J-Wire: Australia’s oldest operating synagogue approaching its 175th anniversary. “Hobart Hebrew Congregation has run services in the heritage-listed synagogue in central Hobart since its consecration on July 4, 1845, and was set to mark the milestone with an array of projects and a program of public celebrations. The coronavirus forced the celebration to be cancelled, but the projects have been successfully completed. The highlight of the anniversary year has been making the congregation’s meeting minutes from 1841 to 1958 easily accessible online.”
primary sources
John Stevens Cooper Family Papers, PC.2190: Featuring a Soldier’s Letters to Wife Left in Charge of the Farm, Family, and Slaves, 1863–1865 (State Archives of North Carolina)
State Archives of North Carolina: John Stevens Cooper Family Papers, PC.2190: Featuring a Soldier’s Letters to Wife Left in Charge of the Farm, Family, and Slaves, 1863–1865. “The John Stevens Cooper Family Papers (PC.2190) are remarkable for the series of letters from John to his wife, Elizabeth, while he served in the Confederate military in 1863 and 1864. This correspondence sheds light on John’s recognition of the fact that, in his absence, Elizabeth knew what was best for managing their farm and slaves. His letters further illuminate his homesickness, his lack of faith in the Southern cause, and, in two notable instances, his desolation upon encountering the enemy.”
Columbia Missourian: SHSMO concludes digitalizing World War II letter collection
Columbia Missourian: SHSMO concludes digitalizing World War II letter collection. “Staffers and volunteers at the State Historical Society of Missouri finished the almost four-year process this month, according to a SHSMO press release. The selection contains texts written by more than 3,000 people, men and women, from every state of the country. They were transcribed and scanned to the SHSMO website with the goal of making the work of researchers, scholars and visitors easier.”
Rome: Keats-Shelley House launches digital archive (Wanted in Rome)
Wanted in Rome: Rome: Keats-Shelley House launches digital archive. “The Keats-Shelley House Museum and Library in Rome has launched its new digital collections of manuscripts and art celebrating the lives and works of the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The launch of the museum’s new website and online collection coincides with the start of Keats-Shelley 200, a three-year programme of events, exhibitions and activities in the UK and Italy in celebration of the poets’ extraordinary works.”
The Text Message (National Archives): Over 650 Newly Digitized Navy Logbooks in the National Archives Catalog
The Text Message (National Archives): Over 650 Newly Digitized Navy Logbooks in the National Archives Catalog. “These firsthand accounts of the Battle of New Orleans during the Civil War are just small snippets from two Navy logbooks, which are part of 653 digitized logbooks from 30 Navy vessels that recently became available in the National Archives Catalog (see list below). These logbooks were digitized in the Innovation Hub at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC, by a team of five graduate student interns working on a project titled ‘Seas of Knowledge: Digitization and Retrospective Analysis of the Historical Logbooks of the United States Navy.’ This project will continue through 2021 and will focus on digitizing Navy logbooks for the period 1861-1879, after having made 548 volumes of associated muster rolls available in the NARA catalog last year.”
UK National Archives: Free access to digital records
UK National Archives: Free access to digital records. “We are making digital records available on our website free of charge for as long as our Kew site is closed to visitors. Registered users will be able to order and download up to ten items at a time, to a maximum of 50 items over 30 days. The limits are there to try and help manage the demand for content and ensure the availability of our digital services for everyone.”
University of Southern Mississippi: USM Professor Wins $350,000 Grant to Digitize Governors’ Papers, Employ Dozens of Students
University of Southern Mississippi: USM Professor Wins $350,000 Grant to Digitize Governors’ Papers, Employ Dozens of Students. “A digital history project based at The University of Southern Mississippi recently won a three-year grant totaling $349,987 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant, which was awarded to the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi (CWRGM) project led by Dr. Susannah J. Ural will also help to employee dozens of graduate students to work on the project.”
Hamilton College: The Zo, Based on the American Prison Writing Archive, Debuts
Hamilton College: The Zo, Based on the American Prison Writing Archive, Debuts. “In 2008 when Professor of Literature and Creative Writing Doran Larson launched a seminar on American prison writing at Hamilton, he found there existed no collection that offered a broad sampling of writing by inmates. Thus began his solicitation of essays from the incarcerated that led to the publishing of Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America, edited by Larson, and to the subsequent creation of the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). The archive, now numbering more than 2,300 essays from 950 authors, has been used by colleges in 33 states and many countries around the world from Australia to England. Never before, however, has the archive received such well-deserved attention as that generated by Welcome to ‘The Zo’, a new series of videos from The Marshall Project that takes a look at life inside prison through sentiments expressed in the APWA letters.”
Genealogy 101: Using Gazetteers for Genealogy (GenealogyBank)
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.”
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.”
