Fans of medieval manuscripts have even more to explore with new additions to e-codices, the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland. The database has put online 48 manuscripts, 30 of which date between the 9th and 15th centuries.

Since 2005 e-codices has been digitizing manuscripts found in Switzerland. Closing in on 3000 manuscripts from nearly a hundred institutions, it is one of the largest online collections of its kind.

You can read many examples of the 30 medieval manuscripts in an article in the medievalists.net web site at: https://www.medievalists.net/2024/06/30-medieval-manuscripts-digitized/.

Adults who were adopted in Quebec now have the right to obtain the names of their biological parents, regardless of whether the parents chose to keep their identities hidden or not.

Lise Emond, the Montreal delegate for Mouvement Retrouvailles, asserts that this is a transformation that her organization has been diligently pursuing for a considerable period of time. "Throughout all these years, every piece of information was kept confidential," she clarified. "They would provide us with details such as your mother's age and the color of her eyes."

In 2018, the mother was granted the authority to exercise a veto, expressing her desire to keep her name confidential. With the introduction of Bill 2, they are now disclosing the name.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3xfAfp6.

Pam Cooper, a county historian said to be passionate about genealogy and who secured troves of historical data and tools for as many people as possible to discover their family histories and learn about the place they call home, died last week at age 74.

Before it was a $5.5 million industry with family histories and DNA profiles available as gifts and monthly subscriptions, genealogy, or learning about one’s ancestry and the creation of family trees were acts of individual detective work through historic records and newspaper clippings housed in court offices and public libraries.

By the end of her three-decade career, Pamela “Pam” Cooper was credited with having transformed what was an Indian River County library bookshelf corner in 1986 into what at the time of her retirement in 2016 was an over 33,000-volume archive center and genealogy department, considered one of the “top three small genealogy departments in the country.”

“She built that from basically nothing,” said Marlis Humphrey, president of the Florida State Genealogical Society.

You can read a lot more in an article by Corey Arwood, published in the tcpalm newspaper’s web site at: https://bit.ly/3Ro2BV0.

Prior to the opening of a research center and artist residency dedicated to Pablo Picasso, a museum will be established in downtown Paris. The digital site provides users with unrestricted access to the museum's extensive assortment of artworks, articles, conferences, podcasts, and interviews.

A significant number of items, including around 19,000 photographs, have not been made available to the general public.

Over the next few years, about 200,000 words from Picasso's workshops will be digitized and made available online.

Picasso was born in 1881 in Spain and resided primarily in France throughout his lifetime, ultimately passing away in 1973. In 1992, the family consigned his archives to the French state. The Paris museum will inaugurate a new exhibition titled "Picasso: Consuming Images".

The exhibition juxtaposes numerous renowned pieces by Picasso with the influential historical artists who served as his inspiration, such as Poussin, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Goya, and Matisse. Additionally, it showcases various additional images and themes that Picasso incorporated into his work.

According to curator Cecile Godefroy, Picasso was exposed to a plethora of novel pictures and artworks that he personally visited in museums in Paris throughout his formative years.

However, she noted that his assimilation of pictures extended far beyond the realm of academia. She explained that his captivation with postcards, art magazines, photography, television images, cinema, comic strips, and advertising foreshadowed the overwhelming influx of images that we now see in the era of social media.

You can view the assortment of artworks housed in the Picasso Museum in Paris through an online platform: here.

The following is a press release written by the Illinois State Museum:

Museum historians will record oral histories with travelers, businesses, highway builders, and others

SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois State Museum is seeking individuals to share their personal experiences with the original Route 66 in Illinois, including travelers, businesses that operated along the route, workers who built the highway, and others.

Route 66 will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2026. Historians from the Illinois State Museum will record and share oral histories of people who can recall their connections to the historic roadway, which operated from 1926 until decommissioning in 1985.

"These interviews will help illustrate the significance of this important transportation achievement," said Erika Holst, the museum's curator of history.

Specifically, museum historians would like to interview:

• People who have memories of driving on Route 66 or traveling the highway with family or for business.
• Those who were involved or whose families were involved in operating restaurants, hotels, or auto service businesses along the route.
• Anyone who participated in the building, maintenance, or rerouting of the Mother Road.
• First responders who worked along Route 66.
• Those who have any other firsthand experiences with Route 66 to share.

"This project also gives us an opportunity to preserve memories of Illinois citizens for posterity," said Amanda Bryden, registrar for the history collections of the Illinois State Museum and Illinois historic sites.

Anyone who has experienced Route 66 in one or more of these ways and would like to be part of the project can contact Route 66 project coordinator Judy Wagenblast at jwagenblastp@gmail.com. The oral history project is funded in part by the National Park Service.

Interview participants will be asked to sign a permission form granting legal rights to conduct and preserve the interview. Monetary compensation is not offered. Video recordings of the interviews and transcriptions will be made available to the public in an online database as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of Historic Route 66 in 2026.

The data watchdogs of the UK and Canada will investigate genetic testing company 23andMe over a data breach in October 2023.

Hackers gained access to personal information of 6.9 million people, which in some cases included family trees, birth years and geographic locations, by using customers' old passwords.

One of the things the joint taskforce will investigate is whether adequate safeguards had been put in place to protect such data.

"We intend to cooperate with these regulators’ reasonable requests," 23andMe said in a statement.

The data stolen in October did not include DNA records.

23andMe is a giant of the growing ancestor-tracing industry, offering genetic testing from DNA, with ancestry breakdown and personalised health insights.

The company was not hacked itself - but rather criminals logged into about 14,000 individual accounts, or 0.1% of customers, by using email and password details previously exposed in other hacks.

The criminals downloaded not just the data from those accounts but the private information of all other users they had links to across the family trees on the website.

At the time, 23andMe said it informed affected customers and made them change their passwords and update account security.

According to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the data stored by 23andMe "can reveal information about an individual and their family members, including about their health, ethnicity, and biological relationships".

It said this means it is "essential" for the public to trust the service.

The joint investigation between the data watchdogs will look at the size of the hack and its potential harm to users as well as whether adequate safeguards were in place.

It will also look into how 23andMe reported the breach, and if the firm followed the correct processes in the UK and Canada.

"In the wrong hands, an individual’s genetic information could be misused for surveillance or discrimination," said Canada privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresene.

The genealogy company has digitized and published 38,000 newspaper articles from between 1788 and 1867—before Black Americans were counted as citizens in the U.S. census.

Thanks to the rise of commercial genealogy platforms, millions of Americans are now researching their family histories. However, for many Black Americans, the process can be challenging, if not impossible, because of insufficient documentation describing their enslaved ancestors.

Now, a newly released database of historic records may help fill in some of those gaps. This week, Ancestry published 38,000 newspaper articles containing the names, ages, physical descriptions and locations of more than 183,000 enslaved people in America.

“Sometimes data can feel impersonal, but what this significant number really represents is over 183,000 formerly enslaved individuals—people who may not have been named or recognized since the original newspaper publications,” Nicka Sewell-Smith, a genealogist and senior story producer for Ancestry, tells Smithsonian magazine.

The collection, called “Articles of Enslavement,” is free for anyone to access online. Ancestry has already digitized more than 18 million records related to formerly enslaved or newly emancipated individuals, drawn from sources such as the Freedmen’s Bureauand the United States census.

The newly published documents, which cover the years between 1788 and 1867, could help Black families across the country who are interested in tracing their roots. Black Americans were counted as citizens on the census for the first time in 1870, and records from before that year are scarce. “Ancestry tracing often leads to dead ends, uncertainty and more questions, especially when it comes to identifying the enslaved,” as Tracy Scott Forson wrote for Smithsonian earlier this year.

As such, to find information from before 1870, Black families need documents other than census records—which the new Ancestry collection might be able to help with. More broadly, the documents could also provide historians with new insights into chattel slavery in the U.S.

“By piecing together individual stories, researchers can construct a more detailed picture of the lived experiences of Black Americans, enriching our collective understanding of history,” says Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, a scholar of Africana studies at Morehouse College, in a statement from Ancestry.

Some of the newspaper articles describe the buying and selling of enslaved people. Others are more like classified ads, with enslavers offering rewards for the return of runaways.

For example, in 1788, an enslaver named David Hawkins published a short piece in the Poughkeepsie Journal offering a $10 reward for the return of two enslaved men, Prime and Nathaniel Rockwell, who’d absconded near Goshen in Orange County, New York. The article described each man’s appearance, clothing and age.

You can read more in an article by Sarah Kuta published in the Smithsonian Magazine web site at: https://bit.ly/4b3tGno.

Wiener Library teams up with Leo Baeck Institute to search for collection of 60,000 precious books looted by Nazis from The Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin

A new exhibition has launched at London’s Wiener Holocaust Library.

Produced by the Leo Baeck Institute, The Library of Lost Books runs until 10th July. The first project of its kind, it tells the story of an important German-Jewish institution, from its role as a vibrant space for learning to a victim of Nazi crime.

The Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin (Hochschule des Judentums 1872 – 1942) was dedicated to the study of Jewish history, culture and religion.

Considered one of the largest and most important Jewish libraries in the world, it welcomed scholars such as Rabbi Dr Leo Baeck and Franz Kafka. Its collection included books in languages including German, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Hungarian, Latin and English. In 1942 the Nazis targeted it for destruction.

During the Holocaust the Hochschule’s unique library of books was looted by the Nazis and scattered across the globe.

One last group photograph: lecturers, students and staff of the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in the reading room of their library, summer 1938. Pic: https://libraryoflostbooks.com/

The new pop-up exhibition at the Wiener Library reveals the complex journeys looted books took in the aftermath of the Shoah. It forms part of an international project which aims to commemorate and educate about the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies.

Alongside a series of online and physical exhibitions, the project also includes a global citizen science project to trace the 60,000 lost works. So far books have been found in Germany, the Czech Republic, Israel, the USA, and in Britain.

You can read more in an article by Michelle Rosenberg published in the Jewish News web site at: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/detectives-welcome-on-historic-quest-to-rediscover-the-lost-library-of-books/

The following is a press release written by the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy:

Registration for SLIG 2025 will open on June 22, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. MDT.

Registration for SLIG Spring Virtual 2025 will open on June 22, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. MDT.
  If you don’t already have an account with our registration system, please create one BEFORE registration opens on June 22. We recommend doing this at least 24 hours before registration opens – in other words, please do this ASAP! You can set up your account at the SLIG registration page by clicking the link below. Download the SLIG Registration Guide here.

Course Offerings

Course 1: Organizing, Preserving, and Disaster-Proofing Your Family Archive
Annette Burke Lyttle, MA, CG

Course 2: Ethics and the Genealogist
Gary Ball-Kilbourne, MDiv, PhD, CG, CGL

Course 3: Advanced Techniques: Material Culture Research
Gena Philibert-Ortega, MA, MAR

Course 4: Corpus Juris: Advanced Legal Concepts for Genealogy
Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL

Course 5: African American Genealogy Methods and Strategies
LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, JD, LLM, CG, CGL, FASG

Course 6: Advanced New England Research: From the Colonial Period to the Early 1900s
D. Joshua Taylor, MA, MLS, FUGA

Course 7: Italian Genealogical Research, Methodologies, and Sources
Suzanne Russo Adams, MA, AG

Course 8: DNA Dreamers: Integrating DNA Evidence to Resolve Complex Cases
Karen Stanbary, LCSW, AM, CG, CGG

Course 9: Advanced Genealogical Methods
Paul K. Graham, CG, AG

Course 10: Guided Research and Consultation
Craig Roberts Scott, MA, CG, FUGA

Course 1: Reconstructing Ancestral Neighborhoods & Networks
Kimberly T. Powell and Gerald H. Smith, CG

Course 2: Researching Women from 1860 to 1950
Gena Philibert-Ortega, MA, MAR

Course 3: A Century of Change: The Emigrant-Immigrant-Migrant Experience in the U.S., 1825–1925
Pamela J. Vittorio, MA, PLCGS

Course 4: The Art of Writing a Research Report
Debra A. Hoffman, PLCGS

Course 5: Bring ‘Em Back to Life: Writing Our Ancestors’ Stories
Annette Burke Lyttle, MA, CG

Course 6: Tracing French-Canadian Ancestors and Telling Their Stories
David S. Ouimette, CG, CGL

Course 7: Becoming an Accredited Genealogist Professional: The Why, the What, the How
Lisa Stokes, AG

Course 8: BCG Certification: Understanding and Meeting Standards
Angela Packer McGhie, CG, FUGA, and Karen Stanbary, LCSW, AM, CG, CGG

Tips to Ensure Registration Goes Smoothly

• Join UGA or renew your UGA membership at least 24 hours before registration.
• Create or log in to your SLIG registration account—this is different from your UGA account—at least 24 hours before registration. Please confirm that your information is still current (name, address, phone number, email address, etc.) and update as necessary.
• Review these SLIG policies you must agree to when registering:
  • Code of Ethics and Conduct
  • Privacy
  • Registration and Cancellation
• Does your desired course have pre-requisites? Do you meet them?
  • Learn about the prerequisites for your desired SLIG Fall Virtual course here...
• Have a second choice in mind in case your first choice fills up quickly.