The following is from the Digital Library of Georgia:

Are you a custodian of cultural heritage materials? 

Have you made them available online? 

Have you thoughtfully considered long-term preservation as well as access to your materials?

One of the main mottos of digital preservation is “Digitization is NOT Digital Preservation.”

That is to say, the digitization and hosting of your items online are great for access, but this is still not preservation. 

We completely understand that most people don’t have the bandwidth to thoughtfully consider long-term preservation as well as access–but please remember there are people and resources that you can call upon to ensure your digital content is preserved.

World Digital Preservation Day is our opportunity to remind you that digital preservation professionals can teach you:

• • some of the easiest ways for people to get started with digital preservation at their institutions or with their personal materials.
  • what people should preserve first.
  • what happens when people don’t put together a plan to preserve their digital content.
  • Contact us if you have questions.

DIGITAL LIBRARY OF GEORGIA RESOURCES ON DIGITAL PRESERVATION

You can read more at: https://blog.dlg.galileo.usg.edu/?p=8636

More than 2000 unclaimed photos and negatives were found that covered the ‘40s through the early ‘60s. They provide a personal, ground-level view of Texas life - pre-disco, pre-cellphones, pre-cable TV.

Imagine an old family photo album you’ve never seen before. What would you learn? Who would you even recognize? Now imagine an entire town discovering an old family album.

Thousands of personal photos and negatives were discovered in 2019 in Corsicana. The photos had been shot, developed — and never claimed. They sat in boxes, unopened for more than half a century.

Chuck Miller manages the CTWP Copy Center, an office supply store in downtown Corsicana. Four years ago, Miller’s company bought the two-story brick building, and he went up to the second floor to clear it out.

The building opened in 1914, and the second floor is essentially an old, dark, wood-beamed, wood-floored warehouse — with shiplap walls and no elevator. Aside from all the stuff crammed into it, it had not changed much since World War I.

“It was basically filled to the rafters,” Miller said. “The two previous owners didn’t throw anything away. It was all old inventory. Old paper, old pens.”

Amid this disorganized stockpile, Miller uncovered two boxes with some 400 envelopes full of prints and negatives. These were old-school photos: You’d snap the pictures and then, to have them developed, you’d drop off the negatives at a drugstore. Or an office supply store.

“And as I’m flipping through this,” Miller said, “I’m going, ‘These are people’s lives. These are people’s memories. These are important.’”

The photos span 1948 to 1966. The first miracle is that they’d never been picked up and they’d never been thrown out. Miller said standard practice for film processing holds that after three weeks, unclaimed photos get tossed.

You can read more in an article published in the dallasnews web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4j4stdce.

Stefan Anikewich’s Instagram account holds a trove of historical images.

Anikewich, who splits his time between Provincetown and New Rochelle, N.Y., says he has been discovering the hidden history of the town since he was a child. “I’ve been a beachcomber since I was 12 years old,” he says.

Walking the shore from Race Point to Long Point, he says, he occupies himself “looking for fragments of our history: pieces of porcelain, shards of bottles that were discarded, items from the whaling industry, Indian artifacts — not taking it, just observing it.”

He started his Instagram account in the summer of 2021, posting a picture of a shard of porcelain he found on the beach. Within a few hours, he had 45 followers, and the photo had 30 likes. That’s when he realized: “Here’s my opportunity to share my passion about Provincetown.”

An image posted on Oct. 15, 2023 on @provincetownarcheology with the caption “The Great Provincetown Summer, 1916. Mudhead paintings on the wharf, Charles Hawthorne school of art. 

Anikewich’s posts appear the same way a beachcomber’s artifacts do — gems from nearly every corner and decade of the town’s history surface with a strangely pleasing refusal to submit to an orderly timeline. There’s an 1898 photo of Provincetown taken from the harbor, a 1970s photo of a woman with a soft sculpture of the Pilgrim Monument in her bike basket, 1957 footage of a stroll down Commercial Street, and a 1916 photo of students in Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art painting on the wharf.

You can read more in an article by Oliver Egger published in the provincetownindependent web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4nen86ff. 

Connecticut’s attorney general is demanding answers from genetic testing company 23andMe after a hack exposed the data of people with Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese ancestry.

State Attorney General William Tong (D) sent a letter to 23andMe on Monday asking for information on a data breach that he says targeted the data of individuals with Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese heritage.

“The increased frequency of antisemitic and anti-Asian rhetoric and violence in recent years means that this may be a particularly dangerous time for such targeted information to be released to the public,” Tong wrote in the letter.

He said that the hack, which the company revealed earlier this month, resulted in the sale of at least one million data profiles of people with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage on the black market. He also said that another leak unveiled data pertaining to hundreds of thousands of people with Chinese ancestry.

“This resulted in the compilation and exposure of individuals’ names, sex, date of birth, geographical location, and genetic ancestry results. Troublingly, the threat actor involved has posted sample data indicating that the 23andMe attack was targeted at account holders with specific genetic heritage,” Tong wrote.

He also accused the company of not submitting a breach notification about the leak to the attorney general’s office or Connecticut residents. In his letter, he asked 23andMe to provide information on what specific data was exposed, what safeguards were in place and what further action was taken.

You can read more in an article by Lauren Sforza  published in TheHill web site at:  https://tinyurl.com/4mrzy4z5.

23andMe is selling everyone's DNA to the pharmaceutical industry. Yes, that includes your personal information if you are a 23andMe customer.

GSK Plc will pay 23andMe Holding Co. $20 million for access to the genetic-testing company's vast trove of consumer DNA data, extending a five-year collaboration that's allowed the drugmaker to mine genetic data as it researches new medications.

Details can be found at: https://boingboing.net/2023/10/30/23andme-to-sell-dna-records-to-drug-company.html. 

An Idaho woman who received fertility treatment from her gynecologist is suing him after she learned the doctor used his own sperm to inseminate her more than three decades ago.

A lawsuit, filed by Sharon Hayes in Spokane County Superior Court, claims former Spokane, Washington Dr. David R. Claypool violated the state's medical malpractice statute which requires doctors to get informed consent from patients for treatment. 

This spring, Hayes' 33-year-old daughter initially took an at-home DNA test seeking answers about" "ongoing health issues," the lawsuit claims, and learned not only was the ex-OBG-YN her biological father, but she shares DNA with 16 people in Washington state.

Hayes, of Kootenai County, about 30 miles east of Spokane, is the among throngs of women who have alleged they were tricked by a doctor they trusted to inseminate them with sperm from chosen or anonymous donors. The women all claim they didn't learn the identity of their child's father until their children took genetic tests − some until decades after they were born.

"My initial reaction was deep, deeply rooted guilt, for even finding out this information, because my mom never told me about any of this until I took the DNA test," Hayes's daughter, Brianna Hayes, who took the test, told KREM-TV.

Warning: This article contains personal opinions.

A newsletter reader asked, "Is there a way to print out (I know; I am bad) an item without all of the right column (Subscribe, Read, Steal, Search, Links, Etc.) being printed? A recent blog was 23 pages of the blog but would have printed out 45 pages in all. If not, OK. I can watch and halt the printing, when I remember."

My answer may have surprised the person who asked. I replied, "I strongly recommend that you NEVER print anything and thereby waste paper! I never print anything from web sites and rarely print anything from anyplace else. I work hard to keep a paperless lifestyle."

Actually, you are free to print most anything in this newsletter and even forward most items or republish them elsewhere, as you please. However, I try hard to never print anything and I suggest you do the same. Why waste paper? There are better ways to keep things for a long time!

As I wrote in an article more than two years ago:

"I have written a number of times about the advantages of a paperless lifestyle. Genealogists seem especially attached to paper. We often save photocopies of old records, old books, and much, much more. I once bought a four-drawer filing cabinet to store all my paper. A few years later, I purchased a SECOND four-drawer filing cabinet. I purchased probably more than one hundred dollars’ worth of file folders over the years. I photocopied and photocopied and stored all the paper in neatly-arranged folders.

"Sadly, I almost never opened the drawers to retrieve anything. When I did attempt to find something, I often couldn’t locate what I wanted because the document was filed in some obscure method. For instance, the marriage record I might be seeking often was filed under the husband’s surname, not under the wife’s maiden name.

"Like a recovering alcoholic, I have since broken my addiction to paper. I now live about 98% paper-free, and I love it. Almost every piece of paper that enters my house is either (1.) discarded immediately or (2.) scanned into my computer, and then the paper is discarded. I don’t ever want to go back to cluttering my life with paper. And, yes, I have multiple backups of everything worth saving; some backup copies are stored at home, and other copies are stored off-site for safety."

Life without paper is great! I can now find things easier than ever before. It saves space. I can electronically search for and find information much more easily, faster, (and cheaper) than I can on paper copies. It saves clutter. And I save money by not purchasing all that paper nor the filing cabinet(s) to store the paper.

My suggestion: whatever it is, don’t print it out!

The following announcement was written by the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society:

FALLS CHURCH, VA, 30 OCTOBER 2023—The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has named Steve Little, an information systems specialist and professional genealogist, as its AI program director. He is the latest addition to the NGS education team led by Education Director Angela Packer McGhie, CG, FUGA. "Steve hit the ground running," Executive Director Matt Menashes, CAE, said. "He was our keynote speaker for an artificial intelligence webinar this past September. He introduced our members to the tools that AI brings to family history research and discussed their limitations. Little is now the instructor for our newest course, Empowering Genealogists with Artificial Intelligence."

Little is a seasoned professional with a rich and diverse career. He completed graduate-level courses in applied linguistics, specializing in natural language processing and computational linguistics, two pillars of today's large language models of AI. His lifelong interests in language, technology, and genealogy provide him with a unique vantage point at the intersection of these domains and prepare him to explain the use of this technology to others. 

"I am extremely honored and grateful to be named the inaugural AI program director of NGS," Little said. "I hope to uphold the values, aspirations, and traditions of NGS while spearheading its entry into the promising world of artificial intelligence and ensuring it aligns with the standards of our genealogical practices."

"AI has the potential to assist genealogists in their work if used carefully," said McGhie. "We are confident that Steve will provide NGS leadership with advice and guidance as the tools for genealogical research evolve. Without question, he will be a great asset as we continue to develop educational programs on the applications and limitations of AI in genealogy and family history."