GenealogyBank: Genealogy 101: Using Gazetteers for Genealogy. “In this article – part of an ongoing ‘Introduction to Genealogy’ series – Gena Philibert-Ortega describes how helpful gazetteers can be to your family history research, and provides links to find them.”
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BusinessWire: MyHeritage Releases Massive Collection of Historical U.S. City Directories (PRESS RELEASE)
BusinessWire: MyHeritage Releases Massive Collection of Historical U.S. City Directories (PRESS RELEASE). “MyHeritage, the leading global service for discovering your past and empowering your future, announced today the publication of a huge collection of historical U.S. city directories that has been two years in the making. The collection was produced by MyHeritage from 25,000 public U.S. city directories published between 1860 and 1960. It comprises 545 million aggregated records that have been automatically consolidated from 1.3 billion records. This addition grows the total size of MyHeritage’s historical record database to 11.9 billion records.”
Coronavirus: Google Launches SOS Alerts For Searches Of The Fatal Virus (Mashable)
Mashable: Coronavirus: Google Launches SOS Alerts For Searches Of The Fatal Virus. “Whenever global tragedy strikes, people on the internet rush to exploit it. The spread of the deadly coronavirus is no different, with fake stories going viral in an attempt to accomplish who knows what. Google, however, wants no part of that, and today announced a new feature in collaboration with the World Health Organization that will hopefully both reduce the spread of misinformation and get valuable information to those in need.”
Next City: ‘People Not Property’ Aims to Create Statewide Database of Slave Deeds in North Carolina
Next City: ‘People Not Property’ Aims to Create Statewide Database of Slave Deeds in North Carolina. “When Deshawn Elam started college at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an Historically Black College (HBCU) in Greensboro, N.C., he thought he would become a history teacher. But life changed his plans. One of his first classes introduced Elam to digital archiving.”
History News Network: British National Archives to trial 12-document limit per day for visitors, as academics warn research could be affected
History News Network: British National Archives to trial 12-document limit per day for visitors, as academics warn research could be affected. “The National Archives have provoked outcry from academics by announcing a new trial restricting readers to 12 documents a day, despite concerns it may add ‘huge expense’ to research.”
The Conversation: Building a digital archive for decaying paper documents, preserving centuries of records about enslaved people
The Conversation: Building a digital archive for decaying paper documents, preserving centuries of records about enslaved people. “The goal is to ensure this information – including some from documents that no longer exist physically – is accessible to future generations. But preserving history by taking high-resolution photographs of centuries-old documents is only the beginning. Technological advances help scholars and archivists like me do a better job of preserving these records and learning from them, but don’t always make it easy.”
Smithsonian: A Massive New Database Will Connect Billions of Historic Records to Tell the Full Story of American Slavery
Smithsonian: A Massive New Database Will Connect Billions of Historic Records to Tell the Full Story of American Slavery. “[Daryle] Williams, a specialist in the African diaspora of Brazil, is one of the principal investigators of a massive new online database called ‘Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade,’ which will launch in 2020. It aims to serve as a clearinghouse for information about enslaved people and their captors. Headquartered at Matrix, the Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University, and funded by a founding $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, Enslaved will serve as a hub for many smaller digitization projects, Freedom Narratives among them.”
