Genealogy This Week - 5 June 2010
Our weekly compilation of interesting new tools, resources and stories for genealogists. This week:
A Great Genealogy Brick Wall Solution for Newspapers – One of the most intractable problems in genealogy is trying to trace ancestors from countries that simply failed to keep official government records of births, marriages and deaths. Well, this week, we have a good genealogy brick wall solution for you. Try to trace your ancestors through newspaper announcements. The only problem with this approach is 1) knowing what newspapers may have existed in the part of the world where your ancestors came from and 2) even if you did know what newspapers existed, it can often be hard to access copies of them. This is where the free website ICON (International Coalition of Newspapers) can be immensely valuable. Simply type in the city/region/country (in the field ‘Country’) and year that interests you. The site will provide you with a list of known newspapers for the area. By clicking further on an individual newspaper name you can find out what libraries keep copies of the listed newspapers. This is a great resource. [International Coalition of Newspapers database]
Genealogy Travel to Ireland – According to Irish Central, the Irish government is considering starting a program to give discounts to travellers to Ireland who are researching their ancestors. Basically, any visitor with Irish ancestry would be eligible for a Certificate of Irish Heritage, a credit-card type of identification that could be used to gain discounted access to various tourist destinations. Ireland has been heavily affected by the recent global economic downturn and the country is obviously trying to get creative in attracting revenue.
Genealogy Travel to England and London – If you look down the left-hand column of this magazine you will see ads for British Heritage Passes and London City Passes. Both passes offer great discounts for tourists going to the UK this summer who plan to visit heritage sites. Basically, you buy the pass and it gives you deep discounts to a variety of great heritage sites. We have used these passes ourselves in the past and we find that they save us a lot of money. This is not a sales pitch, but if you are interested in one of these passes then we would appreciate if you clicked through the ads on our website. We earn a small commission on every sale through our website. This helps offset some of the costs of running our magazine and helps us keep our magazine free.
Ireland 1901 Census Now Online – The 1901 Ireland census that we talked about two weeks ago on our Latest Online Genealogy Records list has now gone live. [1901 Ireland Census]
Personalize Your Google Search – One of the nice things about using the Bing search engine are the cool background images. Well, apparently, Google noticed as well. You can now personalize your main Google search page with a background image chosen by you. Simply click on the link in the lower left-hand corner (circled in the image below) to get started. A couple of things to note. So far, this feature is only available on the main Google.com search page. It is expected to be rolled out to all Google country search pages over the next couple of weeks. Second, you need to register with Google to use a background image. If you have a gmail or Google Reader accounts then you are already registered. An old photograph of an ancestor would make a great background image. So would one of our high-resolution genealogy wallpaper images. Simply copy your favourite image to your local hard drive and then link it to Google search. You have our permission if you want to use one of our images.
