Why Genealogists are Flocking to the London Metropolitan Archives

The London Metropolitan Archives says that half the inquiries they receive are from family historians. This is likely due to their rich resources (click here to peruse the collections)

Because there is such a strong genealogy interest in the LMA, they are making a huge effort to reach out to genealogists. They’re all about educating us and sharing what’s at LMA through their website, hands-on classes, remote research services and partnerships with data sites like Ancestry.co.uk and FindMyPast.co.uk. All this from a city archive!

Check out this video they’ve made for family history researchers:

Doesn’t that video make you want to check out the LMA for yourself? On their website, click on Family History. Read up on the basics, then click on Information Leaflet No.1 for a detailed description of their holdings. If you can’t visit, you can use their Family History Research Service. But it looks like a pretty tempting research destination!

Season Seven

The Genealogy Gems Podcast Episodes
2011 – 2012 Season Seven

Episode 121
Part 2 of Lisa’s interview with Steve Luxenberg, author of the book Annie’s Ghosts

Episode 122
Find out what a Forensic Genealogist Does. Plus suggestions for “Family Medical History” reading, and how to find “Bonus Content” for Steve Luxenberg’s book Annie’s Ghosts

Episode 123
Taking Genealogy out into the Community. Plus Part 3 of Your Life in 5 Minutes, New Records, and a new name for Grandma.

Episode 124
A new way to search with Google, Photo Mystery, Newspapers with Tom Kemp, plus Part 4 of Your Life in 5 Minutes

Episode 125
Genealogist Shirley Gage Hodges will share her genealogical wisdom with you as well as talk about her status as “perennial student.”

Episode 126
The latest news from RootsTech 2012, my video interview with Nick Barratt, and an in depth look at Find A Grave with the website’s creator, Jim Tipton.

Episode 127
Interview with Historian Nick Barratt of the Who Do You Think You Are? TV series in the UK

Episode 128
WDYTYA Live recap, a Family History Mystery Solved, and an interview with Chris van der Kuyl CEO of brightsolid

Episode 129
Genealogy Gems Book Club:  Running Away to Home with author Jennifer Wilson

Episode 130
RootsMagic 5, APG, the 1940 Census…

Episode 131
Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Census Schedules, and Ancestry acquires Archives.com.

Episode 132
Bonnets and Hats with Maureen Taylor, and the Genealogy Widower

Episode 133
Lisa interviews Henry Louis Gates about his TV series Finding Your Roots.

Episode 134
A Blast from the Past! This episode includes Episodes 1 and 2!

Episode 135
Interview with Linda Chavez of Finding Your Roots

Episode 136
Life After iGoogle!  And the brand new Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems website has launched!

Episode 137
Food and Family History with author Gena Philibert Ortega Part 1. Includes a companion video, AND Bonus Video of Gena and Lisa in the kitchen cooking up a Blast from the Past!

Episode 138
Food and Family History with author Gena Philibert Ortega Part 2.

Episode 139
Head back to (family history) school! Lisa announces her brand new book Turn Your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse

Episode 140
Blast from the Past: Episodes 3 and 4. eBay Alerts, Family History Displays, Irish Genealogy

 

Were Your Ancestors “Viscious” or in “Chronic Want”? London Poverty Maps Map It Out

Booth Poverty Maps key

Booth Poverty Maps key

There is a fantastic blog posting on Mad About Genealogy about the Booth Poverty Maps, which look like a riveting way to understand your ancestor’s 1880s London neighborhood.

According to blogger Linda Elliott,  “Booth employed a team of social investigators who walked around the London streets often in the company of the local policeman and recorded what they saw and heard. The notebooks that they filled out can be viewed online and make for fascinating reading with amongst other findings they record what the policeman thought of each street and sometime each building and its inhabitants.”

I’ve shown the map key here (right), clipped from The Charles Booth Online Archive. Linda describes each category in greater detail in her blog post, along with everything a genealogist needs to know to use the maps.

 

Evernote for Family History: OCR Handwriting and Uploading Data

So many of you are harnessing the organizing and storage power of Evernote for family history research (and probably everything else you know!). Every time I teach on Evernote, a round of excited follow-up questions follows. Here are two great questions from Karen:

Q: The handwriting app on my phone is way cool, yet Evernote doesn’t seem to recognize any of the words. I thought it would apply OCR to the handwriting. Is that just a premium feature?

A: The key to handwriting OCR is to print clearly. OCR can not read cursive. Also, if you created your handwritten note and then immediately tried to search for a keyword, (and the note was printed clearly) it may not have found it because you searched before it had a chance to sync through the cloud and apply OCR. If you’re in a hurry, click the SYNC button in Evernote. Also, Premium accounts sync and apply OCR faster than free ones.

Q: My husband has a single note file that he has been putting all his daily notes in for years – currently about 14mb. Once he has uploaded that file, then when he makes additional notes to it each day, will he be “charged” for the entire file being saved again or just the incremental portion?

A: No he won’t be using 14 mb of upload each time he saves it. The key here is “upload.” You are charged uploading for the first time you upload the item to Evernote. I believe that if he adds a paragraph that is 1kb of text to the note the next day, he will only have 1kb deducted from his monthly upload.

One word of caution, if he has a desire to some day publish a book or some other project with his daily notes, I wouldn’t recommend Evernote. As you saw, the export file types are limited, and it does not export directly to Word or .txt. However, if he just wants it for his one record keeping, I think Evernote is a great solution.

Resources

How to Get Started in Evernote, and the Ultimate Evernote Education

Genealogy Gems Premium members can also access exclusive full-length videos on how to use Evernote for family history, like:

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