Scottish Handwriting site integrated into ScotlandsPeople

The Scottish Handwriting website at www.scottishhandwriting.com is sadly no more - its contents have just been integrated into the ScotlandsPeople website at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/scottish-handwriting.

The learning tools on the new version appear to be the same as those previously available on the Scottish Handwriting platform. These can be used to learn how to read old forms of Scottish Handwriting, most notoriously the form known as Secretary Hand, which I often tell folk was invented by the Klingons!

ScotlandsPeople has a news announcement about the integration of the site at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/article/news-article-scottish-handwriting-resource. 

I've not yet found quite how to locate the link directly on the site yet from the home page, but it can be found via the Researching Older Handwriting (Palaeography) guide on the Topics A-Z list at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/guides/research-guides/topics-alphabetical - the guide is at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/guides/research-guides/reading-older-handwriting.

A free guide on how to read documents from 1500-1700 is also available from the National Records of Scotland at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files/research/publications/NRS-Scottish_handwriting_self-help_kit-Web_ready_version.pdf.

** For those wishing to use the original Scottish Handwriting site, it has been cached at the Internet Archive on many occasions - this link appears to lead to a fully functioning version of the site, with most pages crawled and saved - https://web.archive.org/web/20210617072923/https://scottishhandwriting.com/.

Chris 

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, 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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: A Self-Help Pack available online for free

Thanks to Kirsty Wilkinson for pointing out on Twitter that the latest version of Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: A Self-Help Pack is available online for free at https://www.scottishrecordsassociation.org/publications and https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/publications.

The pack, produced by the Scottish Records Association and the National Records of Scotland, is an excellent way to help train the eye with regards to the earlier forms of handwriting in use within the country, for which you will not be prepared if this is the first time you encounter it! 

A physical copy of the pack can be purchased at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/store/scottish-handwriting-kit at the cost of £12.15.

Have fun!

 

Chris

Pre-order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, 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.

What to Expect from FamilySearch in 2022

From FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org):

What to Expect from FamilySearch in 2022
Making personal family discoveries while volunteering online

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—Consumers love a sneak peek at the fun products and features planned for the upcoming year. Consumers in the expanding family history market are no different, and FamilySearch loves giving them something to enable more personal family connections. In 2022, FamilySearch will introduce a marriage of artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing that is sure to deliver millions of inspiring family discoveries for years to come; plus some fun, new international tree features.

FamilySearch Crowdsourcing

Hundreds of thousands of online volunteers have produced nearly 2 billion searchable online records since 2007 using FamilySearch crowdsourcing technology.  The result of these efforts are free, highly searchable name indexes that enable anyone to instantly find information about an ancestor at FamilySearch.org.

The challenge of late has been how to create these searchable name indexes as fast as FamilySearch is digitizing the world’s historical family history records. Part of the answer is engaging more online volunteers. To do this, FamilySearch is offering new mobile technology and personalizing the experience so more volunteers can contribute in ways that are personally relevant to them.

“What if online volunteers could conveniently participate using their mobile phones? What if the records they help make more discoverable online were relevant to their personal family tree? What if meaningful contributions only took a few minutes to complete? What if the experience was in the volunteer’s native language? Those are some of the unique benefits of upcoming upgrades to the online volunteer experience. We are merging the lines between volunteering and making personal family history discoveries,” said Ian James, a FamilySearch product manager.

This is the vision for the new online volunteer experience and integrated mobile app FamilySearch will unveil at RootsTech Connect 2022. FamilySearch believes these new experiences, expanding volunteer involvement globally, along with more technological capabilities under development, will exponentially increase access to the world’s historical records and enable millions more personal family discoveries.  

Online volunteers have already made invaluable collections like the 1790 to 1940 US Censuses freely searchable online. Imagine what they will do with projects like the 1950 US Census and many more historical records collections from patrons’ homelands using FamilySearch’s new online volunteer experiences!

FamilySearch Handwriting Recognition Artificial Intelligence

FamilySearch works with archives all over the world to help digitally preserve and expand online access to their genealogical records. In 2022, FamilySearch will be unveiling some exciting developments utilizing handwriting recognition artificial intelligence and records access technology to make impressive additions to the number of searchable ancestor names found in genealogical records at FamilySearch.org.

These emerging technologies will enable FamilySearch to make ancestral information hidden in its billions of digital images of historical records more discoverable—in a fraction of the time currently required.

“We’ve been implementing our new records access technologies in Spanish-speaking countries for the past year. We are very pleased with the results. We’ve been able to produce in one year what would have otherwise taken us a hundred years to do with previous technology.  We are excited to unveil it at RootsTech 2022 along with our expansion plans,” said John Alexander, a FamilySearch product manager for the emerging technology.

Alexander said the new handwriting recognition technology, coupled with the new online volunteer experiences and integration with a patron’s FamilySearch Family Tree, will dramatically increase personal discoveries and access to the world’s records.

FamilySearch Asian Pedigree Feature

A continual focus of FamilySearch is to help meet the needs of its growing base of international customers. In 2022 FamilySearch will deliver a new family tree visualization and documentation tool for its patrons with Asian ancestry. The Asian pedigree or “First Ancestor View” in the FamilySearch Family Tree will better reflect the record-keeping traditions and processes of Asian cultures that view their ancestors in a “top-down tree” perspective.

“Asia is an exciting segment for us,” said Mitch Wasden, a FamilySearch outreach manager.  “We want to give people around the world the tools they need to help them to collaboratively create the ‘Family Tree of Humankind.’ This feature will give people with Asian ancestry a FamilySearch.org tree-building experience equal to those in other areas of the world.”

FamilySearch Middle East North Africa Family Tree

FamilySearch teams have been spending time in Africa and the Middle East getting to understand these cultures and their needs. For example, individual families in these regions may not be accustomed to documenting, visualizing, and sharing their family relations in the context of a “tree.” FamilySearch is delivering a new experience in 2022 tailored to patrons from Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East to artistically preserve and illustrate their family history in a variety of beautiful printable keepsakes. It will be offered through a mobile and web app that requires very little bandwidth or phone storage memory. Learn more, follow, and share these Family Tree initiatives at FamilySearch.org/Africa and FamilySearch.org/MENA (Middle East and North Africa).

Discover your ancestors for free today at FamilySearch.org.

Register for RootsTech Connect 2022 (March 3–5) for free and be the first to learn more about these new FamilySearch features.

(Source: https://www.familysearch.org/en/newsroom/what-to-expect-familysearch-2022)

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.

Secretary Hand - the Joscelyn font!

Every so often, something comes along that just makes me laugh for its sheer brilliance and simplicity. This is one such occasion - a font that writes in a style of Secretary Hand!

To be slightly more correct, there is a font available for your word processing software called Joscelyn. I noticed it being tweeted about earlier on the Manuscripts After Print account (@MSS_AfterPrint), which was retweeted by a reader (sorry, have lost who that was, but you are a hero!). The font attempts to render text in an old European style of handwriting known as Secretary Hand, which in Scotland was well used up to the 18th century, and which can cause a great number of headaches with earlier documents.

This is an example of the font's style...

The phrase written here is "This is some craic, so it is....!!!" (Ulster English and Secretary Hand, together at last!)

The Scottish Handwriting website (www.scottishhandwriting.com) suggests that a useful practice phrase to write down in Scots, using Secretary Hand, is 'sic braw secretarie hand'. This is that phrase from the site, with Joscelyn's rendition of it placed below:

You'll notice some differences - it's... complicated! But you'll find more about it on the website.

Whether the font can help you attune to the forms of Secretary Hand script or not, it is still immense fun to have something a bit Oldie Wordie on my computer!

The tweet noted more about the font earlier:

We've been having loads of fun with Joscelyn, an amazing secretary hand font developed by the incredibly talented Peter Baker. It's based on the main hand of Corpus Christi College MS 488 and is freely available at https://github.com/psb1558/Joscelyn-font/releases. Check out those ligatures!

Following the link takes you to a page where you can download a zipped folder called Joscelyn.zip. Save this, then extract the files. Once done, simply right click on Joscelyn.otf and click on install.
 
With thanks to all involved!

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.