's collection taken before 1900 were digitized using the scanner.

"It gives us great pleasure to introduce this initiative that will increase awareness of Salina's past." information services head Stefanie Knopp said.

Working with groups all around Kansas, the KSHRAB preserves and makes historical records more accessible to audiences now and in the future. The Board launched the KDAHR award program to enable groups to improve community involvement with local history and online accessibility to historical documents.

For the first time in the history of the Internet, all issues of the former Jewish magazine ‘Soviet Heimland’ have begun to be digitized.

See https://bit.ly/3UH695L for all the details.

NOTE: The article at https://bit.ly/3UH695L is published in Yiddish. You can use Google Translate or another online translation service to translate it to other languages, including to English.

The following is from Geneanet.org:

On May 24-26, 2024, take pictures of graves in a nearby cemetery.

Since cemeteries are among the most important resources for genealogists, Geneanet has launched the ‘Save our Graves’ project to capture headstones before they are lost.

On May 24-26, 2024, we will need you to photograph as many graves as possible worldwide with the Geneanet mobile app or with your camera.

If you can’t take pictures in a cemetery, you can help to index existing pictures in the Geneanet collaborative database.

How to participate?

1. You have a mobile or tablet

• Install the GeneaGraves app for Android or iOS,

 

• Go to a nearby cemetery, launch the app, select a project or create a new one, then take as many pictures as you wish,
• Once you’re back home, upload the pictures to your Geneanet account via a Wi-Fi access point. These pictures will be free for every Geneanet member.

2. You don’t have a mobile or tablet

• Go to a nearby cemetery and take pictures of graves with a camera,
• Once you’re back home, upload the pictures to your personal computer, then go to en.geneanet.org/cemetery/upload.

Please click here to see if your nearby cemetery is not already listed on Geneanet.

The Te Maeatanga Digitization program in New Zealand is coming to an end on June 30. Up until now, the program's funding was time-limited, and Archives New Zealand hasn't been able to find new funding.

Te whakamatihiko ā-tono Digitization on Demand service will therefore also be shutting down. The deadline for service order requests is May 24 in order to guarantee that all orders can be fulfilled by the program's conclusion at the end of June. We understand that you will be disappointed by this news.

Since 2017, the digitization program has been in operation.

During that period, the Government Digital Archive has digitized around 2 million significant photos for Aotearoa New Zealand, making them accessible to the public online.

Access to non-digitized records will require users to attend reading rooms. You may still use your personal cameras to take pictures of the reading room's open access records.

We are unable to provide digital government loan services, however Archives New Zealand will still be able to provide physical government loans

This choice is unrelated to the government's effort to reduce the base level of the public sector in order to achieve efficiencies. It is intended to eliminate three permanent posts from the Wellington digitizing team and not to renew Te Maeatanga kaimahi's fixed-term agreements.

The Te Maeatanga Digitization programme has improved accessibility to the collections of Archives New Zealand. We understand the value of digitization and will notify you of any updates about new services.

The following is a press release written by University College Cork (UCC) in partnership with RTÉ and the Irish Military Archives:

• Database and interactive map lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities.
• Project shows that numbers killed were considerably less than in the War of Independence.
• Research indicates the Civil War was more violent, brutal and protracted in counties Kerry, Tipperary and Louth.

A ground-breaking new research and digital mapping project launched today (Monday, 29 April) by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin TD, lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities in the Irish Civil War. The project represents the first systematic attempt to investigate the number of people killed in the conflict.

The Irish Civil War Fatalities Project is a ground-breaking research and digital mapping project that covers one of the most complex periods in Ireland’s history. For decades, historians of the Irish Civil War have resorted to estimates when surveying the human cost of the conflict. Now a rigorously researched, academically contextualised database and interactive map lists all of the combatant and civilian fatalities in the thirty-two counties between the opening shots of the Civil War on 28 June 1922 and the ceasefire and dump arms order on 24 May 1923.

The project shows that numbers killed were considerably less than in the War of Independence. This is mainly due to the lack of deliberate killing of civilians, who were three times more likely to have been killed in the War of Independence than in the Civil War. It shows the Civil War was more violent, brutal and protracted in counties Kerry, Tipperary and Louth.

The research also suggests a new chronology of the Civil War, contradicting the idea that major combat was over after the first month of the war. The study of fatalities shows that deaths spiked not only in the opening ‘conventional’ phase of the war, but also in the peak of the guerrilla war in autumn 1922 and again in March 1923 with a concerted series of reprisal killings.

Led by University College Cork (UCC) in partnership with RTÉ and the Irish Military Archives, the project was made possible through funding from the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Historical Strand of the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023.

The Irish Civil War Fatalities Project provides new insights into the frequency, nature and concentration of violence across Ireland during the Civil War, complementing the latest research on the military, social and political aspects of the conflict. The interactive map is a major work of public scholarship and fills a significant gap in the historical record.

Launching the project, Minister Martin said: “The Irish Civil War was a great national tragedy and left a deep wound in the newly independent State. The significant loss of life and the injury to the fabric of our communities, and many families, were felt for generations, even to this day. By exploration of the impacts and factual history of the War, UCC’s research serves to deepen our appreciation of the challenges faced and sacrifices made by the individuals and families that made those communities - and the University has done so with a very thorough, engaging, innovative & accessible new resource.”

The Minister added, “From the outset of the project my Department has supported the scope and ambition of UCC, with encouragement and significant funding to underpin the task. This output of this project is exactly the kind of accessible data that the Expert Advisory Group and Government hoped would emerge as an enduring legacy of the Programme, and it adds significantly to the body of work already produced by UCC and others over the course of the Decade. I commend all those who worked on and supported the delivery of this new and invaluable public asset, which assists us all in deepening our understanding of the complex history of the birth of the nation.”

Dr Andy Bielenberg, Principal Investigator of the Irish Civil War Fatalities Project and Senior Lecturer at UCC School of History, said: “Drawing on a wide range of sources, this project offers new insights into the spatial and temporal patterns of violence during the Civil War as well as the social profiles, ages and backgrounds of the victims of that violence. In addition to building a clearer picture of the combatant fatalities of the Irish Civil War, the new research presents a fuller picture of civilian fatalities. We can now see the impact of the conflict on civilians in large swathes of Ireland which remained entirely uncharted until now.”

“The interactive map will be an invaluable tool for researching family history, local history, and filling in gaps in our knowledge about the Civil War,” Dr Andy Bielenberg said.

John Dorney, Historian and Research Assistant, said: “Some of the most interesting findings come from the data collected about fatalities as well as the raw numbers. For instance, we can show that pro-Treaty military casualties were of a significantly lower social class than the anti-Treaty side; that both Dubliners and natives of Cork were overrepresented in the pro-Treaty casualties, while people from Kerry were twice as likely to die on the anti as on the pro Treaty side; and that while pro-Treaty deaths significantly outnumbered anti-Treaty, the latter were far more likely to executed or killed after being taken prisoner.”

The project includes:

• A searchable, interactive Civil War Fatalities map providing new insights into the frequency, nature and concentration of violence across Ireland.
• Research findings by Dr Andy Bielenberg and John Dorney, Historian and Research Assistant.
• A series of articles by invited scholars contextualising the conflict in local areas, including Dr John O’Callaghan on the Civil War in County Limerick; Owen O’Shea on the Civil War in Kerry; Dr Helene O’Keefe on child victims of political violence and Professor Pauric Travers on the Civil War in County Donegal.

View the project here on UCC’s website and on RTÉ.

The Civil War Fatalities Project is the latest in a series of outreach and engagement projects coordinated by UCC's interdisciplinary 'Atlas of the Irish Revolution Team' at UCC during the Decade of Centenaries. These include the award-winning Atlas of the Irish Revolution; the three-part documentary series ‘The Irish Civil War’ narrated by Brendan Gleeson and three, map-based digital history projects created in partnership with RTE.ie.

The following announcement was written by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

Limited seating to view the virtual presentation will be offered at Adamson

Library. To reserve a seat, please call (706) 722-4073

Click here to register,  Augusta Genealogical Society

Is it time to stop the presses?

It seems that every week I report in this newsletter about more and more genealogy books that are being converted to electronic format. Sure, old books have been digitized for several years now. However, even new books are now appearing as electronic publications. Some are published on CD-ROM disks but nowadays more and more old genealogy books are being loaded onto Internet web servers and being offered online on the World Wide Web, sometimes free of charge and in other cases they may be offered for a modest fee.

One example is the 6th Edition of The Genealogist's Address Book, by Elizabeth Petty Bentley, published some years ago by Genealogical Publishing Company. It is available electronically or as a traditional (paper) book. The first four editions of The Genealogist's Address Book were printed only on paper, but the economics caught up with reference books. Each new edition cost more and more to print. As prices escalated, sales decreased. Many people could not afford the higher prices. The latest 6th Edition with 799 pages now costs $83.50 for the paper version, but the electronic version costs only $46.95. I assume the electronic version  has sold more copies than has the paper version.

This is only one such example; there are many more. Is this an indication of the end of book publishing as we know it? Will simple economics drive printed books out of existence?

Many bibliophiles cringed when the Internet search engine Google announced plans to digitize the book collections of five major libraries. To be sure, there isn't as much personal "touch and feel" with an electronic version as there is with a printed version. I have read many comments about this, such as, "no one will ever want to read an entire novel on their computer screen," or, "online books will succeed only when every bathroom has a high-speed Internet connection!" I recently read another statement from a librarian: "There’s just a coziness with a book. The smell. Can you smell a laptop?"

I believe that librarian's view is a bit too simplistic. Very few people would suggest that all books should be printed forever on paper. In fact, I now own several full-length novels that are stored on my computer or on my Kindle (or in BOTH places!

For the rest of this article, let's divide the topic of books into two major categories: (1.) books that are meant to be read from cover to cover (such as a novel) and (2.) reference books that typically are only read in small segments at a time (such as an encyclopedia or many genealogy books).

While I love my Kindle, the state-of-the-art of such “electronic book readers” will obviously continue to improve. The computers and electronic "book readers" ten or twenty years from now probably will be wafer-thin, flexible screens the size of a piece of paper that you can roll up and stuff into a pocket or purse. They will produce no more glare than a piece of paper, perhaps even less. They will be easier to read than paper. They will operate on batteries that last for twenty, fifty, or even more hours before needing to be recharged. Today's "book readers" are already about the size of a paperback novel and weigh less than one pound. As technology continues to improve, they will become even smaller and lighter. Until that day arrives, however, nobody will want to read “War and Peace” on a computer screen while sunbathing at the beach.

Reference books are an entirely different matter. Encyclopedias, operators' manuals, and other reference materials are generally read only a few pages at a time. Such reference material seems to be much better suited for online distribution. The bulk of a computer and the screen glare do not seem like major issues when reading only a few pages. Indeed, online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and Encarta have seen skyrocketing success even as printed reference books (Encyclopædia Britannica) produce reduced sales figures every year. Actually, since 2016, the Encyclopædia Britannica has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.

The Internet Archive has even created greater success than has Google. Located at https://archive.org/, the Internet Archive is a non-profit online library containing millions of FREE books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. If you are not yet using the Internet Archive, you need to start NOW!

Think of all the genealogy books you have consulted. Aren't most of them reference books? Didn't you only consult a page or two, or maybe five or ten pages? How many genealogy books have you read from cover to cover? I bet it is very few. The Genealogists' Address Book is an excellent example: it is a reference book, and nobody will ever be spellbound by it as they read it from cover to cover.

The conversion of genealogy books to digital formats would seem to make sense, even for "War and Peace," "Gone with the Wind" or "The Da Vinci Code." 

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/13355250. (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. 

The following is an announcement written by TheGenealogist:

For the first time, you can now pin down your ancestors in 1851!

TheGenealogist’s latest release makes it easy to locate an ancestor geographically in the 1851 census. With a choice of historical and modern georeferenced maps, this welcome development makes it simple to explore the place where your ancestors lived and discover their surroundings.

Census records have always been a staple resource for family historians. With the particulars of the street or road name, researchers will often turn to a modern map to see if they can locate where their forebears lived. This, however, can be fraught with difficulties if the road name changed over the years or the area was redeveloped. Thus, TheGenealogist has been working through its census collection, linking the records to the detailed map collections on its Map Explorer™. 

The 1851 Census of Edinburgh linked to Map Explorer™ locating Howard Place, the family home of novelist Robert Louis Stevenson

• The 1851 census now joins the ranks of other key censuses (1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and the 1939 Register) already integrated with the innovative Map Explorer™.
  

• With just a click of a button, researchers can pin their forebears’ residences down to a parish, street or building and trace the routes they would have taken to visit local shops, pubs, churches, workplaces, and parks.
  
  

• Historical maps reveal the location of major roads and the nearest railway stations, shedding light on how our ancestors would have travelled to other parts of the country to work, visit relatives or their hometowns.

With this latest release, subscribers of TheGenealogist can now explore their ancestors’ neighbourhood in 1851, making it easier to uncover hidden stories and discover connections to family that lived nearby.

For those family historians on the move, TheGenealogist allows you to trace your forebears’ footprints while walking down modern streets using their “Locate me” feature. Imagine retracing your ancestors’ steps and discovering the places that they had frequented! 

When viewing a household record from the 1851 census on TheGenealogist, you’ll now see a map indicating where your ancestor was during the night of the census. Clicking on this map seamlessly loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article where the 1851 census locates the Edinburgh house where a famous author was born:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2024/a-leading-light-on-the-map-of-the-1851-census-7470/ 

Lifetime Discount Offer!

For a limited time, you can claim a Diamond Subscription to The Genealogist for just £89.95, a saving of £50! You’ll also receive a free Research Pack worth over £60.

To find out more and claim the offer, visit https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/MGBCEN524.

This offer comes with a Lifetime Discount, meaning you’ll pay the same discounted price every time your subscription renews.

This offer expires on 31st July 2024.

This offer includes a free research pack containing the following:-
- Subscription to Discover Your Ancestors Online Magazine (Worth £24.99)
- Researching and Locating Your Ancestors Book by Celia Heritage (Worth £9.95)
- Regional Research Guidebook by Andrew Chapman (Worth £9.95)
- Family Tree Chart (Folded)
- Birth Year from Census Date Calculator
- 10 Generation Relationship Calculator
- Ticket to The Family History Show - choose from York 2024, London 2024 or Online 2025

Total Savings: £113.24 - Save Over 55%

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

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