The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Many of today's genealogy programs will create web pages that you can upload to a web hosting service in the Internet. This allows you to share your genealogy information with everyone on the World Wide Web, or (optionally) you can restrict access to those you allow by using a password. Programs that will generate web-ready HTML files include RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, AncestralQuest, Second Site (works with The Master Genealogist), GRAMPS, Reunion (for Macintosh), and a number of others.

However, the question soon arises: "Where should I host these pages?"

The quick answer is "It all depends." In this article, I will describe some of the available options.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13300535.

The following announcement was written by the folks at Findmypast:

This Findmypast Friday, there are 45,000 new records to discover.

Our collection grew by 44,999 records this week. We've updated three of our existing record sets, and added new pages to 12 of our historical newspaper titles. 

Discover more about your military ancestors at the turn of the 20th century with over 24,000 new Anglo-Boer War records. With new Derbyshire baptisms and Yorkshire monumental inscriptions also added, there is so much to explore.

Anglo-Boer War Records 1899-1902

Do you have ancestors who fought in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century? If so, this week's release may help you to break down a brick wall. 

Trench warfare during the Boer War.

Covering the years 1899-1902, 24,088 new transcriptions have bolstered our existing collection of Anglo-Boer War records this Findmypast Friday. Explore the record of decorated New Zealand soldier William Hardham and so much more within this updated set.

Derbyshire Births & Baptisms

Next up, we've also added 13,932 baptism records from Derbyshire's non-conformist parishes. 

These new transcriptions span over 200 years, from 1760 to 1966.

Yorkshire Monumental Inscriptions, Exley Cemetery

Our Yorkshire monumental inscriptions collection was also updated this week, with 6,979 records from Exley Cemetery.

These new additions span the years 1626 to 2023 and contain key information like the deceased's name, age, birth year, death year, and the location of their memorial. You may also find personalised inscriptions listed on some of these records, which can help to add rich detail to your family tree.

Explore even more stories with the newspaper archive

Our newspaper collection grew by 50,963 pages this week, with updates to 12 of our existing publications. The majority of these new pages are from the year 1917, offering a fascinating insight into this wartime year in British history. 

Guernsey Evening Press, 27 February 1917.

With pages also added for 1964 and 1979, explore new pages from Galway to Guernsey this Findmypast Friday.

Updated titles:

• Berkshire Chronicle, 1917
• Bradford Daily Telegraph, 1917
• Citizen (Letchworth), 1917
• Devizes and Wilts Advertiser, 1917
• Downham Market Gazette, 1917
• Dublin Leader, 1964
• Evening Star, 1917
• Galway Observer, 1964
• Guernsey Evening Press and Star, 1917
• Nottingham Evening Post, 1979
• Stalybridge Reporter, 1917
• Wiltshire Telegraph, 1917

Have you made a surprising family history discovery? Whatever you've uncovered about your past, we'd love to hear about it. You can now get in touch and tell us using this handy form.

Last week, we added over 22,000 brand new British Army records - if your ancestor served in the military, their name may just appear within these new additions. Explore the full release for yourself here.

The following announcement was written by the folks at TheGenealogist:

The latest 1939 Register update has now been released by TheGenealogist.

More than 389,600 new individuals have been added after being opened in accordance with the 100-year rule and open requests submitted by the public. This now means we can search for even more of our ancestors from this period and see where they lived using the powerful mapping tools that TheGenealogist has a reputation for providing. 

As these records are linked to pins on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™, a tool that allows you to view both historical and modern maps, family historians are able to explore the neighbourhood where their forebears lived as WW2 broke out.

Actor and director Richard Attenborough’s record in the 1939 Register is included in the release. His family home, College House, Leicester, is shown as a linked pin on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™

Map Explorer™ will often be able to show the location of properties from 1939 down to the actual building in many cases and at least to the thoroughfare or parish. This makes it a great tool for the family historian to use to find where their forebears lived at this time.

House historians will also be excited to discover that TheGenealogist’s version of the 1939 Register can also be searched from a plot on a map to find who lived there in 1939. This turns the search on its head - as well as being able to look for where a person lived, you can also search for who lived at a property. You can even use Map Explorer to browse the map from house to house to see who lived there, a feature that can only be found on TheGenealogist.

With more precise mapping features, there are some very compelling reasons to search the 1939 Register on TheGenealogist. 

• Unique and powerful search tools and SmartSearch technology offer a uniquely flexible way to look for your ancestors

• Use Map Explorer to explore an area in 1939 and see how it changed over time
  
  

• Break down your brick walls when searching using keywords, such as the individual’s occupation or date of birth
  
  

• Search for an address and then jump straight to the household, or if you are struggling to find a family, you can even search using as many of their forenames as you know
  
  

• SmartSearch technology enables you to discover even more about a person by linking to their Birth, Marriage and Death Records

12 Month Diamond Package Only £109.95

To celebrate this latest release, TheGenealogist is offering your readers a 12 Month Diamond package for just £109.95, a Saving of Over £60

This offer comes with a Lifetime Discount, meaning you’ll pay the same discounted price every time your subscription renews.

To find out more and claim the offer, visit: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/MGBREG124

This offer expires at the end of 12th April 2024.

See TheGenealogist’s article: Updated 1939 Register reveals schoolboy Richard ‘Dickie’ Attenborough on a University Campus in Leicester.https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2024/1939-register-reveals-schoolboy-dickie-attenborough-on-a-university-campus-in-leicester-6924/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections. 

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

Here is an article that caught my eye today. It confirms my earlier suspicions about the book world and the library world are both converting from printed-on-paper books to digital books. From an article by Andrew Albanese printed in the publishersweekly.com web site:

OverDrive reps reported this week that a record 152 library systems and consortia across seven countries—including 41 states and seven Canadian provinces—surpassed the one million digital lends benchmark in 2023, which includes e-books, digital audiobooks, and digital magazines. The numbers represent a significant jump from the 129 library systems that hit the milestone in 2022.

The 152 public libraries hitting the milestone are based in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For the second year in a row, the Los Angeles Public Library topped the global list, with more than 12 million digital titles circulated; MELSA: Twin Cities Metro eLibrary in Minnesota remains the highest circulating consortium. Houston Public Library in Texas experienced the highest year-over-year circulation growth, up 57%,, while Öffntlicher Bibliotheken in Berlin, Germany, held the strongest growth for a library outside North America—up 46%—for the third consecutive year. In addition, OverDrive said that 23 library systems hit the million lend mark for the first time in 2023.

The news comes a week after OverDrive reported that 2023 was another record-breaking year for digital library circulation, with a 19% increase in library checkouts of digital media over 2022. In all, library users worldwide borrowed some 662 million e-books, digital audiobooks, and digital magazines.

The entire article is much longer and can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/2pvudpkc.

The Center for Brooklyn History was awarded a $105,500 grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to hire an archivist to help assist with recovering, organizing and increasing public access to the Center’s materials related to the history of Long Island.

Established in 2020 in partnership with both the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Public Library, the Center for Brooklyn History is one of the most expansive collections of materials relating to the borough’s history and houses items which have been collected over the past 161 years.

After an extensive renovation, the center, located in Brooklyn Heights, officially opened to the public in September of 2023 and, with the aid of the grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, is looking to further extend their accessibility.

“Since 2020, the Center for Brooklyn History is proud to serve the borough of Brooklyn as part of the Brooklyn Public Library system, but CBH’s history actually stretches back to 1863 with our founding as the Long Island Historical Society,” said Chief Historian Dominique Jean-Louis in a statement Tuesday. “Long Island’s people, artifacts, and stories shaped the earliest collections of this institution, and we’re thrilled that with generous funding from The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, we will be able to bring new access and understanding to these collections on Long Island’s history for a wide public audience.” 

Among the Long Island historical materials housed at CBH are a collection of six ledgers kept by Long Island property owner and merchant, Henry Lloyd. The ledgers include records of financial transactions and accounts in the area from 1703 through 1744, including fascinating details of the management of the Manor of Queens Village, a 3,000 acre plantation in today’s Suffolk County which was owned and operated by Lloyd’s family.

You can read more in an article by Isabel Song Beer published in the brooklynpaper.com web site at: https://www.brooklynpaper.com/center-for-brooklyn-history-grant/. 

From the petition.parliament.uk web site:

Please #SaveOurWills! The Ministry of Justice proposes to digitise and then allow the destruction of original wills after 25 years. We call for the original wills to be preserved in perpetuity in line with current legislation. Do not agree to legislative changes that would allow the destruction of these documents.

1. We think costs of digital preservation and storage could be astronomical.

2. The loss of digital files may be more likely than the loss of physical documents, for example via file corruption and cyber attacks.

3. Flaws and errors made during the digitisation process may happen.

4. The proposed changes to legislation may set a detrimental precedent for the destruction of other archive collections.

5. Physical documents provide additional information, such as the materiality of the documents.

You can read more and even sign the petition (if you are a UK citizen) by first going to https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/654081.

The following book reviews were written by Bobbi King:

The Story of Yorktown, Told by the Men Who Were There by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 238 pages.

Victory or Death: Military Decisions that Changed the Course of the American Revolution by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 179 pages.

So You Think You Know George Washington? by Jack Darrell Crowder. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2023.) 228 pages.

More than two centuries later, American students of history continue to carry a deep interest in the Revolutionary War, that pivotal juncture of time that, at the weary end, gave us our glorious, though sometimes conflicted, nation. But it could have all ended up quite differently, leaving us with a Boxing Day more celebrated than any Fourth of July.

Jack Darrell Crowder writes three books of research that offer his perspective on the significance and consequences of certain events of the American Revolution.

In The Story of Yorktown, the account begins on 28 September 1781, when the Yorktown Siege begins, and ends on 26 October 1781, when the siege ends. From the journals, diaries, letters, and pension files of the combatants, the author has transcribed the day-to-day accounts of the soldiers and officers, from both sides of the battle lines, that bring us into the immediacy of the fight.

In Victory or Death, military decisions that were made at what became pivotal turning points of the war are assessed from both the American view and the British view. Major episodes are: the appointment of Washington to become Commander of the Army, the assault on Bunker Hill, Howe’s hesitation of employing British troops in New York, the British loss at Saratoga, and more milestones of the war.

In George Washington, the author dispels a myriad of myths about his subject, familiar legends that we were taught to believe in school and grew up reading about in his biographical stories. The author describes his evidence that explains what really did happen, offering a more realistic and logical insight into Washington the Man, the General, and the President.

The bedraggled, rebellious, upstart colonials took on the mighty British generals, and emerged victorious. Their story of independence, solidarity, and birth-of-a-nation triumph still holds our imagination., 2023.) 228 pages.

The Crowder books are available from the publisher, Genealogical Publishing Co. at http://tinyurl.com/bdfsbnuy and from Amazon at: http://tinyurl.com/ha92hfw2.

A man who kidnapped and raped a teenage woman a quarter century ago, Mark Thompson, now 66, was brought to justice and sentenced to 130 years-to-life in state prison after his DNA was identified using a genealogical program.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan last week reported that defendant Thompson, 66, was sentenced to 130 years-to-life in state prison for kidnapping and raping a teenage girl multiple times on February 17, 1999 in Escondido, California. Judge Robert Kearney handed down the lengthy sentence after Hunter was convicted by a jury in October of 2023 of seven felony counts including kidnapping, rape, and sodomy. 

“The victim was 19-years old when she was brutally attacked by this defendant and put through a nightmare scenario,” said DA Stephan. “Justice was delayed, but thanks to investigators at the FBI, Sheriff’s Crime Lab, Escondido Police Department and District Attorney’s Office, who leveraged the power of modern DNA and never gave up, this rapist is now being held accountable for his crimes.”

You can read more in an article in the times-advocate.com web site at: http://tinyurl.com/ytmpevbj.

Digging into the city's history — and your own — has become incredibly easy thanks to the Fall River Public Library’s initiative to digitize its collection of newspaper microfilm. 

The library’s reference department has been quietly uploading decades worth of Herald News pages online — complete copies of every page, every story, every ad, with all the text searchable. In the past week, the library’s latest batch of editions came online at fallriver.advantage-preservation.com, digitized by Advantage Archives. It comes to more than 310,000 pages of Fall River and national history from 1926 to 1968.  

It’s the first time that Fall River newspapers from this era have been freely online and searchable. 

“It's a free site,” said Conor Murray of the library’s reference department. “There’s no paywall or anything.” 

Those with a nose for news archives — historians, researchers, genealogists, or those just curious about their past — may know that it’s been difficult to access most of Fall River’s newspapers from the 20th century. 

You can read more in an article by Dan Medeiros published in The Herald News at: http://tinyurl.com/4kcsazcx.

The subject of printed books and electronic books (or e-books) has been featured in numerous past articles in this newsletter. Therefore, I was interested today to see an online Associated Press article and video about numerous universities that are purging many printed books from their shelves. In many cases, the libraries simply don't have the room for all the old books, and the idea of expanding libraries is subject to budget constraints. If they want to purchase new books, even printed publications, the libraries have to free up shelf space. Also, according to one 2009 study of libraries, between staffing, utility costs, and other expenses, it costs about $4 to keep a book on the shelf for a year. 

In one example at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, (yes, there really is an Indiana University of Pennsylvania, see https://www.iup.edu/ for details), nearly half of the university's collection remained uncirculated for 20 years or more. Unused books obviously do no one any good.

Of course, an increasing number of books exist in the cloud where publishing costs, shipping costs, and storage costs are only a fraction of the expense of printed books. In addition, most students and even many older library users prefer the convenience of Wikipedia, Archive.org, Google Books, and other free sources of information along with paid services, such as Kindle.

Of course, genealogists are a part of this trend. The specialized genealogy libraries that many of us have used for years suffer from the same budget constraints as other libraries. They probably also have the problem of books that are not accessed for years at a time. Today, there are more genealogy books available through your home computer than at any single genealogy library. Just ask the folks at FamilySearch, an organization that has downsized their printed book collection in favor of making the same books and other publications available online whenever copyright laws allow.

Libraries aren’t the only ones facing these decisions. Individuals face the same issues. For instance, my Kindle now contains more than 150 e-books, including numerous genealogy books, old county histories, and more. I carry all of them with me almost every time I travel. Try to do that with printed books! In addition, most of the e-books are easier to search than are the printed books. I can find any word or phrase in an e-book within seconds with the exception of some of the books printed electronically in PDF format. For those few books, I have to search the old-fashioned way, one page at a time, the same as in a printed book.

I admit I love the feel and the smell of old and even new printed books. However, when purchasing a book, the funds available in my wallet usually dictate my choice. The cost of purchasing a printed book, shipping, buying yet another bookshelf (and finding a place for it in my home!), usually swings my decision in the opposite direction. Sometimes we don't have a choice; but, if a choice is available, I usually will select the ebook version of a book I want to read.

Which do you prefer?

NOTE: The idea for this article was triggered this morning when I purchased a new book from Amazon. I had to make a choice between paperback or Kindle. The Kindle version was much cheaper, requires no additional storage space, and was delivered (electronically) to my Kindle or iPad seconds later with no shipping charge. The choice was obvious to me.