This is just a quick note to let you know that I will be traveling for the next week. No, this is not a genealogy-related trip. This one is personal. I'll be visiting relatives, attending a reunion, and walking around the small town where I was born and grew up.

I will be traveling witha Macintosh laptop and an Android tablet computer so I should be able to connect online whenever I want. However, traveling always creates some new challenges, such as bulky or non-existant wi-fi connections. Therefore, please do not be surprised if I am absent occasionally.

I should be back home and back to normal on August 23.

Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem announced Sunday that it has started using state-of-the-art AI technology including a new image detection capability to help comb through the world’s largest archive documentation of the Holocaust.

This innovation comes at a time when Holocaust distortion and trivialization are on the rise around the globe.

Over the seven decades since its establishment, Yad Vashem has accumulated 224 million pages of documentation, more than half a million photographs and nearly 135,000 video, audio and written testimonies from the Holocaust.

“A human being could not go over all the material which houses a treasure-trove of material for the world in terms of Holocaust education,” said Esther Fuxbrumer, head of the software development department at Yad Vashem.

She said that to facilitate access to the vast information in its archives, Yad Vashem embarked on an innovative tech project two years ago dubbed “AI in the service of Holocaust remembrance” that has been implemented over the last couple of months.

It includes an image-processing ability to sift through hundreds of thousands of photos in a matter of minutes and a separate Natural Language Processing (NLP) model, specially tuned to Hebrew, which can identify names, dates and places from the millions of sheets of testimony and connect them.

You can read more in an article by Etgar Lefkovits in the J-Wire web site at: https://www.jwire.com.au/yad-vashem-using-ai-to-restore-memory-of-holocaust/.

Kasey Buckles is more of an economist than a family genealogist. Most of her past work explores the economics of the family, demography, and child health.

But she decided to try the genealogy website FamilySearch because she was working with Brigham Young University economist Joseph Price on a study of intergenerational mobility. Buckles knew how difficult it can be to track and link the historical records of one person over time, especially women who change names when they marry.

She decided to look up her great-grandmother, and was surprised to see that some of her U.S. census records were already attached to her profile on FamilySearch. In 1910, the 2-year-old was listed as Mary L. Gaddie. A decade later, she went by her middle name of Lettie. And by 1940, she was a married woman: M. Lettie Caswell.

Buckles knew traditional research methods that attempt to trace a person by following the same name over time would have failed to make the connections.

“I had my aha moment when I looked at my great-grandmother and saw all the work that other people had already done,” Buckles said. “And then I did get into it, because it is a little addicting.”

The Notre Dame professor in the Department of Economics was able to use the research to revisit family memories with her grandmother before she died in 2019. “We had this really great afternoon,” Buckles said, “where I was able to tell her things about her past that she had forgotten or had never known.”

Other people, likely relatives Buckles doesn’t know, had used their knowledge of family history to connect her great-grandmother’s changing names. Working with Price, she realized that this goldmine of crowdsourced family knowledge could be used to build a powerful tool for all kinds of long-term research.

With funding from the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, Buckles and Price created the Census Tree, a digitized database that uses genealogy research and machine learning to improve census linking from 1850 to 1940. The Census Tree website went live in late July 202

The same month, Buckles and Price presented the findings of their study of intergenerational mobility, the first working paper to use the data, at two sessions of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Summer Institute. Notre Dame doctoral student Haley Wilbert is also a co-author on the paper, along with Zach Ward of Baylor University.

Buckles said creating the Census Tree required a huge team, including dozens of undergraduate students from both Notre Dame and the BYU Record Linking Lab, multiple economics doctoral students from Notre Dame, and Cornell doctoral student Adrian Haws.

“This effort will link people across the censuses in a way that allows you to see them through the course of their life, and to see how their experiences—their early life, world events, public policies—have shaped them in a way we haven’t been able to do before,” Buckles said. “Our innovation is our connection to people doing their own genealogy research. I think this is an exciting symbiotic relationship between the public and academic researchers.”

You can read more in an article in the University of Notre Dame web site at: https://www.nd.edu/stories/the-census-tree/.

From the MyHeritage Blog:

Introducing PhotoDater™, an Exclusive, Free New Feature to Estimate When Old Photos Were Taken

If you are like most genealogists, you probably have cherished old family photos whose details, such as when they were taken, remain a mystery. Perhaps you flipped them over hoping to find more details, only to discover that your ancestors who treasured these photos didn’t leave any information behind. Until now, missing details about your photos could have remained a mystery forever, but here at MyHeritage, we set out to find a solution. Today we’re excited to announce the release of PhotoDater™, a groundbreaking, free new feature that estimates the year a photo was taken, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

PhotoDater™ is one-of-a-kind: MyHeritage is the only genealogy service that offers date estimation for historical photos. Using powerful technology developed by our AI team, PhotoDater™ gives its best guess when a photo was taken. This can help you unlock further clues about who appears in the photo and the event at which it was taken, to solve mysteries in your genealogy research. PhotoDater™ is completely free!

Check out the cool video in the MyHeritage Blog to see what PhotoDater™ can do!

I know what you may be thinking: why would I rely on guesswork? For undated photos with no other leads, PhotoDater™ can help you unlock further clues about who appears in the photo and the event at which it was taken, to solve mysteries in your genealogy research.

The innovative historical resource brings together several distinct historical records for the first time, to make a searchable biography of settlers in Ulster in the 17th century.

The Ulster Settlers Database, which brings together several distinct 17th-century historical records for the first time, is now accessible to researchers on a new website. 

A valuable biographical and historical digital resource, the database makes innovative use of historical data relating to the English and Scottish men and women who settled in Ulster in the period between 1609 and 1641 along with the Gaelic Irish inhabitants who they interacted with.

The searchable database, which may be may be of interest to local history, genealogy and academic researchers, comprises a wide selection of sources ranging from military musters and plantation grants to judicial records and secondary literature.     

You can read more in an article in the IrishCentral web site at: https://www.irishcentral.com/ulster-settlers-database.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:                           

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

Elephind is a great service that searches online digital newspaper collections. Best of all, it is available free of charge. 

Elephind.com is a search engine that operates much like Google, Bing, and other search engines. The one thing that is different with Elephind is that it searches only historical, digitized newspapers. It enables you to search for free across many newspaper sites simultaneously rather than having to visit each collection’s web site separately.

At this time Elephind has indexed 200,311,212 items from 4,345 newspaper titles. These include such well known sites as Chronicling America (the U.S.’s Library of Congress) and Trove (National Library of Australia), as well as smaller collections like Door County Library in Wisconsin. Many of the smaller newspaper sites are not well known and may be difficult to find with the usual search engines, but they are searchable from Elephind.com. A list of available newspaper collections that have been indexed so far is available at https://bit.ly/2EECuqG (it is a long, long list).

Additional newspaper collections are added to Elephind’s indexes frequently.

I found that Elephind operates in much the same manner as many other search engines. If you already know how to search for things in Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, or elsewhere, you already know how to use Elephind. In fact, there are two search methods available on Elephind:

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/13239856.

The following is a press release from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA):

WASHINGTON, August 11, 2023 – Today, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is making its second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release of documents related to the transfer of Obama-era Presidential records from President Biden to NARA, beginning in November 2022. 

NARA has received approximately 25 FOIA requests related to NARA’s receipt of these records. We are processing the requests on a rolling basis and posting any non-exempt, responsive records at https://www.archives.gov/foia/biden-vp-records-covered-by-pra. Today’s release, of Category 2 documents, consists of 340 pages of press and communications discussions about the discovery and transfer of the records. 

This statement is also posted online here: Press Statements in Response to Media Queries About Presidential Records.

The following is an announcement issued by the State of Minnesota:

Birth Records and Adoption

Law change: Adoptee access to original birth records
Beginning July 1, 2024, adopted people born in Minnesota who are 18 or older will be able to request their original birth records. Birth parents named on an original birth record may submit a contact preference form (see information below) to indicate their preference for contact by the adopted person.

After an adoption, birth records are changed to show the new name of the adopted person and new parent information. When people born in Minnesota are adopted, courts collect a $40 fee from the adoptive parents and send it along with a Certificate of Adoption or a court order to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). MDH replaces the original birth record with the new one. The original record and all correspondence pertaining to it are sealed, making it confidential and only released according to Minnesota law. Changes to birth records for adopted persons not born in Minnesota are handled by the state where they were born.

If an adopted person was born outside the United States, the adoptive parents file the adoption papers from the country of birth and the district court collects a $40 fee from the adoptive parents. The court sends the fee and a Certificate of Adoption to MDH so that the foreign birth record can be created. 

Adoptive parents must order and pay a separate fee to receive a birth certificate – see the Birth Certificates page. They must complete the application with the adopted person’s current information, rather than information from before the adoption.

Court administrators: Instructions for courts

Accessing sealed birth records

Access to original, sealed birth records is restricted to certain people under certain conditions. Adopted people may request their original birth records now, but a new law will be providing more access for adoptees soon. Beginning July 1, 2024, adopted people born in Minnesota who are 18 or older can request their original birth records. If the adopted person is deceased, their legal representative or person related to the adopted person will be able to request the records.

Noncertified copies of original birth records may also be released to a:

These requesters must submit a Request for Original Birth Record of an Adopted Person (PDF) to obtain the record. Others looking for information about a sibling or parent who was adopted should visit the Minnesota Department of Human Services Adoption and kinship webpages or call 651-431-4682.

Adopted people

Currently, an adopted person, age 19 or older, may request a noncertified copy of their original birth record by submitting the Adopted Person’s Request for Original Birth Record Information (PDF) form and a $13 nonrefundable fee. The release of the original birth record to the adopted person may be restricted. Birth parents decide whether to release information from the original, sealed record. If the birth parent has restricted access or has not actively approved release of the original records, the requestor will receive a letter saying the record is not available.

When an adopted person requests an original birth record and the birth parent(s) have submitted an affidavit of nondisclosure or no affidavit at all, MDH notifies the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS). DHS contacts the adoption agency, which will contact the adopted person about services and fees before searching and notifying the birth parent(s) of the request and providing an opportunity to submit an affidavit of disclosure or nondisclosure. The process may take up to six months. MDH will contact the adopted person when the process is complete.

This process will change on July 1, 2024, when adopted people will be eligible to receive their original birth records regardless of the birth parents’ disclosure preferences.

Birth parents

Affidavits of disclosure or non-disclosure

Currently and until June 30, 2024, access by adoptees to original birth records is governed by the preferences of the birth parent(s). Until then, a parent named on the birth record may submit an Affidavit of Disclosure or Non-disclosure (PDF) form to provide or restrict access to the record by adoptees. However, all affidavits on file at MDH will expire on June 30, 2024, under the new law, and an adopted person’s access to original birth records will no longer be determined by the disclosure preferences of the birth parent(s).

Contact preference form - NEW!

Birth parents may submit a Birth Parent Contact Preference form (PDF) for past and future adoptions to indicate whether they would like to be contacted by the adopted person. Only birth parents named on the original birth record of an adopted person can submit the form. MDH will attach the form to the original birth record and provide it when the record is requested, on or after July 1, 2024. Birth parents may submit a new form to change their preference at any time, and MDH will destroy the old form. Regardless of the contact preference expressed by birth parents, adopted people will still be able to receive a noncertified copy of their original birth records and to initiate contact with birth parents.

The following is a press release issued by Library and Archives Canada:

Introduction and program history

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is the nation’s designated national memory institution, with a legislated mandate to acquire, describe, preserve and provide long-term access to Canada’s documentary heritage.

This includes the Canadian Web! Resources in formats for the Web are recognized internationally as an important facet of a nation’s modern digital heritage. These irreplaceable web resources are important evidence of Canadian history and culture in the 21st century, but they are volatile and prone to disappearing without warning.

What can be done about this? How do we “rescue” resources generated in real time, which exist outside the normal production streams of archival records or traditional publications? How do we safeguard web resources that can therefore contain information found in no other medium, which may document national historic events or important aspects of culture as they are unfolding?

Owing to their precarious nature, immediate and managed action is required to select, arrange, make available and ensure the digital preservation and data continuity of web resources that constitute Canadian digital documentary heritage. This action is referred to internationally as “web archiving,” which is a discipline based on digital preservation and curation that is practiced and advanced by, for example, the 50-plus members of the International Internet Preservation Consortium (of which LAC is a founding member).

Acquiring web resources became a formal part of LAC’s mandate in 2004 under the Library and Archives of Canada Act, subsection 8(2). LAC’s means of realizing this part of its mandate is the Web and Social Media Preservation Program within the Digital Services Sector. The program curates data and researches collections of unique web resources documenting Canadian historical and cultural themes and events, in alignment with the requirements of modern digital scholars. It also makes these resources available to the public for posterity and to support future international research on Canada.

The web resources acquired by the program are made available through the Government of Canada Web Archive (GCWA). While the program and the GCWA are well known in Canada, their scale may not be.

How big is the GCWA? How much data does the GCWA contain?

In 2022–23, the Web and Social Media Preservation Program at LAC reached an important milestone.

As of February 2023, we are pleased that the GCWA exceeded 120+ terabytes of total data and surpassed over 3.1 billion assets or documents.

This is about the same amount of data as 4,600 Blu-ray movie discs (1,150 in 4K, or 384 copies of your favourite movie trilogies in 4K). If the GCWA were printed out on paper, it would take up some 57.5 billion sheets; stacking this up, it would reach the same height as 12,263 CN Towers!

Some program clients may be surprised to hear this, because since 2005, LAC has only provided public access to portions of its federal web archival collections. This means that fully 50 percent of the total collections have therefore never been available to the public until now.

New functionalities and features of the relaunched Government of Canada Web Archive (GCWA)

New collections

We are delighted to announce that, with the relaunch of the GCWA in 2023, LAC will begin providing access to all non-federal collections curated since 2005. At the time of launch, the following collections will be available:

• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Collection (curated in partnership with the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg)
• The LAC collection on COVID-19 and its impacts on Canada (20+ terabytes of data)
• All federal government data collected since 2005 (55+ terabytes of data)
• Additional curated collections (to be arranged and published in the upcoming fiscal year)

The GCWA is one of the most comprehensive sources in existence for the following:

• Canadian cultural and historical events as documented on the Web (2005–)
• Official publications of the Government of Canada (GC) (2005–)
• The federal and historical GC web presence (gc.ca domain, 2005–)
  • Historical GC financial and departmental plans and performance reports (2005–)
  • Historical GC policy frameworks (2005–)
  • Historical GC proactive disclosure (2005–)
  • Data and statistics from the federal web (2005–)
  • Material removed from the federal web under Common Look and Feel 2.0 (2005–08)
  • Material removed from the federal web under “CLF 3.0” (2008–13)
  • Material removed from the federal web under the Web Renewal Initiative (2013–)

Overall, the GCWA is the definitive source for any historical study of the Government of Canada web domain over time.

New portal design

From 2005 to 2019, the GCWA arranged data according to, and only provided access to federal government web resources under, Crown copyright (at maximum, approximately 15 terabytes of data were available). With the launch of the new GCWA in 2023, we have expanded our search tools and filters to help users explore our non-federal data and thematic web collections.

Clients will now be able to engage non-federal collections in a specialized portal and user interface. The relevant interface (government versus non-federal collections) will be presented automatically based on the collection being accessed.

Full text search of the web archive, individual collections or collection themes

Since 2011, LAC has not provided a full-text search capability or service to the public for navigating the GCWA. This situation was very problematic, and it limited client access to discovery and browsing. For the launch in 2023, a complex and powerful full-text search will be made available:

• Clients will be able to search at multiple hierarchical levels, from the entire archive down to individual files.
• An advanced search will also be available, including the ability to search by collection, keywords, exclusions, exact phrase, URL/domain, web resource type and date range.
• An ability to quickly search by exact URL will also be available (useful for Reference Services and practitioners).
• Further, clients will be able to discover and access the content of non-federal collections by sub-theme (for example: show all resources collected having to do with the “economic impact on Canada of COVID-19”).

Specialized reference services

The Web and Social Media Preservation Program continues to provide all clients with specialized reference services for the GCWA. If you have difficulty locating a known resource within the GCWA, we would be pleased to assist you with the following:

• Locating obscure Government of Canada official publications or decommissioned websites
• Locating obscure historical reports, policies, financial data or proactive disclosure
• Locating genres of Government of Canada content where exact titles or dates are not known
• History and development of the Government of Canada domain (gc.ca)
• Use of the web archives as a historical source or as computational data
• Copyright or privacy concerns
• Questions on how to have your web resource digitally preserved at LAC

Do you have ideas on what should be collected? Please let us know!

Please forward all complex reference questions dealing with the web archive, nominations of Canadian web resources for acquisition, or requests for computational access to our web archival collections data team, at archivesweb-webarchives@bac-lac.gc.ca.