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

Genealogists have long relied on paper for storing their genealogy publications. While useful, paper does not last forever. Even the best acid-free paper will deteriorate someday. Even worse, today's printer inks and laser toners used to print on that paper will disappear many years earlier. Suppose, then, that you print out your records on the finest quality archival paper today and put it away in a safe deposit box for posterity. Within ten or twenty years, that data may become unreadable as the printed characters slowly fade away. The cruel irony is that high-quality, acid-free paper is worthless if it looks blank!

Life expectancy of the media used for storage isn't the only issue. A bigger problem may be the capability to read that media many years after its creation. Paper records are easy to read if the paper does not disintegrate and the ink does not fade. However, other media are often used and almost always have limitations.

For instance, my first computerized genealogy records were stored on 80-column punch cards. When was the last time you saw a device that could read those cards? My data stored on punch cards is now useless, regardless of the life expectancy of those cards.

My next genealogy database was stored on 8-inch floppy diskettes in dBase-II, a popular database program that ran on CP/M computers. (CP/M was the forerunner of MS-DOS, which, in turn, has been replaced by Windows.) 8-inch floppies were very popular in the late 1970s and very early 1980s. Again, those 8-inch floppies are now useless as nobody makes equipment to read them anymore. My data stored on those disks is now inaccessible.

As technology evolved, I updated my hardware and software. I moved to 5 ¼-inch floppies, then to 3 ½-inch floppies, then to ZIP disks, on to CD-recordable disks, and I recently added a DVD-recordable drive to my networked computers. However, each of these also has a finite lifespan: the applicable medium is destined to become as obsolete as the 80-column punch cards.

For many years genealogists, librarians, historians, and archivists have relied on microfilm and microfiche for long-term records preservation. Properly created and stored, these films should last a century or longer. However, I was quite surprised recently to learn that microfilm and microfiche are doomed to become obsolete and unusable long before then.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) has sent microfilm cameras and crews to locations all over the world for many years. These microfilm cameras have recorded hundreds of millions of records, and almost everyone involved was confident that the organization would continue to film more records forever and ever. However, a problem has arisen in the past few years: nobody makes the microfilm cameras anymore. As present cameras wear out, or if the Church wishes to expand the number of teams, there are no new microfilm cameras to be had.

It seems that almost every organization in the world (except perhaps for genealogy) is going digital. Hospitals, insurance companies, governments, and others who used to microfilm records for long-term preservation have now stopped doing so and have switched to digitally-scanned records. Who can blame them? With digital scanning, expenses are lower and record storage space requirements are greatly reduced.

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/12184126

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:

The latest release from TheGenealogist sees 60,290 new owner and occupier records added to their unique Lloyd George Domesday Survey record set. The IR58 Inland Revenue Valuation Office records reveal to family historians all sorts of details about their ancestors' home, land, outbuildings and property owned or occupied in Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate at the time of the survey in the 1910s.

Baker Street, Enfield from Image Archive on TheGenealogist

These property tax records, taken at a time when the government was seeking to raise funds for the introduction of social welfare programmes, introduced revolutionary taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's population. To carry out this policy the government used surveyors to catalogue a description of each property in a street and also to plot it’s location on large-scale OS maps.

Using the IR58 records from The National Archives, these valuable records can now be searched using the Master Search at TheGenealogist or by clicking on the pins displayed on TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™. The ability to switch between georeferenced modern and historic maps means that the family historian can see how the landscape where their ancestors had lived or worked may have changed over time.

Baker Street, Enfield – Lloyd George Domesday OS map on Map Explorer™

This online 1910s property records resource is unique to TheGenealogist and enables the researcher to thoroughly investigate a place in which an ancestor had lived in the 1910s notwithstanding that the streets may have undergone unrecognisable change in the intervening years.

See TheGenealogist’s page about the Lloyd George Domesday Survey here:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/lloyd-george-domesday/

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:

This week's Findmypast Friday update involves two unique record collections spanning 108 years.

Asia, Far East Directories & Chronicles 1833-1941

Did your ancestors work or reside in the Far East? Discover more with this collection of directories and chronicles that cover the international community in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Indo-China, Straits Settlements, Malaysia, Siam, Dutch East Indies, Borneo and The Philippines.

Consisting of over 70,000 records printed in books that were published between 1833-1941, the collection provides listings of active corporations, foreign residents and government agencies of all nationalities for each particular year, together with their addresses in countries including Borneo, China, Indo-China, Japan, Korea and The Philippines.

They were compiled annually from many different local sources, and include names and addresses of Western corporations, institutions, consulates and foreign residents including large numbers of Americans, Canadians and Australians. Details of the residents include addresses, occupations and employers. 

Parts of these books can also contain details of treaties, conflicts, changes of jurisdiction, relevant law, currencies and taxes, public holidays, festivals and traditions.

London, Synagogue Seatholders 1904

Discover your Jewish heritage with this collection of seat holders from a number of synagogues across the area now known as Greater London.

Covering 16 synagogues from Bayswater to Stoke Newington, these transcripts and images provide a snapshot of a time in which the Jewish population of Britain was saw significant growth, rising from 46,000 to 250,000 between 1880-1919. Many of these new arrivals were refugees from Russia, fleeing the Pale of Settlement region in which Jewish residents had faced terrible persecution and been forced from their homes. 

Newspapers

This week’s update sees Findmypast publish five brand new titles along with substantial updates to 13 existing ones.

New titles:

• • • Bromley & West Kent Mercury, 1919, 1921, 1927-1930, 1933-1950
    • India, 1890-1921
    • Sheffield Public Advertiser, 1760-1763, 1768, 1770, 1772, 1774, 1776, 1787, 1790-1793
    • South London Mail, 1888-1906
    • Swanage Times & Directory, 1919-1936

Updated titles:

• • • Barrow Herald and Furness Advertiser, 1875, 1891
    • Cambria Daily Leader, 1897, 1911
    • Glasgow Courier, 1851, 1856
    • Lancashire Evening Post, 1911-1915
    • Lancaster Standard and County Advertiser, 1897
    • Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 1861-1862, 1864-1867, 1869, 1871, 1890-1891, 1897, 1899-1905
    • Macclesfield Courier and Herald, Congleton Gazette, Stockport Express, and Cheshire General Advertiser. 1844, 1858-1859, 1877, 1891
    • Newark Advertiser, 1879-1891, 1897, 1905, 1908-1909, 1911, 1914, 1917, 1958, 1963, 1966-1968
    • Northern Weekly Gazette, 1876, 1913
    • Porthcawl Guardian, 1958
    • Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, 1869
    • West Ham and South Essex Mail, 1928
    • Weymouth Telegram, 1874, 1876, 1879-1881

The following is a message posted to the IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring mailing list and is republished here with permission:

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on December 8, 2021 that Russia will return to Greece the Jewish Holocaust archives that were moved to Russia following World War ll. The largest part of the archives relates to the once-thriving Jewish community in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.

During the Nazi regime and occupation of much of Europe, the Nazis plundered the documents and culture a treasures of Jewish organizations which they deemed to be enemies of the Reich. According to official figures, on July 11, 1942, the Nazis, led by the Austrian head of the SS Alois Brunner, surrounded the Jews of Thessaloniki in order to deport them to concentration camps. The community paid 2.5 billion drachmas for the freedom that they had been told would be given to them, but they only managed to delay the deportation until March 1943.

When the Nazis were crushed, many of these looted collections, as well as records of Nazi state agencies that persecuted and murdered Jews, were discovered by the Soviet Army, then transferred to Moscow and held for decades in closed, secret archives.

More than 44,000 Thessaloniki Jews perished in the Nazi death camps. Most were sent to Auschwitz. The few Greek survivors who returned to the country in the early 1950s found most of their sixty synagogues and schools destroyed, their cemeteries looted and their own homes occupied by other people. Once part of thriving communities in several Greek cities, approximately 59,000 Greek Jews were victims of the Holocaust — at least 83 percent of the total number living in Greece at the time of World War II and the German Occupation.

To read more see: https://greekreporter.com/2021/12/08/russia-greece-jewish-holocaust-archives/

To read more about looted art and Russian State Military Archives go to: https://www.lootedart.com/MFEU4M60512

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

If you are using one of the new Macintosh M1 systems, you might want to pat close attention to this. According to an article by by Tim Hardwick and published in the MacRumors web site:

"Apple's built-in Time Machine backup solution for macOS appears to be causing problems for some Mac users running the latest versions of Monterey and Big Sur, based on a steady trickle of reports on both the MacRumors Forums and Reddit.

"While some users are complaining of different issues with Time Machine on different Macs and versions of macOS that are hard to replicate, one common complaint in particular has surfaced regarding Time Machine backups not completing for M1 Mac users running Monterey 12.0.1 or Big Sur 11.6.1.

"The issue seems to occur when Time Machine runs its first backup after either Monterey/Big Sur is first installed or the operating system is updated to the latest point release. Time Machine says it is "Waiting to Complete First Backup," but as it appears to be reaching its conclusion, Time Machine suddenly reports "Oldest backup: None" and "Latest backup: None," and then fails to offer any notice that the initial backup has successfully been performed at all."

Details may be found at: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/08/time-machine-initial-backup-error/.

The following announcement was written by Aliza Leventhal, Head, Technical Services, Prints & Photographs Division, at the Library of Congress:

When the Annenberg Space for Photography closed in June 2020, they offered the Library of Congress more than 900 high quality prints from ten of their exhibitions. We responded enthusiastically to this rare opportunity to add work by 329 contemporary photographers to the collections. In a year when we organized and described 350,000 items using the standard archival description and housing techniques that work well for large collections, we also rose to the challenge of providing intensive, special attention for what is now the Annenberg Space for Photography Collection of Exhibition Prints.

To provide the public with a way to experience the timely subject matter and modern photographic techniques in the Annenberg Collection, the Prints & Photographs Division (P&P) digitized each photo, created item-level descriptions, and worked closely with the Conservation Division to make custom housing for the sensitive surfaces of the prints. Here’s the story of a lively and successful year—from a gift agreement to online access.

Shipment

The 49 oversize wood crates filled with carefully wrapped prints traveled safely across country in several tractor trailer shipments. Stringent security and pandemic health requirements added unique complications that were overcome by careful coordination among the Annenberg Center; P&P; the Library’s acquisition, conservation, and off-site storage departments; and the art shipment company. The crates filled a lot of floor space and pallet racking in the warehouse receiving area, which meant that P&P had to move quickly to reduce the footprint. In only 10 months, each crate was brought to our work space on Capitol Hill. After we unpacked and inventoried the collection, most prints fit on the tops of map cases. But they couldn’t stay there.

The full article is much longer, describing the Housing, Digitization, and Developing a Description of this huge collection at: https://bit.ly/3DP4b8Y.

The New York City Police Department’s use of a controversial Virginia-based tech company for criminal investigations remains in effect more than a year after City Hall announced the arrangement was terminated.

The privately-owned Parabon NanoLabs uses DNA samples to create “virtual mugshots” of crime suspects using “Snapshot DNA Phenotyping,” with criminal defense advocates questioning its reliability.

The lab is one of two certified by the State Department of Health for investigative genetic genealogy, which can help determine a suspect’s eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, face shape and other clues to their identity.

Mayor de Blasio’s office, in a statement late Wednesday, confirmed the NYPD maintained a relationship with the company despite an announcement in September 2020 that the police would not be working with Parabon and had “no plans to do so.”

“The state has certified only two labs to perform investigative genealogy, and NYPD uses Parabon for this limited purpose,” City Hall said in the new statement.

Details may be found in an article by Rocco Parascandola and Larry Mcshane published in the New York Daily News at https://bit.ly/3GCW2Gt.

The double murder conviction of a Seattle-area man found guilty in the cold-case homicide of a young British Columbia couple has been overturned due to juror bias. William Earl Talbott was arrested in 2018 on the strength of DNA genetic genealogy tracing, 31 years after the bodies of Tanya van Cuylenborg, 18, and Jay Cook, 20, both of Saanich, B.C., were found in northern Washington state.

In 2019, Talbott was found guilty by a jury of two counts of aggravated murder in the first degree and given two life sentences, which he appealed on the grounds that his right to an impartial jury was violated because a biased juror deliberated his case.

In a decision handed down Monday, the Division 1 Court of Appeals in Washington state said a woman identified as Juror 40 exhibited "actual bias" during her comments in voir dire. A voir dire is a legal procedure in which the admissibility of evidence and jurors is discussed.

Talbott was the first ever person to be convicted as a result of genealogy research. Police in Washington state used information from public genealogy websites to pinpoint him as a suspect, then arrested him after getting a DNA sample from a cup that fell from his vehicle.

Details may be found in an article in the CBC News web site at: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/william-earl-talbott-appeal-win-1.6275822.

The following was written by the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA):

The eagerly anticipated 1921 England and Wales Census release date is almost here. Its secrets have been hidden for over 100 years. But on 6 January 2022 all will be revealed.

AGRA genealogists, like family historians across the country, cannot wait to unlock its treasures: From seeing family members in a census for the first, or last, time, to finding out the impact the Great War had on family and community structures; to discovering the employment, and possibly employers, of their ancestors especially in this period of industrial strife, to where they were - and who they were with - on census night. Then there’s societal changes at the start of the Roaring Twenties, like the increase of divorce, and changes in the work of women from previous censuses. And not forgetting the inevitable disentangling of truth from mistakes and pure fiction in the entries of our ancestors

AGRA Chair, Antony Marr, said: “The release of any major set of historical records is always an exciting time for family history researchers. The 1921 Census is no exception and will allow us to find out so much about the lives of our ancestors, many of whom we may have known as elderly relatives, but will appear listed as young children. An AGRA researcher will be able to help find the correct records, interpret them and use them to connect to other, older records.”

Our membership is now busily drawing up lists of those must-see records, for their own family and local history research, as well as for the research wish-lists of their clients. Many AGRA genealogists will be already preparing for visits to The National Archives at Kew to minimise cost. In fact, because of this, combined with their expertise, it might prove more cost-effective to employ a professional researcher with the experience to view, disentangle, interpret and link these records.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

For further information about AGRA and the 1921 Census please contact Jane Roberts, on tel 0771 4203891 (09:00-17:00hrs) or via press@agra.org.uk.

The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) has awarded almost $2 million in Cultural and Historical Support Grants to 154 eligible museums and official county historical societies from 56 Pennsylvania counties. In addition, PHMC awarded more than $175,000 in Historical and Archival Records Care (HARC) Grants to 34 organizations in 24 Pennsylvania counties.

The goal of the Cultural and Historical Support Grant program is to strengthen Pennsylvania's museum community by supporting the general operations of eligible museums and official county historical societies that are not supported by other state agency funding programs. An eligible museum must have an annual operating budget exceeding $100,000 (excluding capital and in-kind services) and at least one full-time professional staff person (or approved equivalent).

Award amounts are determined using an equation based on a percentage of the eligible museum's previous year's operating budget. The maximum any museum could receive is $40,000. All official county historical societies receive a $4,000 minimum grant.

Details may be found at: https://www.media.pa.gov/pages/PHMC-details.aspx?newsid=400 including a list of Cultural and Historical Support Grant awards by county.