Muncie Public Library (MPL) recently received a $100,000 grant from The Patricia Schaefer Foundation Trust and a $30,000 Historic Preservation Fund grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The grants will be used for the restoration of the Carnegie Library in downtown Muncie. Carnegie Library was built with funds from industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and opened in 1904. The building has continuously operated as a public library and now serves as the Local History & Genealogy branch of MPL. It is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in Indiana.

The goal of the restoration project is to make the necessary repairs to the iconic Carnegie Library building to protect the structure and its contents from the elements while preserving the building’s historic integrity. A professional assessment by Arsee Engineers in 2022 identified several priorities to be repaired, including the concrete curb at the base of the limestone facade, failed seams in the roof, water collection issues in corner gutters, spalled limestone masonry, failed mortar joints, failed sealant joints in limestone and at the perimeter of windows and wall openings, and damaged plaster. According to MPL Library Director, Akilah Nosakhere, a series of fundraising events and opportunities will be planned in the near future. “These initial and generous grants will allow us to begin work almost immediately to save this community treasure,” she said, noting that project details and specifications will be publicized and made available to those interested in submitting bids for the project.

According to Sara McKinley, Local History & Genealogy Supervisor at Carnegie Library, the goal is to maintain the building as a library offering access to unique collections and educational opportunities while also preserving the beauty of a rare and iconic historic structure for future generations. “Preserving historic places supports a community’s sense of belonging, legacy, and pride of place,” she said.

The Patricia Schaefer Foundation Trust was established by Patricia Schaefer, a former Director of the Muncie Public Library from 1959 until 1986. Schaefer remains a dedicated MPL supporter. In 2011, she donated the beautiful Sonata glass sculpture created by glass artist Christopher Reis that is on display at Kennedy Library.

This project has been funded in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund administered by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology.

A homicide victim has been identified 26 years after his body was found in Flagler County.

According to the Flagler County Sheriff's Office, deputies found the man's body in the intracoastal waterway in Flagler Beach on Sept. 10, 1997.

Deputies determined the male had been bound, shot and stabbed multiple times before being dumped in the water.

"The male had been bound, shot and stabbed mutiple times," Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said.

The victim was unidentifiable until 2021, when his bones were submitted to Othram, a private forensic genetic genealogy corporation.

With the help of their genetic genealogy team, the victim was identified as Robert Bruce McPhail, who was 58 at the time of his death. He went by Bruce. 

The ID is a huge step, but the sheriff says there is much more work to be done.

You can read more at https://www.wesh.com/article/flagler-county-cold-case-robert-bruce-mcphail/44838951.

Dropbox, a provider of online data storage, is ending its unlimited option, saying a small handful of customers were using massive amounts of resources that had the potential to degrade the cloud service for the rest of its clients. From a report:

The company's highest-tier "all the space you need" storage plan will be capped at about 5 terabytes per user for new customers, the company said in a blog post.

While the plan was designed for businesses, some clients were instead using it for cryptocurrency mining, pooling storage with strangers, or re-selling the cloud service, Dropbox said. These uses "frequently consume thousands of times more storage than our genuine business customers, which risks creating an unreliable experience for all of our customers," the company said. [...] The change follows Alphabet's Google removing "as much storage as you need" product branding for its highest-tier Workspace plan in May, according to copies of its website hosted on the Wayback Machine.

This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I find it interesting. Perhaps you will also.

Want to watch YouTube with friends or family online? Here are several ways you can do that while syncing the video playback.

It's a great joy to share a YouTube video with friends. It's even better to watch it with them. Unfortunately, this isn't always possible, especially if you live apart.

So, we have compiled a list of ways to watch YouTube together with your friends. As well as helping you watch YouTube together, these services help you sync playback so that you and your friends are watching the same thing at the same time.

You can learn how to do this in an article by Joe Keeley published in the Make Use Of web site at: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/watch-youtube-together/. 

There are many reasons why every genealogist can use the Reimagine app for iPhones and Android phones. MyHeritage recently listed a few:

Reimagine is a photo app that allows you to harness the power of MyHeritage’s AI photo features and scan multiple photos in seconds right from your mobile device. This innovative app has really resonated with our users, who have already scanned, colorized, enhanced, restored, and animated hundreds of thousands of photos using the app.

Download Reimagine now

If you haven’t gotten in on the action yet — you’re missing out. Here are 7 reasons why you need the Reimagine app in your life:

1. To futureproof your photos (and beat procrastination)

2. To revisit your favorite memories and see them in a new way

3. To seize every opportunity to collect photos from your childhood

4. To share your memories and improved photos with family and friends

5. To declutter your living space without getting rid of important mementos

6. To organize your photos into customized albums and collections

7. To create unique and powerful gifts for loved ones

Interested? You can learn more about these features and more in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/08/7-reasons-you-need-the-reimagine-app/.

This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it contains information about the FREE word processor. spreadsheet, PowerPoint replacement, and other applications that I use and prefer over the Microsoft and Apple products:

The free competitor to Microsoft Office and Apple iWork just got another update.

LibreOffice is a popular open-source software suite, serving as a replacement for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other applications. It's a great option if you want to edit documents and spreadsheets without paying a subscription for Microsoft 365

, especially since LibreOffice has more features and supports more file formats than many other free alternatives. The Document Foundation has now released LibreOffice 7.6 across all platforms, making the office suite even better.

LibreOffice Writer, the equivalent to Microsoft Word or Apple Pages, has a few useful improvements in LibreOffice 7.6. Adding the current page number to a document in the header or footer is now just one click, with the updated "New Page Number Wizard" option in the Insert menu. Tables of Figures can now be generated based on paragraph styles, instead of just from categories or object names, and bibliography entries can be edited more easily. The Paragraph Style dropdown menu also now gives you a list of styles used in the document, rather than the full list of available styles.

LibreOffice Calc, the Excel and Apple Numbers replacement, also has some great changes. There's a new compact layout for pivot tables, spreadsheets copied to another document don't lose their print range anymore, the autofilter can sort by color, and the Import Text feature (used for opening unformatted text or CSV files) has been improved.

Finally, there are a few new features for LibreOffice Impress (the PowerPoint equivalent) and Draw (a vector graphics tool). There's a new panel for switching slides while viewing a presentation, auto-fitting text scaling that now works more like Microsoft Office, and fonts for CJK and Arabic languages have been improved.

You can download LibreOffice 7.6 from the official website as the "Community" version, which is intended for personal home use, with Enterprise versions available for businesses and other groups who need custom features and dedicated support. The update should also roll out to Linux package repositories, the Mac App Store, and other places soon. Interestingly, LibreOffice isn't giving up on Windows 7 and 8 just yet, like we've seen from many other applications over the past year — it still works on Windows 7 SP1 or newer, as well as macOS 10.15 or later.

The Document Foundation also confirmed that this will be the last update in the LibreOffice 7.x family, as the group is moving to a new version scheme based on the year and month, like Ubuntu Linux. The next major update will be LibreOffice 2024.02 in February of next year.

You can learn more at: https://www.libreoffice.org/. 

The following was first published in the blog of the Digital Library Of Georgia:

The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) announced today the 7 recipients of its latest set of digitization service awards. These awards expand the scope of the Georgia communities documented in the Digital Library of Georgia. Among the awardees are 5 new partners. Awardee projects include documentation of the Leo Frank trial and folk pottery of Northeast Georgia.

The GALILEO-funded program increases the diversity of contributors to the DLG and its content. The Breman Museum, the DeKalb History Center, the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia, Island Ford Baptist Church, and the Suwanee First United Methodist Church are all new partners. These awards enhance the DLG’s coverage of the growth of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties and of elementary education in Clarke County. Materials covering the Leo Frank trial and its aftermath will supplement those currently available. Documentation of Georgia folk life and pottery traditions rounds out the awards.

The recipients and their projects include:

Athens-Clarke County Library

Chase Street PTO Scrapbooks

Digitization of 17 scrapbooks and one photo album of the Athens-based Chase Street Elementary School’s Parent Teacher Organization from 1926 to the early 2000s. 

Atlanta History Center

John Burrison Folklore Archives Collection

Digitization of oral history interviews created between Fall 1973 and Fall 1977 by Georgia State University folklore students. The interviews discuss Southern crafts, storytelling, and traditions.

The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum

Leo M. Frank Collection

Digitization and description of the materials highlighting the repercussions experienced by those who stood up for Leo Frank’s innocence.

DeKalb History Center

Digitizing DeKalb County plat map books

Digitization of DeKalb County plat map books that detail the subdivisions, streets, and property owners throughout the county from 1912 to 1936.

Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia

Folk Pottery Project

Digitization and description of the Folk Pottery Museum Collection, composed of more than 300 ceramic objects created by Georgia folk potters from the mid-19th century onwards.

Island Ford Baptist Church

Suwanee Creek Chapter, NSDAR Historic Preservation Project

Digitization and description of the records of Sugar Hill’s earliest church, Island Ford Baptist Church, dating from 1833 to 1917. The records document enslaved individuals and the early settlers of Gwinnett County.

Suwanee First United Methodist Church

Suwanee First United Methodist Church Historical Documents

Digitization and description of the records of the first church established in Suwanee, Georgia, that document the church’s marriages, baptisms, and deaths from the 1880s through the 1950s.

Notice that this presentation will be available in-person and also on Zoom. That means you can attend online from anyplace in the world (but pay attention to timezone differences!)

Location:

Irish Family History Forum

Bethpage Public Library 47 Powell Ave 
Bethpage, NY, NY (Map)

Contact Name: C. White 
Visit Website: Website.

Date & Time

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Sat, Sep 16, 2023

Cost: Free Event

The Irish Family History Forum 

 Presents 

Getting Started in Irish Genealogy 

Genealogist Melanie McComb 

➢ New to Irish genealogy? 

➢ Need to improve your research skills? Saturday, September 16, 2023 at 10 a.m. 

This meeting is free and open to ALL! 

Attend in-person, or virtually on Zoom! 

10 – 10:45 a.m. - Meet & Greet, Refreshments, Ask the Experts 11:00 a.m. - Presentation 

In-Person: Bethpage Public Library, 47 Powell Ave. Bethpage, N.Y. 

Virtual on Zoom: Pre-registration required for Zoom. Website: www.ifhf.org for Directions and Zoom registration 

For more information email: press@ifhf.org Become a Member (Discount for Students with ID

I haven't figured out WHY this exists but it does. There's a full-scale styrofoam replica of Stonehenge located in Virginia called, appropriately enough, Foamhenge. You can find a Foamhenge web site at https://coxfarms.com/about/foamhenge/ although a more detailed description can be found on Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foamhenge

The new National Archives leader whose nomination was swept into the partisan furor over the criminal documents-hoarding case against ex-President Donald Trump says she is now preparing the agency that’s responsible for preserving historical records for an expected flood of digital documents.

Colleen Shogan, a political scientist with deep Washington ties, says the spotlight on the Archives during the past year shows that Americans are invested in preserving historical materials. After events in Kansas on Wednesday, she reiterated that she had no role in decisions made when the Trump investigation began and said the Archives depends upon the White House to deliver documents when a president leaves office.

“It provides an opportunity for us to discuss, quite frankly, why records are important,” Shogan said. “What we’re seeing is that Americans care about records. They want to have access to the records.”

You can read more in an article by John Hanna published in the Associated Press web site at: https://apnews.com/article/national-archives-trump-classified-documents-aba70ea2bb1c7b8ae2f24a6d7d5631c0.