Staying on top of new relevant publications available for your area of genealogical research can be a challenge. I recent found out about a new Ortsfamilienbücher (heritage books) for one of my areas of research by visiting the GenWiki which is “designed to become the main source for genealogy in the German-speaking areas of the world”.
It is easier to check out one wiki where individuals contribute information vs. researching alone to find new information. Wikis are information packed when individuals contribute. I recommend if you know of a small, under utilized resource, that you find a genealogical wiki to contribute to. One suggestion would be FamilySearch Research Wiki at https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Main_Page.
The Ortsfamilienbücher I was looking at was for Zeutern which covered 1682-1900. This find helped me work on one of my brickwalls and provided numerous leads to other branches in my family. Had I not checked GenWiki, it might have been some time before I found this publication.
Not all indexes are the same. This is especially true for those taken of newspapers. The number of newspaper indexes released has greatly improved with the increase of volunteer projects.
With the size of newspapers, it is not possible for an indexer to capture all the information. Not all indexing projects include all articles. Some are just for social pages and obituaries.
What is nice is the ability to browse an entire newspaper online and look for relevant newspapers when a name is found in the index.
James Hansen’s chapter on Newspapers in The Source goes into details what can be found in newspapers.
In the 1830′s there were labor riots in England as agricultural works attempted to get better working and living standards. Some of those charged with various crimes were sentenced to Australia to serve out their time. This made life for the families left behind very challenging.
Learning about the details of the cases, the individuals involved on both sides and even having the family history of the convicts makes Jill Chambers’ book Berkshire Machine Breakers an interesting read.
Jill’s book discusses the individual cases with testimony. Excellent sources listed.
I look forward to the second edition of Berkshire Machine Breakers.
Binder or drives? Depending on your personal preference–and storage space limits–you will need to determine whether you capture all your data electronically, or print out everything you find. For my direct lines, I have printed out the important documents and kept an electronic copy. All those distant cousins and the people who I do not know how they fit into the picture yet are all digital copies.
One of the main things I have learned about capturing digital copies is to make sure that if the image is captured using a program which saves in a special format, that I am able to convert it into a jpg file. Many times I have had to hunt down a patch to convert the files into a jpg.
Organizing Your Family History Search by Sharon DeBartolo Carmick discusses the need to keep copies of documents you find using digital and/or paper methods.
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