WIBW: New website helps preserve Kansans life stories. “The Kay McFarland Japanese Garden played host to the launch of ‘Lasting Legacy Online.’ It is a website allowing users to log their own life stories to share with their loved ones.”
Arizona Secretary of State: New platform for the Arizona Memory Project launches September 29, 2022. “The new website provides users with a modern look at the Arizona Memory Project and comes with many enhancements. Users will find the new website easier to search, with thousands of additional documents, newspapers, and other items fully text searchable. Additional enhancements include linked information across collections and items, improved search capabilities, and improved storytelling that highlight Arizona’s people, places, and events.”
University of Toronto: Student project creates accessible database of Canada’s first newspapers. “Led by Sébastien Drouin, an associate professor in the department of language studies at U of T Scarborough, the bilingual project, ‘Early Modern Canadian Newspapers Online’ is a collection of newspapers from the second half of the eighteenth century – from 1752 to 1810 – printed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec and Ontario.”
The Journal (Ireland): ‘These were babies, not numbers’: New website documents deaths in mother and baby homes. “INSPIRED BY HIS own family’s connection to Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork, Daniel Loftus has committed to compiling an online database that documents all the people who died in these institutions in Ireland. The 18-year-old student started Project Infant in July and is currently going through records for various mother and baby homes, county homes and other institutions in a bid to compile a comprehensive list of all the mothers and children who died there.”
Library of Congress: Historical Newspapers for National History Day. “Explore the Frontier and learn to use Chronicling America, a freely-available collection of historic American newspapers at the Library of Congress for research in this year’s National History Day theme ‘Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas.’” Thursday, September 15. It will be archived for later viewing if you can’t make the live event.
University of Oxford: Oxford University project aims to preserve Second World War memories. “A project led by the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford is looking for contributions to a free online archive of family stories, anecdotes, memories, and digitized objects relating to people’s experiences of the Second World War.”
Lifehacker: Use This Free Tool to Restore Faces in Old Family Photos. “This online tool—called GFPGAN—first made it onto our radar when it was featured in the August 28 edition of the (excellent) Recomendo newsletter, specifically, a post by Kevin Kelly. In it, he says that he uses this free program to restore his own old family photos, noting that it focuses solely on the faces of those pictured, and ‘works pretty well, sometimes perfectly, in color and black and white.’” I tried this tool with a picture of my great-grandfather sitting on the running board of an old Ford with his three kids. It worked okay, but I think it would work better on pictures where the faces where closer-up.
Northumbria University: Major New Project To Reveal New Insights Into 19th Century British And Other Immigrant Sailors In The U.s. Navy. “The ‘Civil War Bluejackets’ Project—so named because of the distinctive uniform worn by U.S. Civil War sailors—is a collaboration between historians at Northumbria University, Newcastle, and computer scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Koblenz-Landau. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project launches on 6 September 2022 with a call for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War “Muster Rolls”, documents that were carried on board U.S. ships and which capture the personal details of the c.118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865.”
Illinois State University: Historic Illinois State alumni and marketing publications digitally preserved . “With 110 years of material to look through, each issue contains valuable insight into the evolving sociopolitical landscape of the country. One magazine which was disconnected from these previous publications, The Statesman, ran for just four issues between 1969 and 1971. It offers great insight into views on the Vietnam War, race relations on campus, marijuana, and other markedly countercultural perspectives of the era.”
IrishCentral: Did your ancestors come from Armagh? Massive amount of new records released online. “Are you searching for family history in Co Armagh? We might have another breadcrumb to add to your trail. Roots Ireland has just added 26,210 Armagh records to their database. Dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries, the historic Irish records contain census substitutes, church records, and headstone records.”
Fold3: New British Royal Air Force Records! . “We are pleased to announce a new collection of military records from the United Kingdom. The UK, British Air Force Lists, 1919-1945 contains a list of people who served in the British Royal Air Force between the end of the First and Second World Wars.”
NARA: National Archives Public Programs in September . “In September, the National Archives celebrates Constitution Day (September 17), opens its new All American: The Power of Sports exhibit on September 16 at its DC Museum, and continues offering free public programs at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, at Presidential Libraries nationwide, and virtually on the National Archives YouTube Channel.” Interesting census program on September 8!
WSFA: New user-friendly website highlights Alabama Department of Archives and History resources. “The new website includes robust databases for conducting historical and genealogical research in the ADAH’s extensive archival collections. Those resources are curated by ADAH staff and include an events calendar for at-a-glance information about ADAH programs, a new database of retention schedules and other helpful resources on records management for state and local government offices.”
Bellingcat: Using New Tech to Investigate Old Photographs. “New tools and a wealth of online data make it easier to navigate more than 150 years of evolving landscapes, cities, buildings and street names. Reverse image searches, Google Lens, digitised newspapers, heritage and auctioneering websites, AI colourisation and tools such as Peakvisor can help add valuable information and understanding to historic art collections.”
Irish Central: New York Irish History Roundtable articles now available online. “The New York Irish History Roundtable is making available, online and free, all its journal articles on the Irish in New York published between 1986 and 2020.”
