New York Times: Two Huge Questions Loom as 2020 Census Winds Down. “The most contentious census count in memory is nearing an end with questions remaining about the accuracy of its numbers and how they will be used in congressional reapportionment.”
genealogy
Ancestry: Ancestry® Debuts World’s Largest, Searchable Digital Archive of Newspaper Published Historical Wedding Announcements
Ancestry: Ancestry® Debuts World’s Largest, Searchable Digital Archive of Newspaper Published Historical Wedding Announcements . “Today, Ancestry is excited to launch the first phase of the Newspapers.com™ Marriage Index collection, powered by cutting-edge technology. We trained machine learning algorithms to comb through more than 600 million pages of digitized newspapers to extract and identify key names, relationships and other facts from marriage and engagement announcements in historical newspapers via text classification.”
Help Us Preserve History: Ottoman Greeks of the United States Project (Pappas Post)
Pappas Post: Help Us Preserve History: Ottoman Greeks of the United States Project. “The Ottoman Greeks of the United States Project (OGUS) is a multifaceted interdisciplinary research project at the University of Florida. OGUS was established in 2015 with the support of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and is one of the program’s many projects. Our main goal is to raise the public’s awareness and inspiring scholarly research about the experiences of Ottoman Greek immigrants and refugees in the United States. To achieve this goal, the project is interviewing descendants of immigrants in the US from regions of the former Ottoman Empire which constitute contemporary Turkey.”
Arkivverket: Has reached 80 million personal names in the Digital Archive
Translated from the Norwegian, a little awkwardly. Arkivverket: Has reached 80 million personal names in the Digital Archive. “The reason for the gratifying increase is the National Archives’ multi-year collaboration with the international genealogy companies Ancestry, MyHeritage and FamilySearch (AMF). These have helped to make the priest’s entries in church books up to the end of the 20th century searchable. In return, companies can also publish the information on their websites. For over 20 years, many enthusiastic volunteers have written from the sources the National Archives has published in the Digital Archive. This information has then been published in the Digital Archive, so that it becomes searchable for everyone and even more easily accessible.”
NBC News: Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end census count early
NBC News: Supreme Court allows Trump administration to end census count early. “The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively allowed the government to stop the census count immediately, blocking a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to continue gathering census information in the field until the end of October.”
Northumberland Gazette: Huge new database containing 20,000 names records Alnwick burials back to 17th Century
Northumberland Gazette: Huge new database containing 20,000 names records Alnwick burials back to 17th Century . “The project came about as a result of local residents and visitors seeking information about ancestors who may have been buried there. Researcher Trish Jones embarked on the project to record an up to date searchable database and now has a list of 20,000 named individuals buried in the one and a half acre churchyard.”
Phys .org: American Statistical Association releases 2020 Census Quality Indicators, urges prompt action
Phys .org: American Statistical Association releases 2020 Census Quality Indicators, urges prompt action. “The American Statistical Association Board of Directors has endorsed the recommendations of the 2020 Census Quality Indicators report, written by a task force of census experts to shed light on the quality, accuracy, and coverage of the 2020 Census counts. The task force, co-chaired by former US Chief Statistician Nancy Potok and ASA President-elect Robert Santos, was formed in early September in response to concerns about 2020 Census data quality, including the lack of transparency and measures of quality traditionally provided by the US Census Bureau.”
Jewish Press: 180 Years of Australian Jewish Newspaper History Going Online
Jewish Press: 180 Years of Australian Jewish Newspaper History Going Online. “A new initiative will digitize and open free digital access to 180 years of Australian Jewish newspapers, including over 200,000 pages from Jewish communities across the continent. The project is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia (NLA), the National Library of Israel (NLI), and the Australian Jewish Historical Society (AJHS).”
The Hill: Judge begins contempt proceedings for Wilbur Ross over allegedly defying census order
The Hill: Judge begins contempt proceedings for Wilbur Ross over allegedly defying census order. “U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, appointed by former President Obama, initiated contempt of court proceedings during a Tuesday hearing, accusing the Department of Commerce of disobeying her previous order, Bloomberg News reported. She set a hearing for the proceedings for Friday.”
NBC News: Commerce Secretary Ross says 2020 census will end Oct. 5 despite court order
NBC News: Commerce Secretary Ross says 2020 census will end Oct. 5 despite court order. “U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says the 2020 census will end Oct. 5, despite a federal judge’s ruling last week allowing the head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October, according to a tweet posted on the Census Bureau’s website Monday. The tweet said the ability for people to self-respond to the census questionnaire and the door-knocking phase when census takers go to homes that haven’t yet responded is targeted to end Oct. 5.”
Route Fifty: Court Orders Census to Continue Counting People Past Trump Administration’s Sept. 30 Deadline
Route Fifty: Court Orders Census to Continue Counting People Past Trump Administration’s Sept. 30 Deadline. “The decision—issued in a federal court in California in response to a lawsuit brought by many nonprofit groups—marks a dramatic shakeup for the 2020 census just days before it was set to stop its enumeration. After the novel coronavirus pandemic forced the bureau to push back its original schedule, Census had planned to continue knocking on doors through October. The Trump administration later revised that timeframe, in a decision that came from outside the bureau, to expedite the delivery of apportionment data by a statutory deadline of Dec. 31, 2020. The judge stayed both the Sept. 30 and Dec. 31 deadlines.”
Jerusalem Post: USC Shoah Foundation launched new partnership with JewishGen. org
Jerusalem Post: USC Shoah Foundation launched new partnership with JewishGen. org. “Jewish genealogy service and affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, JewishGen.org, will be partnering with the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive to integrate the data from the nearly 50,000 available Jewish Holocaust survivor testimonies onto its platform.”
Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan: More Historic Newspapers Available Online
Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan: More Historic Newspapers Available Online. “Three new South Dakota towns are represented in the digitized historical newspaper collections on Chronicling America. Newspapers from Eureka, Wood and Tabor have been digitized and made available by the South Dakota State Historical Society. This batch of digitized newspapers contains foreign language editions in German and Czech.”
CNN: Constitution doesn’t require census to be accurate, Trump administration says
CNN: Constitution doesn’t require census to be accurate, Trump administration says. “The Trump administration argued on Friday against a challenge to its 2020 census plans by saying the Constitution requires a count but does not say it must be accurate. ‘It cannot be the case that accuracy in and of itself establishes some sort of — is established in the enumeration clause’ of the Constitution, Justice Department attorney Alexander Sverdlov told a federal judge in California.”
Family Tree: Mayflower descendant records and family trees available free at FamilySearch
Family Tree: Mayflower descendant records and family trees available free at FamilySearch. “FamilySearch has today (16 September) announced it has added tens of thousands of Mayflower Society member applications and documented descendant family trees of the Mayflower passengers to its website. This new initiative is the work of FamilySearch International, AmericanAncestors.org (New England Historic Genealogical Society) and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants(GSMD).”