Guest post: Preparing for your visit to the Central Auckland Research Centre

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Guest contributor: Bridget Simpson

We welcome everyone to our Research Centre. Whether you are a member of our library or a non-member, a resident of Auckland, or a visitor.

We welcome all age groups, and really do enjoy it when we get a school visit.

If you are coming into our Research Centre to do your family history research, it does pay to come prepared.

Sometimes people, adults and schoolchildren, come in unprepared. They have surnames and anecdotal evidence but nothing concrete that we can usefully follow.

If you are coming in, it will make your visit far more satisfactory to do a little bit of preparation before hand. Start with yourself. Sit down with your parents and write down as much as they know (their parents’ names and dates of birth, and places they lived is a good start ).

If you have birth, death or marriage certificates for your ancestors, photocopy them and bring these copies along as well.

Filling in a genealogical tree sometimes makes all the difference to sorting out the different generations and families in your mind. And it’s helpful for us. You can find these free online. Start with what you know and we can then help point you in the various different directions to start filling in the rest.

A digital camera and a memory stick are optional, but very useful tools in our Centre. Sometimes we don’t allow photocopying for preservation reasons, so a digital camera is a good way of getting that vital copy for your records. Memory sticks are handy to save images to, then you have the file forever.

Before you come in, we recommend you read our information pageResearching Your Family History on our website.

Bridget Simpson

RootsTech Family History and Technology Conference in Salt Lake City

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February 2 to 4, Salt Lake City
RootsTech is only in its second year, but is on its way to becoming one of the largest and most influential genealogical conferences in the world! 

Its brief is to bring technologists together with genealogists, to stimulate cross-pollination of ideas for creative technological development.

The impact of family history and genealogical research on the world, has led to some stunning technological breakthroughs.

For example, the host, FamilySearch, has the largest and most successful digitisation project in the world. The high speed, high quality scanners that FamilySearch use to digitise the millions of microfilms in their Vault, were specifically developed for their use.

This year, the Conference will be exploring latest technologies using Cloud computing, mobile apps, social networking and geo-mapping.

Hosted by FamilySearch, sponsors this year, include some pretty big names: Microsoft, Oracle, brightsolid, vmware, Dell, ancestry.com, Association of Professional Genealogists, Archives.com, Federation of Genealogical Societies, NGS, Brigham Young University and IIMI.

We're 11,000 kilometres and a time zone ahead of Salt Lake City, but you can listen to some of the lectures via livestreaming - you can access the schedule from Randy Seaver's geneamusings blog:

A tip from Carole Riley, Australian genealogist and editor of Descent: the journal of the Society of Australian Genealogists:

If you enter the date and time into Google Calendar, and specify that its US Mountain Time, it will automatically convert it for you and put the NZ date and time in the Calendar! (no trying to work out time zones for yourself!)
 
Read more about what's on offer at RootsTech!

Some handouts will also be available for download so keep an eye on this website

Happy hunting
Seonaid

Guest post: Getting more from the internet

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Guest contributor: Marie Hickey

We have recently received the Christmas 2011 issue of Who do you think you are? Magazine in the Central Auckland Research Centre. I always enjoy reading this magazine as there is usually something of interest and this issue is no different as it is “chocca block”  with interesting articles.
There are explanations of the nursing records which have gone on line at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/nursing.asp and the Irish prison records 1790-1920 which are now on line at www.findmypast.ie. While the latter is a subscription database you can search the index for free but will have to pay to view the record. As is usual with this time of the year, there is a round up of 50 essential websites which include the “usual suspects” but there is mention of others which you may be unaware of, as well as information on new items to come available on the sites in the coming year. It is just so easy to become absorbed with the data on some of these sites.
I am the first to admit that I don’t use the internet to my best advantage so the article “Get more from the internet” was very helpful for me as it gives a number of tips and tricks which makes searching on the internet much easier. While on the subject of the internet, there is an article about the new British Library newspaper site and digitisation project. Postal workers records were published on ancestry.com last year which was great for those of us with Post Office ancestors so the article on postal workers should be of interest to you. 
Got a shop-keeper/worker in the family? There is a bit about some websites that may be useful.
Just as a short postscript, if you have ancestors in London, you will be interested to know that the London electoral rolls 1835-1965 were published on ancestry.com last week. In the main, these only give the name of the person, their address and qualification to vote. However, in some circumstances you get information about rent paid, to whom, whether or not the flat was furnished and where in the building it is eg 2nd floor at front – all useful information if you can get it.
As I say, this issue was a really good read. We have a non-borrowable copy in the Central Auckland Research Centre but you may be able to borrow a copy from another library alternatively, it should be available in the shops here probably next month but do check with your local magazine shop about this.

Marie Hickey

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