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

CD discs (often called “optical discs) have been commercially available since the 1980s. Sadly, many computer users have inserted their older CDs into a computer and found that the discs no longer work. 

Sometimes it is a software problem: the old software for the CD might not work on a newer version of Windows or Macintosh. However, the most common problem seems to be physical: the CDs themselves have microscopic mold or "rot" that ruins the surface and prevents the data from being read. Even worse, there is no cure. If the data is bad now, it will only get worse. There is no reliable way to restore data from a defective CD.

Some experts claim that CDs will last up to 200 years. However, practical experience shows that hasn't happened in the first 30 or 40 years. To be sure, not all CDs have gone bad. Only a percentage of them have failed so far. Perhaps the MAJORITY will last 200 years or the AVERAGE will be 200 years, but we know it will not be true of 100% of the discs. However, nobody knows how to predict which disc will fail next. The CD that is most valuable to you might last another 170 years, or it may fail tomorrow.

We do know that CDs created one at a time in a PC do not last as long as CDs created in a factory, where hundreds of them are made at once. Those backups you made or that family genealogy book you wrote may not last very long on a CD you "burned" at home.

To understand what limits the life span of optical discs, let’s look at how they are built. What all optical discs have in common is the presence of three key layers:

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/13093182.

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 announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist.co.uk has just added over 342,500 new records to the 1939 Register for England and Wales. Researchers can now see all people born in 1922 opened under the 100 year rule along with those who have passed away since the last release.

TheGenealogist’s version of the 1939 Register is matched to its powerful mapping tool, Map Explorer™ so that researchers can see more accurately where their ancestor’s house was situated on maps down to house, street or parish level, giving more detail than ever before. With its SmartSearch family historians can discover even more from the records in the 1939 Register not just where their ancestors were living as the Second World War began in Britain, but potential birth and death records.

 Sir Christopher Lee in the 1939 Register as a 17 year old

TheGenealogist’s unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology offers a hugely flexible way to look for your ancestors at this time. Searching the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist also allows researchers to take advantage of some powerful search tools to break down brick walls. For example there is the ability to find ancestors in 1939 by using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or their date of birth. Researchers may also search for an addressand then jump straight to the household or, if you are struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know.

Having discovered a record in the 1939 Register, TheGenealogist then gives its subscribers the ability to click on the street name and so view all the residents in the road. This feature can be used to potentially discover relatives living in the area and can therefore boost your research with just a click.

The 342,543 newly opened records from the 1939 Register, linked to the detailed mapping tool on TheGenealogist, is a tremendous way for family historians to discover where their forebears lived in September 1939.

See TheGenealogist’s article: The “Count” and the Contessa found in the 1939 Register

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/the-count-and-the-contessa-found-in-the-1939-register-1661/

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!

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Sidney Lapidus ’59 has donated a collection of rare Revolution-era books and publications to Princeton University as part of the Venture Forward campaign, enabling Princeton University Library (PUL) to greatly enrich the Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution. The collection includes more than 2,700 original books, atlases, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines relating to human and political rights, liberty, and independence around the time of the American Revolution. Lapidus also made a financial gift that enabled the PUL team to digitize the collection, making it keyword-searchable and openly available to the world.

“We are deeply grateful to Sid Lapidus for enabling scholars and students to access a deeper perspective on the ideas that animated the Enlightenment and the American Revolution through the digitization of his vast personal collection of books,” said President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83. “His loyal support of Firestone Library and his love of literature, history and the artistry of books will benefit generations of Princetonians.”

Lapidus has collected rare books and other publications for more than 60 years. His first purchase inspired what became the theme of his collection. The summer after he graduated from Princeton, he visited London. “Peering through a dusty bookstore window in central London, I saw a 1792 edition of Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights of Man,’” Lapidus said. “It was less than $5 — about the most I could afford at the time. I bought it and that basically got me started collecting.”

Paine was already a semi-prominent figure in Lapidus’ life. The Thomas Paine Cottage, where the “Common Sense” writer lived near the end of his life, is located across the street from Lapidus’ high school in New Rochelle, New York. “I had some excellent teachers at New Rochelle High School and when they taught us Paine, I thought, ‘This guy speaks to me,’” Lapidus said. “I felt like he was my neighbor, so seeing that book in London brought me back home in a way. Of all the pieces in my collection, that was always the one that meant the most to me.”

Lapidus’ personal collection also includes rare books and pamphlets related to the abolitionist movement as well as the expansion of religious liberty and civil rights, particularly for the Jewish community on both sides of the Atlantic, and he has donated portions of his collection to other institutions. He provided pieces from his collection to help establish the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Trans-Atlantic Slavery at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Lapidus and his wife, Ruth, have also made numerous gifts to NYU Langone Health, including volumes from his private collection that now reside in the Sid and Ruth Lapidus Health Sciences Library at NYU Langone.

"Most white Americans can be identified through the DNA of someone else already."

"Never had your genes tested? The DNA you leave behind is fair game for police."

"Detectives use genetic genealogy for more than murders and cold cases. "

If you are concerned with your personal privacy, you might want to read an article by Hannah Phillips published in the Palm Beach Post web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2r47v929.

In 1856, Benjamin Drew, a U.S. abolitionist, travelled to Canada to transcribe the oral stories of formerly enslaved Black refugees. Among them, 16 individuals who originally settled in London, Ont. Their narratives, recorded in Drew’s book, A North-Side View of Slavery, describe their former enslavers, their escapes and how they made it to Canada.

But what of their lives afterwards?

With Drew’s accounts as their starting point, Western researchers Miranda Green-Barteet and Alyssa MacLean are working to trace the paths these self-liberated individuals took after arriving in London. By documenting their journeys through an interactive website hosted by Western Libraries, Green-Barteet and MacLean aim to address a longstanding gap in the history of Black Londoners.

Beyond the Underground Railroad

By the 1850s and ‘60s, British North America (Quebec, Nova Scotia, Ontario and New Brunswick) had become a refuge for a growing number of formerly enslaved people fleeing plantations in the American South. Many had escaped to freedom with the help of a secret network of free Blacks and white sympathizers, known as the Underground Railroad.

For those interested in the history of this period, the successful outcomes of the Railroad are the final chapter in the stories of those escaping enslavement.

For Green-Barteet and MacLean, that’s where the story begins.

“One of the things we are trying to do, is to ‘complicate’ the idea of the Underground Railroad,” said MacLean, a professor in English Studies. “There’s a sense that people who were trying to free themselves from slavery would basically run across the Canada-U.S. border and once they got to the Canadian side, it was like crossing a finish line.

“We’re trying to show it wasn’t a terminus. People’s lives continued. Once the Civil War ended (in 1865), people had to decide what to do ─ some of them went back to live in the States, some went back to collect family members.”

Permanent digital exhibit

Guided by the narratives from Drew’s book, Green-Barteet and MacLean are conducting extensive archival research on the formerly enslaved Black Londoners to create Western’s first Black Londoners Digital Archives.

It’s a project they’re completing with the help of staff in Western Libraries Archives and Special Collectionsand their research assistants, undergraduate student Kathleena Henricus and PhD candidate David Mitterauer.

Henricus is compiling a timeline of historical events aligning with the Black newcomers’ arrival while Mitterauer is combing census data and city directories to track their next steps. The researchers hope to engage more students in research opportunities with the support of the Western Black Student Leadership University Experience (Western B.L.U.E.) program.

The team is using Arc GIS Story Maps, a cloud-based mapping and analysis tool, to combine Drew’s narrative text with images, maps and media to develop the permanent, interactive website.

The site will chart where these new Londoners originally lived and trace their relationships to each other and the rest of the city. This content, accessible across Western, London, and Canada, will provide a fuller historical record of Black Londoners.

You can read (a lot) more in an article by Keri Ferguson published in the Western News (Canada) web site at: https://news.westernu.ca/2023/02/formerly-enslaved-black-londoners-digital-archive/.

Please feel free to forward this article to others or to republish it anywhere you please for non-commercial purposes. There is no need to ask for permission; “just do it.”

NOTE: This article contains several personal opinions.

I travel a lot, and I spend a lot of time with officers and members of many genealogy societies. Most everywhere I go, I hear stories of societies that are shrinking in size and even a few stories of societies that are struggling to maintain their existence. Even amongst all this "doom and gloom," I do hear a few rare stories of genealogy societies that are thriving and growing larger. Not only are they attracting more members, but these few societies are also offering more and more services to their members with each passing year. 

Why do the majority of societies flounder while a handful succeed?

I hear all sorts of "reasons" why societies are shrinking these days. I suspect many are not true reasons but are merely "shoot from the hip" excuses offered with no statistics or research to back them up. Common excuses include, "It's competition from the Internet" or, "It's the economy" or, "People just aren't interested anymore." 

To be sure, competition and economic difficulties and even lack of interest exist everywhere. If society members and officers do nothing to offset these factors, inertia sets in, and societies suffer. However, these factors affect all societies. The question persists: why is it that some societies thrive and even expand while others are shrinking?

I think the answer is a combination of many factors. However, some of the causes and perhaps even a few of the solutions become obvious when we look at history. Our ancestors witnessed and perhaps participated in similar problems years ago in other industries. Indeed, in recent years, even those of us alive today have seen similar declines and occasional reversals in a number of business endeavors. Perhaps the answer to the future growth of your genealogy society may be found by first looking back at the history of similar problems in other fields of endeavor.

Here is the first question to ponder: What happened to all the railroads in North America? 

In the 1800s the railroad industry in the U.S. was a growth business. In some ways it was like today's Internet businesses. Consumers couldn't get enough of the railroads' "product:" convenient and easy travel. People traveled to places they never visited before, even if only to visit relatives in another state. Corporations also rushed to send their products by rail because it was cost-effective to do so. Farmers sent their products to distant markets that had previously been impossible to reach. The economy improved for farmers and for corporations, and the money then “trickled down” into almost all other businesses. The country flourished, in part because of the railroads.

Most every year, inventors created newer and more efficient locomotives. First it was steam, then it was petrol, then diesel, and still later it was electricity (in some cases). Times were good, and America had a bright, rail-based future.

So what happened? Why isn’t North America blanketed in rail routes today? Why doesn’t everyone commute to work on the railroad?  

Today, the railroad companies are a shell of what they once were. Why? Because automobiles and trucks came along and ran the railroads into the ground.

Senior managers at railroad companies seemed to believe "we are in the railroad business." In fact, they were really in the transportation business, but few executives realized that. A very few railroads expanded over the years into bus lines, trucking companies, and allied transportation businesses. 

One company provides a perfect example: Railway Express. This company specialized in brokering and delivering railroad freight, mostly smaller packages that required much less than a full box car for transportation. This was a "railroad company" that eventually was driven to bankruptcy by a newer company that saw the true business was delivering packages (parcels) by whatever means made sense: United Parcel Service. The new company, usually called "UPS," seems to have done quite well by delivering packages by rail, truck, and airline. In short, the company succeeded nicely by doing exactly what the older company had done except for one major difference: the new company did not limit its services by calling themselves a railroad company, but by calling themselves a freight delivery company and then by doing “whatever it takes” to serve the customers.

The overwhelming majority of railroad companies tried to remain just that: railroad companies. Then they wondered, "What happened to all the customers?"

Let's fast-forward a few years and look at another business: newspapers. Again, newspapers used to be multi-million dollar businesses that most everyone respected. They were the primary sources of news and information for most citizens. A very common question was, "Have you seen the paper today?" When was the last time anyone asked you that question?

The newspaper business was almost an exact repeat of the railroad business. New competition arose from radio, television, the Internet, and a host of small electronic devices. Even bloggers are competition to newspapers. Generally speaking, the new competition has been cheaper, faster, and much more flexible, able to change quickly to meet customers' demands.

The result was predictable: stodgy, old newspaper companies with inflexible management started losing business. Customers abandoned those companies where management said, "We are in the newspaper business." Yet a few forward-thinking managers said, "We are in the news and information business," and they survived by adopting the methods of their new competitors. A very small number of newspapers, such as USA Today, adopted modern business methods and built upon their strengths: dozens of reporters, editors, advertising departments, and more. They built multi-media organizations capable of delivering news and entertainment to their customers, wherever and whenever those customers want it. Yes, even if that meant publishing on the World Wide Web.

I will suggest that it makes no difference how a news story is delivered to a customer. One (slow) method is to print it on paper and send it out via overnight trucks to be sold in stores and newsstands. Another is to broadcast the same story on radio and television. Perhaps still better is to place the story on a web site where customers can retrieve it whenever they wish. Another option is to build the story into an RSS newsfeed where customers can access it via a newsreader. Better still, if the customer has a strong interest in some topic (sports, financial news, or most anything else), PUSH that information as it becomes available to the customer's smart phone that is on his hip or in her purse. 

Executives who think they are “in the newspaper business” will fail. In fact, the PRODUCT is news and information, and that is important. The DELIVERY METHOD might be paper or broadcast media or Internet. I will suggest that delivery methods are important, but never as important as the product. The product is INFORMATION, and companies in the information business have a better chance of survival than those companies that believe they are in the newspaper business.

Let's look at a third example, although one with a very different ending. Apple started in the computer business 46 years ago at about the same time as did Microsoft and a few dozen other personal computer companies. Some built hardware; a few created software. A very few, including Apple, tried to do both. In fact, Apple floundered for a few years as the company's managers tried to become the best and most successful computer company in the industry. By most standards of measurement, the Apple executives failed. Sales were down and continued to drop every year. At one time, Apple was close to bankruptcy.

Apple's board of directors then re-hired Steve Jobs. He was a founder of the company but later left to pursue other opportunities. Newly-re-hired Steve Jobs was given one objective: turn the company around. He was given a free rein to do whatever he thought was best.

The rest is history.

Even today, Apple does not build as many personal computers as some of its competitors and does not produce as much software as its biggest competitor. Yet Apple is now more profitable than any other company, even more profitable than Microsoft. In fact, Apple now has the highest corporate valuation IN HISTORY.

How is this possible? There are a number of reasons, but the biggest seems to be that Apple stopped being a computer company years ago. Instead, Apple is now the world's leading PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANY.

To be sure, Apple does make a significant amount of income from sales of personal computers. However, that revenue is not as big as the money derived from the sales of cell phones and tablet devices. Apple also produces devices to stream movies and television programs across the Internet. Indeed, this is no longer a computer company.

Apple failed as a personal computer company, but it became wildly successful as a personal technology company.

Better than any other tech company, Apple paid attention to the trends of what consumers want, and they’ve never been afraid to experiment with other products. Some of those products failed miserably, (remember the Apple Newton?) but others succeeded far beyond anyone's expectations. The result is the most profitable company in the industry with more money in the bank than the gross national products of many countries.

The railroad moguls of days past said, “We’re in the railroad business!” when they should have been saying, “We’re in the transportation business.” Newspaper managers used to say they ran newspaper companies when they should have been managing news and entertainment companies. 

Steve Jobs and Apple got this right by saying, “We’re not a personal computer company; we’re a technology company.”

Summation

So what does this mean for your genealogy society? Are they societies, or are they providers of genealogy information and education and other services?

First, let's stop calling them "societies." That is a very narrow term that encourages members and officers alike to narrow their focus. We need to look at a bigger picture. Perhaps we should call them "genealogy organizations" or invent some other term that better describes the myriad of services possible. Such services can include:

    1. Education

    2. Publishing (on paper as well as electronic publishing)

    3. Travel services to local and distant repositories or even to "the old country"

    4. Lobbying services

    5. Sponsoring a cruise for members and others and offer seminars when at sea

    6. Fraternal organization services, somewhat like the Elks or Lions or Masons or other fraternities and sororities, all working towards common public service goals

    7. And perhaps the most important of all: offer entertainment

Probably not all genealogy organizations need to perform all of these activities, but I will suggest that most organizations need to perform at least several of the above. Like Steve Jobs' experiences at Apple, some of these services will flounder and become miserable failures. Chalk those up as “learning experiences.” All you want is to make sure that enough of your organization's efforts succeed and generate enough revenue to help sustain the organization. 

Most societies already perform educational activities for members and sometimes for non-members. All we can do is to expand this. Perhaps societies should be holding classes and information sessions for the general public. How about establishing scholarships for local high school seniors planning to pursue studies in history or allied fields?

Publishing is performed by many societies today although often is limited to small booklets that are published only on paper and are not well advertised nationwide. Yet today's technology allows for electronic publishing at far lower costs than older methods of printing books. Shouldn't we be placing all genealogy publications online and making them available to anyone and everyone worldwide for a modest fee? Or will we continue to act like newspapers?

Travel services can be a major service for members. How many of your organization's members have ever visited the state historical society's library? Or a nearby university's archives? Organize a trip! A trip doesn't always have to involve airfare to distant locations; a local visit can be just as valuable for members and non-members alike.

Lobbying is perhaps one of the greatest needs of genealogy organizations today. We are under constant pressure from well-meaning, but ignorant, legislators to limit access to the very records we depend upon. Genealogy organizations need to make sure that legislators understand that identity theft is not a factor when looking at death records from many years ago. In short, we need to lobby!

Speaking of members, do services have to be restricted to members? Why not make all services available to the general public? Sure, you might offer a discount to members, but restricting items "as a benefit of membership" rarely benefits anyone. By restricting services to members, all the society is doing is locking out potential new members and others who may have a casual interest in genealogy. The best advertising to attract new members is to let non-members use the organization's present services, although perhaps at a slightly higher price than what members pay. Some of these "outsiders" will be motivated to join. The remainder at least will have added to the organization's treasury.

As proven recently by the television networks, genealogy is also “entertainment.” Yes, we are in the entertainment business, whether we realize it or not. Let's entertain our members and especially let's entertain our potential future members!

The above list only "scratches the surface." I am sure you and your associates can create a longer list of worthwhile activities. We need to exist, thrive, and even grow in a high tech world of instant communications and collaboration. We cannot sit back and complain of "competition from the Internet." Instead, we need to embrace the Internet and every other form of technology and use all these tools to further our own interests.

My prediction: many genealogy societies will continue to shrink and will eventually die. Genealogy "organizations" with a broad outlook and a willingness to experiment with new methods of delivering services will expand and become influencers within the genealogy world.

Where will you and your society fit into all of this?

A trio of codebreakers has found and deciphered a treasure trove of lost letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots.

The 57 secret letters, from Mary Stuart to the French ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584, were written in an elaborate code. The findings come 436 years after Mary’s death by execution on February 8, 1587.

Most of the letters were kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, mainly in a large set of unmarked documents that were also written in cipher — special graphical symbols. The documents were listed as dating from the first half of the 16th century and thought to be related to Italy.

Then, a trio passionate about cracking historical ciphers stumbled upon the documents.

George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer from France; Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor from Germany; and Satoshi Tomokiyo a physicist and patents expert from Japan, all worked together to find the truth behind the documents.

The multidisciplinary team has worked together for 10 years to find and understand historical ciphers. Lasry is also a member of the DECRYPT Project, which digitizes, transcribes and identifies the meaning of historical ciphers.

Once the researchers began working through the unique ciphers, they quickly realized the correspondence was written using French, and there was nothing Italian about it.

The team spied verbs and adverbs that used a feminine form, mentions of captivity — and a keyword: Walsingham. Sir Francis Walsingham was Queen Elizabeth I’s secretary and spymaster. Together, all signs pointed to the fact that the team may have found letters of Mary Stuart thought lost for centuries.

The results were published Tuesday in the journal Cryptologia.

You can read more in an article by Ashley Strickland published in the CBB web site at: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/world/mary-queen-of-scots-lost-letters-scn/index.html.

You inherited your blood type from your ancestors. Now it seems that includes higher risk of a stroke (for some people).

People with one of the type A blood groups are more likely to have a stroke before the age of 60 compared with people with other blood types, research shows.

Blood types describe the rich variety of chemicals displayed on the surface of our red blood cells. Among the most familiar are those named A and B, which can be present together as AB, individually as A or B, or not present at all, as O.

Even within these major blood types, there are subtle variations arising from mutations in the genes responsible.

In a study published last year, genomics researchers uncovered a clear relationship between the gene for the A1 subgroup and early onset stroke.

Researchers compiled data from 48 genetic studies, which included roughly 17,000 people with a stroke and nearly 600,000 non-stroke controls. All participants were between 18 and 59 years of age.

You can read more at: https://www.sciencealert.com/your-blood-type-affects-your-risk-of-early-stroke-scientists-find.

New and Updated