Received at the Library

The featured article in Internet genealogy (Oct./Nov.2017) "Always an apprentice!" gives tips for improving your family history research: use maps, historical apps like WhatWasThere and HistoryPin, and find local histories and other books that give the flavor of your ancestors' lives.  Two articles elucidate slave records in Britain (including British Caribbean colonies) and in the American South ("Slave Insurance Records").  "Reaching the end of the roll" reviews the end of the LDS microfilm project, and covers workarounds while we await the completion of digitization in 2020.  YMCA WW1 Service Cards are an interesting new resource added to FamilySearch, giving information on over 27,000 civilian volunteers who aided the war effort.  FindMyPast has added a collection of Catholic parish records ultimately expected to contain 100 million records.  The 2017 release of genealogy software package Heredis is reviewed.

The Dec./Jan 2018 issue of Internet genealogy explores several less traveled avenues for your research.  The lead article treats lesser known manuscript and archival holdings in "Online finding aids reveal genealogical gems."  The author suggests that ledgers are particularly useful, but names a host of other records that can reveal genealogy facts, such as petitions, bank records, benevolent society records, and more, and she suggests ways to find them.  (A friend of mine works on transcribing records in Provincetown, and found the Pharmacy ledger particularly fascinating.) Another article treats military periodicals, which are scattered across the internet -- search using the unit's name/number, and don't forget state newspaper archives.  If you like to think about the big picture of our genealogy enterprise, you'll enjoy "The global village in 21st century genealogy," which looks at the theories of Marshall McLuhan in light of the internet.  As always, there are software and website reviews: the PRONI historical map viewer covers Northern Ireland; ProStamm is a new genealogy software; Jambios is a new platform for telling stories online in book format.