The following announcement was written by the organizers of the Family History Expo 2022 in Auckland, New Zealand:

Tickets offered to exhibitors, speakers, volunteers, sponsors and raffle donors.

Family History Expo 2022 opening event
Friday 12 August 5pm-8.30pm
Fickling Convention Centre, 546 Mount Albert Road, Auckland

Family History Expo opening reception for speakers, exhibitors, and the general public

Bookings: $22 a ticket to cover catering, numbers limited, bookings essential

Book now
https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/.../auc.../auckland/three-kings

Entry only by pre-paid booking. No door sales. No refunds (unless event is cancelled).
If you are unable to come, tickets can be transferred to someone else.

Opening Night Programme

• • 5pm: Refreshments and canapes, mix and mingle
  • 6pm: Suffer the Little Children with Judy Russell, aka “The Legal Genealogist”
    They were victims. They were heroes. They were lost. And they were found. Some lived and became our ancestors. Some died. Some are remembered vividly. And some are known to no-one alive today. They are the littlest members of our family. They are the children. And from the mundane to the amazing, they all have stories we ― as our families’ genealogists ― must tell.
  • 7pm: Family History Friday’s LIVE!
    with Jason Reeve (Ancestry AU & NZ - platinum sponsor), Debra Carter (Ancestry ProGenealogists) and Talking Family History's Michelle Patient and Fiona Brooker
  • 8pm: Q&A session and interactive discussion
  • 8.30pm: Close

Saturday and Sunday, 13 and 14 August FREE
8.30am-6pm
Programme to come
www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/AFHExpo

BOOKING:

https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2022/auckland-family-history-expo/auckland/three-kings

I have written often about the many advantages of Chromebooks. (That includes Chromeboxes as well.) Now there is news from Google: Windows has supported these for decades, so it’s awesome to see Google’s operating system have some much-needed feature parity for users who receive zip files or other formats from their co-workers, peers, or even family members. Now, with the release of ChromeOS 101, this is finally coming to the masses!

Formats supported include:

• 7z
• bz2
• crx
• gz
• iso
• rar
• tar
• tbz
• tbz2
• tgz

This update will be rolling out to all ChromeOS operating systems in the next few days.

Walking past the countless photos of Holocaust survivors and victims at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in 2016, New York-native Daniel Patt was haunted by the possibility that he was passing the faces of his own relatives without even knowing it.

Jews from Hungary arriving at Auschwitz in May of 1944, part of 'The Auschwitz Album' series of photographs. Most of these Jews were murdered later that day.

For Patt, a 40-year-old software engineer now working for Google, that sort of conundrum presented the potential for a creative solution. And so he set to work creating and developing From Numbers to Names (N2N), an artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition platform that can scan through photos from prewar Europe and the Holocaust, linking them to people living today.

You can read the full story in an article by by Yaakov Schwartz published in the Times of Israel web site at: https://bit.ly/3OL4mrs.

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

I have been downsizing my book collection by scanning the books and then often, but not always, throwing away the printed copies. I keep the digital copies in a laptop computer's hard drive plus on several flash drives plus copies stored in the cloud. The copies in a cloud-based storage service let me access any of the digitized books quickly and easily on an iPad, a cell phone, a friend's computer, or anyplace else I wish to view them. I find this handy not only for my own use but also when at genealogy conferences and various meetings. If I am discussing something I saw in a book with another genealogist, I can view the book on my tablet computer's screen and even send a copy of the book to the other person by email if the copyright laws allow.

Of course, another big benefit is the fact that digitized books require no shelf space. There is no need for me to purchase more bookshelves. In fact, if I were to place all the printed genealogy books and magazines I have ever purchased on bookshelves, first I would need to purchase a bigger house!

The problem became even worse when I started a mobile lifestyle. For several years, I spent my summers in the northern U.S. and my winters in the Sun Belt in a Winnebago motor home that had restricted space for books. Yet, I refuse to stop doing genealogy reading and research when on the road. Luckily, I have since I purchased a home in Florida where I have lots of room. However, I became so used to having ebooks digitized and conveniently online and easily available, that I have refused to purchase new bookshelves and go back to the old-fashioned way of storing books.

That solution sounds great until you start scanning the books and magazines. Then you run into a major problem: scanning hundreds of pages is a slow and tedious process with most scanners. In fact, "tedious" isn't a strong enough word. It is truly boring. After about two years of effort, I have found a few ways to minimize the labor required.

Buy a Scanner with a Sheet Feeder

Scanning with a typical flatbed scanner you purchased at a local computer store is an exercise in futility. The scanners typically cost $30 to perhaps $150 and do a great job on single pieces of paper or photographs that are placed on the flat glass scanning area of the scanner. However, making a scan, picking up the book, turning the page, placing the book back onto the scanner, and then making the next scan quickly becomes tedious. You won't want to digitize 1,000 pages this way! Most of these flatbed scanners also have issues with "page curl," trying to get a good image on the edge of each page that is near the binding.

Of course, if you have lots of money, you could always purchase a book scanner.

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/12828164

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 a follow-up article to the article published earlier at https://eogn.com/page-18080/12827721:

Relatives of Holocaust survivors and victims can now look through the files of more than 2,700 Jews who sought help through Vatican channels to escape Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War. The archives have gone public on the internet at the request of Pope Francis.

The files constitute “a heritage that is precious because it gathers the requests for help sent to Pope Pius XII by Jewish people, both the baptized and the non-baptized, after the beginning of Nazi and fascist persecution,” Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, said in a June 23 article for Vatican News.

This heritage is “now easily accessible to the entire world thanks to a project aimed at publishing the complete digitalized version of the archival series,” he said. “Making the digitized version of the entire Jews/Jewish people series available on the internet will allow the descendants of those who asked for help, to find traces of their loved ones from any part of the world. At the same time, it will allow scholars and anyone interested, to freely examine this special archival heritage, from a distance.”

The files are hosted at the website for the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State’s Section for Relations with States and International Organizations. The archive hosts a photographic reproduction of each document and an analytical inventory that names all those requesting help.

The series pertains to the papacy of Venerable Pius XII, who was elected pope on March 2, 1939, just six months before the start of the war.

Some requests written by Jews or on behalf of Jews sought help to obtain visas or passports, to find asylum, or to reunify families. Others sought freedom from detention or transfers to a different concentration camp. They sought news of deported people or asked for supplies of food or clothes, financial support, spiritual support, and more.

You can read more in an article by Kevin J. Jones published in the CBCPNews web site at: https://bit.ly/3OGFKQU

The following was written by the Augusta Genealogical Society:

When:      Saturday, July 23, 2022
Time:       1:00 - 2:00 pm EST
Where:    Online - Register at www.augustagensociety.org

                 The registration deadline is July 22.  Registration is required to receive the Zoom link

Price:       FREE to AGS members or $10 for nonmembers
Speaker:  Allison Hudgins - Reference Manager Georgia Archives, Morrow GA

     Allison Hudgins

When:      Saturday, July 23, 2022

Time:       1:00 - 2:00 pm EST

Where:    Online - Register at www.augustagensociety.org

                 The registration deadline is July 22.  Registration is required to receive the Zoom link

Price:       FREE to AGS members or $10 for nonmembers

Speaker:  Allison Hudgins - Reference Manager Georgia Archives, Morrow GA

Allison Hudgins, the Reference Manager at the Georgia Archives, previously worked at the Cobb County Public Library System, and at Mercer University Special Collections while she was a student. Allison holds a Masters of Library and Information Science from Valdosta State University.

The Georgia Archives is the state’s premier repository for researching families that have lived in Georgia during any period since its founding in 1733. Not only does it hold official state records, but it also has microfilm and some original county, city, and town records, church records, manuscripts compiled genealogies, family histories, county histories, and general genealogical reference works.

It also holds original land grants and plats both through the bounty land and the land lottery systems.  Digital collections have increased in recent years as well.  Ms. Hudgins will give an overview of the information available and explain how it can be accessed. 

The program flyer may be found at: https://www.augustagensociety.org/july-program.html 

JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of several programs, which will be free to members in 2022.  The Augusta Genealogical Society is a non-profit organization founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979.

Daphne Hopson
Public Relations
Adamson Library
Augusta Genealogical Society
706-825-3498

Pope Francis has ordered the online publication of 170 volumes of its Jewish files from the recently opened Pope Pius XII archives, the Vatican announced Thursday, amid renewed debate about the legacy of its World War II-era pope.

The documentation contains 2,700 files of requests for Vatican help from Jewish groups and families, many of them baptized Catholics, so not actually practicing Jews anymore. The files were held in the Secretariat of State’s archives and contain requests for papal intervention to avoid Nazi deportation, to obtain liberation from concentration camps or help finding family members.

The online publication of the files comes amid renewed debate about Pius’ legacy following the 2020 opening to scholars of his archives, of which the “Jews” files are but a small part. The Vatican has long defended Pius against criticism from some Jewish groups that he remained silent in the face of the Holocaust, saying he used quiet diplomacy to save lives.

You can read more in an article by Nicole Winfield published in the Washington Post at: https://wapo.st/3tV0o7R.

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Two sets of viable DNA have been recovered from remains found at a potential Tulsa Race Massacre mass burial site.

The lab responsible for processing, analyzing, and mapping the genealogy of the obtained DNA said in a virtual meeting Tuesday that “we’ve got two good samples, and we’re really excited to move on in the process.”

Danny Hellwig is the Laboratory Development Director for Intermountain Forensics, the Utah-based lab where the 14 remains discovered last year were sent for analysis.

Hellwig said that out of the 14 remains, only one bone and one tooth from two of the remains contained enough viable DNA to move forward with the genealogy mapping.

You can read more in an article by Mike Creef that has been published in the Black Wall Street Times web site at: https://bit.ly/3yeMqjB.

Thousands of photographs of Communist Romania and of Romania as a Constitutional Monarchy between 1921-1947, managed by The National Archives are going to be scanned and digitized. The Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile will collaborate with the National Archives of Romania on this project.

The Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER) is a governmental structure whose role lies in the scientific analysis of the totalitarian period and its consequences. One of its main areas of activity is collecting, archiving, and publishing documents related to the memory of the Romanian Communist regime.

The project they have planned is the digitization of the National Archives’ photograph collection. Over the next six years, around 100,000 photographic materials from 1921-1989 will be digitized and uploaded to IICCMER’s online photo library in two sections: 1921-1944 and 1945-1989. Here they will be freely available to the public.

You can read more in an article by Maia Van Kline and published in the Romania Insider web site at: https://bit.ly/3yew2Qb.