Disaster Preparedness for Genealogists Part 2: Duplicate the Past
In celebration of National Preparedness Month in the United States, I’m running a four-part post on securing your family history archive and research against disasters. Last week I talked about assessing and prioritizing your original family artifacts, photographs and documents. This week’s tip:
DUPLICATE THE PAST. There’s no true substitute for an original family Bible, but if it’s lost, you at least want to have a copy. Scan your original photos, documents, and other flat artifacts—including the important pages of that Bible. While you could carefully use a flatbed scanner, consider a portable scanner or a mobile scanning app like Genius Scan or Scanner Pro.
Next, photograph dimensional family artifacts like artwork, handicrafts, clothing, military and school memorabilia, etc. Use a regular digital camera or the camera on your phone or tablet/iPad. Make sure you label the photos by using the metadata fields in digital files or by printing them out and captioning them in an album. Consider using the Heirloom Inventory Kit developed by the folks at Family Tree Magazine to create an archival record of your artifacts with images, stories and more.
Next week, we’ll tackle a third topic: preserving original documents, photos and heirlooms.
Premium Podcast Episodes
Premium Podcast Episodes As a Genealogy Gems Premium Member you have access to the entire back catalog of Premium Episodes! Of course, things do change over time, so occasionally you’ll hear about something that is no longer around (like the Premium Message...Family History Episode 8 – Best Genealogy Websites, Part 2
Originally published Fall 2008
Republished November 26, 2013
by Lisa Louise Cooke
Download the Show Notes for this Episode
Family History: Genealogy Made Easy
Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.
Episode 8: Best Genealogy Websites, Part 2
In a follow up to last week’s episode about subscription genealogy records website, in my first segment our guest is Yvette Arts, Director of Content Partnerships at World Vital Records. She tells us about exciting developments at the website that have helped make it a success.
In our second segment we look at five organizations that provide free online access to genealogy records for those with North American roots: FamilySearch, the National Archives of the United States, Ellis Island Foundation, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, and Library and Archives Canada.
Now for some updates on these sites and MORE since the show first aired:
- FamilySearch.org is still free and growing exponentially. It captures records from all over the world, not just North America and the U.K. It is now home to over 3.5 billion names in searchable databases, with over 35 million new records added every month. In addition, they’ve added over 60,000 digital books to the site. The layout of the website has changed dramatically since I described it in the original show. Click on Search to get to their databases, then enter an ancestor’s name and, if you can, a life event (birth, marriage, residence or death). A significant portion of new online records are browsable but not yet indexed. So now, after you search for individuals in their databases, scroll down to the Browse section below the search fields. There you’ll be able to see what records you can browse for a locale (choose the international region, then you can choose more specific locations). You can still order microfilmed records at the Family History Library to a satellite FamilySearch library near you. From the Search screen, choose Catalog, and you can search for and order available records by location.
- The National Archives (U.S.), also known as the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) also offers more on its website now. The portal for genealogists looks a little different now but still helps you see how to search and use the site for genealogy. There’s a direct link to the 1940 census, with images, maps and descriptions. Remember that Footnote, the subscription site I mentioned that’s digitizing military records, is now Fold3, which we talked about in Episode 7.
- EllisIsland.org still offers free access to the passenger records of those who landed at Ellis Island. In addition, you can still look at ship information (click on Ships from the home page). The Immigrant Experience and timeline I mention can be found by clicking on the Ellis Island tab.
- The National Archives (U.K.) links from the home page to resources for ordering birth, marriage and death certificates for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Read about updating order information, including costs, at these sites. There is still a portal for genealogists from which you can learn all about the various record groups I mention in the podcast and more.
- Library and Archives Canada continues to add more valuable genealogical data to its site, including census data! Start from its Genealogy and Family History page. In addition to the features I mention in the show, they’ve improved their online indexes: scroll down on the above page and you’ll find the Ancestors Search (Databases) link to a main search engine and individual databases for vital records, censuses, immigration, land, military and several directories.
- Cyndi’s List and U.S. GenWeb are still fantastic online resources, but add to your list these ones as well:
- DeadFred, a photo identifying and sharing site;
- Google, for searching across the Internet for everything from individual ancestor’s names to maps and local histories (especially through Google Books at www.books.google.com);
- The Library of Congress family of websites, including the mega-newspaper site, Chronicling America;
- WorldCat, an enormous card catalog for more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.
- Find a Grave and Billion Graves, home to cemetery inscriptions for millions of tombstones.
- Of course, there are many, many more websites for genealogists, but these will certainly keep you busy to start!
How to Save and Open Genealogy eBooks and PDFs to Your Mobile Devices
Cliona in Ireland’s recent email question illustrates the point that not everything on the iPad is straightforward. But I’ve got an easy answer to her question that will make reading pdfs and ebooks on your iPad and other mobile devices a breeze:
“I bought your new book Turn your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse and I downloaded it to my PC straight away without problem. Ironically my problem came when I tried to download it to my iPad!
When I click to download the book to my iPad it downloads to the Safari Browser but I cannot find how to save it to iBooks or Kindle or anywhere else…I know I must be doing something wrong but I’ve looked on the Lulu site and they show that there should be an option to ‘Open In’ (at which point I should be able to specify, say, iBooks) but this option doesn’t appear in my browser. The only icons that appear at the top of my browser are the ‘book’ icon (bookmarks, history and reading list), the ‘cloud’ icon for icloud and the ‘forwarding’ icon which allows me to send to mail, Facebook etc., but not to iBooks…In short HELP please, before this drives me nuts.”
Here’s an easy way to add any ebook or PDF to your iPad:
- Get a free Dropbox account at www.Dropbox.com
- Install the Dropbox app on your tablet
- Create an “eBooks” folder in your free Dropbox account
- Save all pdf ebooks to the folder
- Open the Dropbox app on your iPad
- Navigate to the ebooks folder
- Tap the ebook you want
- Tap the “Open In” button at the top of the screen (folder icon with down arrow) and select Good Reader, iBooks, Kindle, etc.
Saving your ebooks in Dropbox also means they are easily accessible from all of your computing devices, regardless of whether they are PC or Mac. Sweet!