After five years of systematic research, documenting and collecting stories from all over Greece, Istorima, the largest-scale collection of oral history in the country, continues its activity and is enriched with a renewed website with updated series and collections. Its more than 18,000 stories make up a unique archive of oral history and heritage, from every city, island, and village in Greece.

Istorima.org is a blend of journalism and history, and functions as a modern cultural digital ‘library’ wherein thousands of oral accounts, which would otherwise be lost, are collected and presented.

Podcasts, collections, and tributes are the media through which people of all ages recount their personal stories from today and yesterday, detailing emotions, memories, culture, traditions, customs, historical moments and events of today. These profound experiences connect us to those around us and help us all understand our world.

Istorima is a non-profit organization created in 2019 by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming, with a founding donation from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its Recharging the Youth Initiative. Through the donation, which ends in June 2024, more than 700 young researchers working in their places of origin and residence, discovered storytellers, highlighting those stories that make each region, and each person, special. To date, more than 18,000 accounts from 7,000 parts of Greece have been collected and presented at https://www.istorima.org/en and https://archive.istorima.org/en with the assistance of a large team of sound technicians, curators, and lawyers.

With the completion of five years, the wide-ranging archive of 18,000 stories hosted at archive.istorima.org will be transferred to the National Library of Greece (NLG), thus fulfilling the vision of the SNF which supported Istorima with its founding donation, from its creation and for the first five years.

The archive transferred to the NLG is essentially the online platform which hosts all the stories that have been collected, recorded, and reclaimed. The records consist of 49 thematic sections which include memories, traditions, legends, experiences but also achievements, expressions of human nature, and imprints of the collective memory of each place.

The entire record is open and accessible to all.

At the same time, istorima.org is renewed with a friendly and easy-to-use layout, where oral stories evolve into podcasts using advanced media and technology. The user may listen to original podcast series and collections, or explore themes based on emotions, geographical region, historical periods, and subject categories of interest, and browse the Istorima archive. The user also is also able to create their own account to further personalize browsing experience and share their favorite podcasts easily and quickly across all social media and streaming platforms.

The map posted on Istorima’s website reflects the scope of the study that has been done in the last five years. Each narration becomes interactive, and every person is a protagonist. The storytellers take us on a journey throughout Greece, but also around the world from Vancouver to Japan, Iceland, Patagonia, where stories unfold, new and old, entwined with tales of courage, love, loss, and triumph.

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

A citizen research effort to document the lives of Black residents and other people of color from the last three centuries in the Monadnock Region is now available online.

For the last five years, the Historical Society of Cheshire County and Monadnock Center for History and Culture worked with volunteers to collect primary sources, like photos, publications and artifacts.

About 50 citizen archivists sorted through sources dating back to 1730 — including census records and town histories — to uncover stories of Black residents and other people of color in southwest New Hampshire.

That included stories of families moving into town and establishing businesses, like George Cooper, who came to Keene in the 1890s and opened his own bakery café and muffin delivery service. 

The website showcases biographies, genealogical information and bibliographic sources. It can be sorted by subject, century, town and alphabetical order.

Michelle Stahl, director of the Monadnock Center for History and Culture, said she was excited to illuminate the "longevity and complexity of Black history in our region."

"It's not just a story of enslavement and coming out of that era, but we're also telling 20th century stories and showing the influence that families of color had in our region and helping shape who we are today as the Monadnock region,” Stahl said. “And I think that's what's exciting.”

Stahl encourages those who visit the site to share their feedback, especially if they happen to be descendants.

Jennifer Carroll, director of education of the Historical Society of Cheshire County, said the group has been able to make few connections so far and hope to make more as they continue their research.

“It's exciting to see that maybe we'll be able to also get some artifacts or collections, items that really help illustrate the story in a way that we hadn't been able to do before,” she said.

Carroll also said that she hopes with making this information more easily accessible to the public, it will help to learn more about slavery in New England and New Hampshire through this project.

“Unfortunately, that's where we're having the hardest time, the most anonymity and names comes from that era,” Carroll said. “We're hoping to be able to put names where we know there were enslaved members of a household.”

The group found that evidence enslaved people lived in at least 13 of Cheshire County’s 23 towns.

Updates will be made to the site weekly. Stahl, Carroll and the citizen archivists plan on figuring out the social networks that are beginning to emerge from the research.

The database may be found at: http://www.bipocmonadnock.org/. 

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has changed a big part of the American landscape over the years. Established during the Franklin Roosevelt administration, TVA has a large cache of what are known as cultural heritage documents. With the deadline looming to present digitized records to the National Archives and Records Administration, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin checked in with TVA’s senior manager for enterprise records, Rebecca Coffey.

See the interview at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/management/2024/06/5047528/.

Archivists are creating a “digital time capsule” to tell the story of Scots involved in whaling and are inviting contributions from those who worked in the industry.

The Whalers’ Memory Bank project has been launched to compile photographs and oral testimonies from those who worked in the industry, which provided a lifeline to Shetland during the post-war years.

The project has been created by the South Georgia Heritage Trust and the South Georgia Museum on the sub-Antarctic island, at the site of the former whaling station at Grytviken, to preserve a forgotten part of social history, including language and the experiences of wives left behind.

As many as 400 men worked aboard whaling ships, which sailed from October until May, starting in 1904 and ending in the mid-1960s.

Oil produced by the industry was used for margarine and cosmetics during the Second World War, and another by-product was animal feed.

As much as 50 tonnes of oil could be produced from 30% of a whale’s body weight, and other nations competing for the lucrative catch included Russia and Japan.

Gibbie Fraser, 82, chairman of Shetland Ex-Whalers Association, has contributed to the memory bank.

He worked on whaling ships for four seasons, starting as a 16-year-old in 1958, and said it was an “adventure” at a time when there was little opportunity for young men on Shetland.

You can read more in an article in The Herald web site at: https://bit.ly/3zi2EeY.

Despite being expensive and having difficult-to-cancel long-term subscription plans, Adobe has monopolized the creative design industry. Ruby Helyer curated the perfect list of free alternatives to all of Adobe's major creative software apps, so you can pursue your creativity without paying a penny.

Go to https://www.makeuseof.com/free-adobe-software-alternatives/ to read the list.

If you found out that 500,000 books had been removed from your local public library, at the demands of big publishers who refused to let them buy and lend new copies, and were further suing the library for damages, wouldn’t you think that would be a major news story? Wouldn’t you think many people would be up in arms about it?

It’s happening right now with the Internet Archive, and it’s getting almost no attention.

As we’ve discussed at great length, the Internet Archive’s Open Library system is indistinguishable from the economics of how a regular library works. The Archive either purchases physical books or has them donated (just like a physical library). It then lends them out on a one-to-one basis (leaving aside a brief moment where it took down that barrier when basically all libraries were shut down due to pandemic lockdowns), such that when someone “borrows” a digital copy of a book, no one else can borrow that same copy.

And yet, for all of the benefits of such a system in enabling more people to be able to access information, without changing the basic economics of how libraries have always worked, the big publishers all sued the Internet Archive. The publishers won the first round of that lawsuit. And while the court (somewhat surprisingly!) did not order the immediate closure of the Open Library, it did require the Internet Archive to remove any books upon request from publishers (though only if the publishers made those books available as eBooks elsewhere).

As the case has moved into the appeals stage (where we have filed an amicus brief), the Archive has revealed that around 500,000 books have been removed from the open library.

The Archive has put together an open letter to publishers, requesting that they restore access to this knowledge and information — a request that will almost certainly fall on extremely deaf ears.

We purchase and acquire books—yes, physical, paper books—and make them available for one person at a time to check out and read online. This work is important for readers and authors alike, as many younger and low-income readers can only read if books are free to borrow, and many authors’ books will only be discovered or preserved through the work of librarians. We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed—the same technology used by corporate publishers.

But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn’t be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that’s why we are appealing.  

The Archive also has a huge collection of quotes from people who have been impacted negatively by all of this. Losing access to knowledge is a terrible, terrible thing, driven by publishers who have always hated the fundamental concept of libraries and are very much using this case as an attack on the fundamental principle of lending books.

You can read more in an article by Mike Masnick published in the techdirt.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3zghwuc.

The blplaybills.org website provides a way to search for, view and download archival playbills from Great Britain and Ireland, 1600-1902, as curated by the British Library (BL).

The website is independently produced using assets made available by the British Library under a Creative Commons licence as part of an open data initiative.

The playbill data

Playbills were promotional flyers advertising entertainment events at theatres, fairs and pleasure gardens.

The BL playbills data originated as document scans (digitised from microfilm, the most viable approach for fragile artefacts) in PDF format, each file containing hundreds of individual playbills, grouped by volume (usually organised by theatre, region and/or period of history).

In total there are more than 80,000 scanned playbills available.

Beside the PDFs, there is also metadata describing where in the Library these playbills could be found (volumes, shelfmarks etc). Including this information meant researchers could search for information online, and also have the volume reference at hand when visiting the Library.

This data is useful to anyone researching theatre, music, history and literature. Making it easy to find, view and download playbills using simple text searches over the internet is a good way to bring the playbills to a wider audience.

This is how blplaybills.org came into existence: the goal was to turn playbill data from the British Library into a searchable online database and image store.

You can read more in an article by Sak Supple published in the British Library’s web site at: https://bit.ly/3REGY2O.

Big changes are coming for New York’s youngest social media users after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed two bills into law Thursday clamping down on digital platforms’ algorithms and use of children’s data.

The unprecedented move makes New York the first state to pass a law regulating social media algorithms amid nationwide allegations that apps such as Instagram or TikTok have hooked users with addictive features.

Hochul’s signature comes days after US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels to be applied to social media platforms, fueling a debate about social media’s potential impact on the mental health of users, particularly teens.

Under New York’s SAFE For Kids Act, social media platforms will be required to display content chronologically by default for kids under 18, while the New York Child Data Protection Act will restrict websites from collecting or sharing the personal data of users under 18 without consent — expanding on existing federal privacy protections for children under 13.

You can read more in an article by Brian Fung published in the CNN web site at: https://cnn.it/3VyQAxn

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

Are you eligible for citizenship in the country where your ancestors were born? You might not have to give up your American citizenship. Many Americans may be surprised to learn that they are eligible for dual citizenship. With today’s political upheaval in the US, more Americans than ever are seeking citizenship, especially dual citizenship, in foreign countries. See Americans Renouncing Citizenship at Record Rates at https://www.newsmax.com/us/american-citizenship-bambridge-accountants/2020/05/12/id/967062/ for the details 

The US government used to claim that you couldn't hold dual citizenship except in certain cases involving dual citizenship from birth or childhood. However, the US Supreme Court struck down most of the laws forbidding dual citizenship in 1967. The court's decision in the case of Afroyim v. Rusk, as well as a second case in 1980, Vance v. Terrazas, eventually made its way explicitly into the statute books in 1986. 

The official US State Department policy on dual citizenship today is that the United States does not favor it as a matter of policy because of various problems they feel it may cause, but the existence of dual citizenship is recognized in individual cases. That is, if you ask a government official if you ought to become a dual citizen, he or she probably will recommend against doing it. But if you tell them you already are a dual citizen, government officials usually say it's OK.

Dual citizenship is available only if the laws of both countries allow it. Not all other countries allow for dual citizenship, however. U.S. laws specifically state that dual citizenship is recognized only if the other country fully reciprocates. You need to closely check the laws of the other country involved. 

While U.S. laws allow dual citizenship, there are restrictions about serving in a foreign military, voting in another country's elections, swearing allegiance to another government, or other restrictions. However, the Supreme Court's 1967 decision made those provisions difficult to enforce. The government now acknowledges that dual citizens may find themselves forced into military service by the laws of the other country. While still on the books, the U.S. laws are no longer enforced unless there is evidence that the individual intended to give up the U.S. citizenship.

A dual citizenship with a European Union nation will allow Americans to legally obtain employment in any other European Union nation. This can be a very positive move for career reasons or for taxation issues. I'd strongly suggest that you consult with a lawyer specializing in such issues before accepting new employment, however. 

If you want to find out whether you're eligible for dual citizenship, here's how to get started:

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/1337307. (A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

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. 

10 Million Names is a collaborative organization working to help African Americans learn more about their genealogy and family history. 

“Juneteenth is an opportunity to celebrate the history of African American resilience and freedom," Dr. Kendra Field, the chief historian with 10 Million Names said.

From the 1500s to 1865, nearly 10 million men, women and children of African descent were enslaved in the United States. With their stories now publicly accessible, 10 Million Names is working to help African Americans learn more about their ancestry.

“Part of what 10 Million Names is doing is trying to connect those longer older threads with present day possibilities," Dr. Field said.

Field helps connect African Americans with the oftentimes emotional history and stories of their enslaved ancestors.

"It can be difficult and challenging and deeply emotional and sometimes very sad what we encounter in the archive, what we encounter in the course of our genealogical work. But it can also be tremendously empowering to actually know those names and to know those stories,” Field said.

Those stories can be found on the 10 Million Names website. Once there, you’ll be connected to other sites and databases to look deep into your family history and even work with a historian to help you gather even more information.