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2017 Auckland Family History Expo - report back

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2017 Auckland Family History Expo

 Many thanks to the Exhibitors, speakers, volunteers and attendees who came to this year’s Expo in the Fickling Convention Centre, Three Kings.

Many many thanks to  my co-committee members Marie Hickey (Auckland Libraries), Jan Gow, Don Gallagher, Chris Bayley, David Bryant, Rex Wood, Dorothy Walker and Bryn Smith from the Genealogical Computing Group.

We had three international speakers this year, Chris Paton (Scots/Irish), Dirk Weissleder (German/European) and Helen Smith (Australian, British, DNA), as well as many local speakers.  We had about 30 lectures across the 2.5 days,  12 workshops, a Beginners' Table and 25 exhibitors: Ancestry, Auckland Council Libraries, Auckland War Memorial Museum,   Beehive Books/HOG Tours, Chinese genealogy researchers, Families in British India (FIBIS), FamilySearch, FamNet/Jazz Software, Guild of One Name Studies (GOONS), Kippenberger Research Library - National Army Museum - Waiouru, Indian genealogy / West Research Centre, My Heritage, New Zealand Fencible Society Inc, New Zealand Micrographics/Recollect,   New Zealand Military Historical Society, New Zealand Society of Genealogists Head Office  and Interest Groups: English, European, Irish, Maori, Pacific Island, Scottish; Unlock the Past/ Gould Genealogy, Wales – New Zealand Family History Society.

We had awesome financial sponsors: Auckland Council Libraries, Genealogical Computing Group, MyHeritage, Ancestry, The Genealogist and LivingDNA, who also donated prizes for our raffles. Many exhibitors also donated prizes for raffles too. Altogether we had more than 75 raffle prizes totally over $9000!

110 people attended the opening night on Friday night where we shared some yummy canapes and heard from Chris Paton on “Genealogy without borders”, and heard from LivingDNA about their offer (a mixture of video call from the UK, recorded video, and explanation from Michelle Patient), and then we had a panel discussion with our three speakers Chris, Dirk and Helen, about the future of family history.

Saturday and Sunday were very busy and we know for certain we had over 750 people attend across the two days – however, we suspect the actual number was a fair bit higher, as not everyone would have taken name labels or bags (which was our method of trying to calculate attendance). We got a lot of complete beginners again this year, so hopefully we have infected them with our enthusiasm, and they have now become addicted!

You can view the photo album for the Expo on Facebook. And you can read reviews about the Expo from Chris Paton's British Genes, 

For those still looking for the handout notes still from the Expo, you can find them at our Dropbox folder.

It had been posted on the Auckland Research Centres' Facebook page, as the Auckland Libraries new website was about to be launched. Please feel free to like the Research Centre’s Facebook page to be kept informed of what events and new resources we have in!

All going well, we hope to hold the next Auckland Family History Expo again next year – weekend Friday 10 to Sunday 12 August 2018. If it goes ahead, once again, we plan for it to be free, and for the exhibitors to pay minimal costs so it will be affordable for everyone to attend.

Watch this space!

Happy hunting

 Seonaid


Friday's Faces from the Past: A new book by Lloyd Jones

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I have recently finished reading Lloyd Jones’s book, A History of Silence: A memoir. Lloyd Jones is the author of  the gripping Mister Pip which starred Hugh Laurie in the book’s movie interpretation.

Auckland Libraries collection.
Jones relates the fascinating journey he went on to discover his mother’s family, something she claimed to know nothing about. In his childhood was the shadowy figure of his estranged grandmother, bitterly declaimed by his mother, but there was nothing further. The silence in the title is the layers upon layers of blankness about his family history and the silence he lived in with his working class parents. Theirs was a house with no family photos and no family stories.

The tragedy of the earthquake that struck Christchurch in 2011 lead Lloyd to investigate his own foundations and family past, a search that takes him from Wales to a devastating court transcript.

The book makes compelling reading and is an interesting read for family historians. Click through to reviews in the Telegraph and in Australian Book Review. There are borrowable copies available from Auckland Libraries.

Bridget

Location: 44 Lorne Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand

Census Sunday: Proposed UK Census changes

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The other day a colleague handed me an interesting article by Simon Szreter to read from this month's issue of  History Today magazine (January 2014) about the proposed changes to the collection of UK census information.  In fact, the Office of National Statistics or ONS as they are more often called -- the department responsible for the census 'are proposing two possible options for the 2021 census' which according to the article are:

'One possibility is to try to ensure that the census is returned online as much as possible. 
Provided the proper safeguards are put in place to cater for information from the predominantly
 older section of the population who would otherwise be disadvantaged by this new method,
 this is probably a sensible move.'

'The second option under consideration would represent a historic abandonment of the census's democratic principle of information collection established since 1841. This idea is to drop the census of every individual and instead patch together a number of disparate sources of more partial or anonymous statistical information on the characteristics of the British population already collected . . . . the argument is that this kind of composite database can provide more regular updates on change . . . to satisfy the needs of government bodies  . . . and will be cheaper to administer than a census . . .'

If the ONS does decide to follow this radical second option we can all imagine what the ramifications are for future generations of family historians who will have an even greater challenge of finding information on their own UK family's past.

'Taking the Census' an illustration of 1861.
Image from History Matters, January 2014.

If you would like to search the 1841-1911 UK Census records they are easy to access for free at any of the Auckland Libraries through the Ancestry and FindMyPast databases in the Digital Library.

For some useful hints on using census records you may want to check out a new book in our family history collection by  Emma Jolly, 'Tracing your Ancestors Using the Census: A Guide for Family Historians', which is packed with advice on how to explore and get the most from these records.

Karen





Location: 44 Lorne Street, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand
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