Understanding Copyright webinar series from the Scottish Council on Archives

The Scottish Council on Archives has a series of webinars by Dr. Ellie Pridgeon hosted on the theme of Understanding Copyright.  From the SCA website at https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/latest/news/understanding-copyright-webinar-series/:

Issues surrounding copyright law and related rights are of relevance to archivists and the cultural heritage sector worldwide. With an increased shift to online engagement, it is more important than ever for anyone who collects, preserves, and shares material-both in person and online-to have at least a basic understanding of how to address copyright issues and manage related risks.

Copyright issues can be notoriously complex and nuanced. The Scottish Council on Archives is delighted to be working with Dr Ellie Pridgeon who will be delivering a series of webinars to help demystify the topic. The series will feature practical examples and case studies to help those who manage archive collections to approach copyright quandaries with greater confidence and clarity.

The first lecture, providing a general introduction to copyright and archives, is presented below, and can also be found via the SCA link above, or more directly on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKH94_miaLI:

Comment: The video is well worth watching from the perspective of a humble genealogist, in that there is much that we need to be aware of in terms of what we can use and what we cannot with regards to materials in our family history research.

The subjects of copyright, terms and conditions, digital legacy etc are featured within my book Sharing Your Family History Online, should you wish to learn more about such issues within our family history research. The book is available from Pen and Sword Family History at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Sharing-Your-Family-History-Online-Paperback/p/18718.

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Glasgow Genealogy Centre hopes to re-open mid-January 2022

From Glasgow Genealogy Centre (https://glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=17698), located in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow:

Update: 1 December 2021

Registrar Services are currently in discussion with the Mitchell Library to confirm the re-opening date of the Genealogy Centre. The Centre is set to re-open mid January, one day per week, with the hope of increasing this to two days per week from the end of January.

Health and safety measures are currently being implemented to support the safe resumption of this service.

The appointment diary will open from 5 January 2022 to allow customers to book a date to visit the Genealogy Centre.

All of the above is subject to change dependant on future Scottish Government announcements/guidelines. Any updates will be provided on our website when further information is available.

Thank you for your continued patience and support as we continue to face the challenges of the ongoing pandemic and the impact on our resources and services.

Fingers crossed everyone....!

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

WDYTYA magazine Family Photo of the Year competition

Who Do You Think You Are? magazine (www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com) has launched a Family Photo of the Year competition, and is enouraging readers to submit family photos to try to win within 6 different categories:

• Category one – On holiday
• Category two – Special occasion
• Category three – Dressing up
• Category four – Solo photo
• Category five – Family together
• Category six – My family and other animals

From the magazine's site:

How will winners be selected?

We have chosen six categories for people to submit their photos under and we will be looking for good quality, striking images that capture the imagination. Each entry must be accompanied by no more than 50 words telling us something about the photograph and why you chose it. Don’t worry if you don’t know who the subject is in the image – we all have mystery photographs in our collection – you can just share what the photograph makes you feel or why you love it so much.

As well as character, composition and impact, we will also be judging photographs on the quality of the surviving image so please submit a high-resolution digital copy (see below).

Although there is no cut-off date for how modern the photographs can be, we will score photographs for rarity which will benefit older photographs.

Our judges will select a shortlist of six images for each category based on the image alone. The accompanying description will only be taken into account at the final stage when choosing a winner from the six finalists.

The overall winner will be chosen from the winners of the six categories and will be the image that the judges decide is the most striking. We will be looking for a family photo that would stand out in anyone’s family album.

The winner of each category will receive a beautiful framed professional print of their winning photograph plus a year’s subscription to Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine. There will also be an overall winner who will receive £200 on top of their category prize courtesy of Vivid-Pix the photo editing software specialists. All the winning photographs will appear in a future issue of the magazine along with some of our favourites from the shortlists.

For further details visit the magazine's website at www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/article/family-photo-competition/.

(With thanks to Sarah Williams)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet - further reprint

My best-selling book Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd edition) has just been reprinted yet again by publisher Pen and Sword, and can be purchased for them for the price of £11.99 (plus p&p). You can find more about the title at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Family-History-on-the-Internet-Paperback/p/16483, including several reviews - and a huge thanks to those who have reviewed it, reviews always help and are always appreciated!

I should also thank those of you who may have borrowed the book from your local library in the last year! You may not be aware, but authors can actually receive royalties from books that are borrowed from libraries in the UK and in Ireland, thanks to the British Library's Public Lending Right service (https://plr.bl.uk). I received a statement a few days ago which noted that Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd edition) was my most requested title (and, by a long shot, from libraries in the UK rather than Ireland!), for which I will get a few pounds early next year - so thank you!

 

Don't forget that my most recent book is also now out and on an Irish theme. There are many vital records online, and yes, there was that rather unfortunate incident in 1922 where we lost a lot of stuff, so where do you go next? Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records hopefully provides some answers! The book is also available from Pen and Sword at £14.99 (plus p&p) - see https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Ancestors-Through-Land-Records-Paperback/p/19283 for further details and reviews.

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

PRONI to release Belfast poor relief application indexes online

I've just attended the final PRONI stakeholder forum this year, and there is some great news for family historians - PRONI's Christmas gift to us all is going to be the online release of the digitised indexes to Belfast's poor law applications from 1892-1921! 

The index books, which cover periods of 3 months at a time, are for applications made for indoor relief, i.e. into the workhouse, and are catalogued under BG/7/GK/1-107. Whilst the admission registers themselves are not going online, being able to research the indexes through the online catalogue is still going to be a massive game changer for poor law research in the city. The first tranche will be out towards the end of this month (expect the update around 29 DEC 2021), and there are plans to extend the coverage further in due course. Wonderful!

Also from PRONI, on cataloguing there has been a recent effort to re-catalogue some materials previously recorded at series level only concerning the papers of Sir Wilfred Spender, the first secretary of the Northern Irish government post-Partition, and some items from Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. These include a mixture of offical papers and private papers, and will be available at D/12/95. The papers of Sir Wilfred Spender will be available to search now at item level. There will also be some official records catalogued under PM8/1 including correspondence from Sir Wilfred Spender covering the period 1921-1923, with letters concerning ex-servicemen seeking positions in the new state, the death of Michael Collins, the opening of the Northern Irish parliament, and more. Also tying in with the centenary of Northern Ireland will be the release of a hundred government files from the 1920s, including topics such as raids by the B-Specials, and some more recent records from 1997-98, which will include discussiuons leading up to the Belfast Agreement.

On site, PRONI will be shifting to a six weeks in advance booking system, to help better cater for those travelling from afar, and in the public search room they have also now taken out a subscription to the Library Edition of Ancestry, which will be accessible on two separate terminals (FindmyPast is already available on site). Further good news is that PRONI successfully made it through its summer mid-point review this year with regards to its accredited archive status. 

Coming up in the near future, PRONI will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in both 2023 and 2024 - PRONI was created in June 1923 (after provision was initially made in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920), but did not actually open its doors to the public until March 1924, so there are two pegs well worth commemorating! Stephen Scarth has been tasked with writing an offical history of the institution, which he promises will be 'myth busting'. 

Various projects will be created to help celebrate the anniversary, including a 100 PRONI documents project flagging up some extraordinary stories from the archive's history. One interesting fact mentioned by Stephen was that PRONI's first offical acquisition was two 18th century maps depicting Cookstown in County Tyrone, as sourced from a holder in Dublin. Since then PRONI has become a world class archive, with some particularly brilliant collections on areas such as emigrants letters, and the linen industry of the north.

For forthcoming PRONI events, visit https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/talks-and-events-proni.

Thanks again to the PRONI team for a great service provision in a challenging year, and a Happy Christmas to all in Belfast! (And I'm looking forward to the day when we can have on-site meetings again, once Covid diminishes - I miss my annual trip to the Christmas market after the December meetings!)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Big thanks to Wall to Wall for series 17 of WDYTYA?

This is just a quick post to express my thanks to the TV production company Wall to Wall for the now finished broadcast run of series 17 of Who Do You Think You Are? 

I watched the final episode of the series last night, featuring Ed Balls, which was a great culmination to the seven episode run which also featured Judi Dench, Pixie Lott, Joe Lycett, Alex Scott, Joe Sugg and Josh Widdicombe. As with most series, there were a range of stories, some more interesting to me than others, but each offered an entertaining hour's diversion once a week, which is all I ever ask of it!

In a previous life I worked in television documentary production for 12 years, and I am well aware of just how difficult it is to make a programme at the best of times - but with the Covid pandemic over the last 18 months, it really is a miracle that we got a series this year at all. At times the Covid restrictions were evident - social distancing between most folk, and lots of scenes with people seated at tables looking at documents - but each programme successfully told the stories that the directors and celebs wished to be told. 

In a year where we needed a distraction, with all sorts of issues regarding the access of archives and libraries etc, it kept the flame burning for the good times yet to come back. And so for that, here's tae ye folks, thanks, and have a great Christmas!

 ("Whisky toast on top of Perito Moreno Glacier" by amymaura is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.    
To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/) 

Roll on Series 18....! (And if you missed Series 17, or many of the earlier series, UK viewers can find them on the BBC iPlayer at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Free access to USA city directories from 2-7 December on MyHeritage

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com), news about a resource that might help with your emigrant ancestors if they ended up in the United States:

People across the United States celebrated Thanksgiving last week, taking the opportunity to reflect on all they are thankful for as well as the meaning of American heritage. To help our users learn more about their ancestors in the United States, we’re offering free access to our very special U.S. City Directories collection this week, December 2–7, 2021!

This collection contains records from 26,000 public U.S. city directories published between 1860 and 1960. City directories are publications that were distributed by many cities in the United States to help residents find local individuals and businesses, and they typically list names (and names of spouses), addresses, occupations, and workplaces. These records constitute a rich source of information for anyone seeking to learn more about their family in the United States in the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. They can serve as an important alternative to census records where those records are not available — for example, most of the records from the 1890 census, which were destroyed in a fire in 1921. 

For further details visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2021/12/limited-time-offer-free-access-to-u-s-city-directories/. 

To search the directories, visit https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10705/us-city-directories.

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Happy 10th anniversary to the British Newspaper Archive

A slightly belated note to offer congratulations to the British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), which this week has celebrated its tenth anniversary. 

In November 2010 I offered my initial thoughts on the Beta version of the site, which you can read at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2011/11/british-newspaper-archive-beta-initial.html. Things have moved on a bit since then!

To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the site has added ten new titles this week, albeit from England only - you can read more on these at https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2021/11/29/new-titles-29-nov-2021/.

Today the site has 46,424,284 pages, well past its initial target of 40 million pages, with newspapers across Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales, and beyond, as sourced from the British Library and digitised by FindmyPast. In the last ten years, it has revolutionised family history research considerably - it would be difficult to imagine carrying out research without it. 

So a big slàinte mhath to the BNA, and to many more years (hopefully!) of material to be placed online!!!

(And if I was to make a request - Glasgow in the 20th centry is still a wee bit bare. God loves a trier!)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

New NIFHS research booklet - The City of Belfast

The North of Ireland Family History Society (www.nifhs.org) is now selling its latest Researching Your Ancestors in the North of Ireland guide booklet, entitled The City of Belfast.

The book is 105 pages in length, and is essentially a source book highlighting some of the key resources available for research in the city, or at least within the city as its boundaries were defined between 1896 and 1973. 

After a short history of the city, it then details the sorts of administrative boundaries that records were collated within, before dealing with various topics and resources that will assist the historian. By far the most useful section is the detailed listings for the various churches found in Belfast, listing the various houses of worship for the major denominations, and offering information about the surviving coverage of records. The section on Education is another equally handy chapter detailing the many schools in the city.

The price of the booklet is £12, plus p&p, and it can be ordered from https://www.nifhs.org/product/researching-your-ancestors-in-the-north-of-ireland-belfast/. 

A very useful resource if you have ancestry from the city!

(With thanks to the NIFHS for a review copy)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Family Tree's Scottish Family History Month, Feb 2022

Family Tree magazine (www.family-tree.co.uk) will be hosting a series of five talks in February 2022 as part of its Scottish Family History Month. And I am delighted to say that I will be chairing them, and giving one of the talks myself!

From the magazine:

Family Tree's annual programme of online Scottish family history talks, in partnership with History Scotland, will return in February 2022.

Booking is now open for the 2022 Scottish Family History Month, with five fantastic online talks available, covering everything from making the most of the census to exploring the lives of Scottish women.

This year's chair is genealogist Chris Paton, who will host each talk and also present a talk of his own. Each event will comprise a 50-min Zoom talk, followed by a 30 minute Q&A. Each event will be recorded and the recording made available to ticket holders for 7 days.

Booking is now open for all 5 talks - secure your place today! A bundle price of £40 for all 5 talks (£35 for magazine subscribers) is available here.

Scottish Family History Month 2022 talk programme

• Making sense of the Scottish census, Emma Maxwell, 1 February, 6.30pm
• Civil cases in the sheriff courts, Fergus Smith, 4 February, 2pm
• Using DNA for Scottish family history research, Michelle Leonard, 8 February 6.30pm
• Tracing Scottish women, Kirsty Wilkinson, 17 February, 6.30pm
• Scottish research resources before 1800, Chris Paton, 22 February, 6.30pm

To book tickets please visit https://www.family-tree.co.uk/news/scottish-family-history-month-2022.

I am looking forward to introducing some great sessions with some great folk - hopefully we will see you there!

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.