Online genealogy research

About.com has recently published a guide - How to find your family history using free web resources - http://websearch.about.com/od/peoplesearch/tp/family-search.htm?nl=1 which may be useful for those researching the history of their family.

Easy ways to learn HTML

When designing websites it is useful to have some knowledge of HTML - the code used to construct a webpage.

About.com has a section  on Web Design and HTML and has recently prepared a guide Cheap and easy ways to learn HTML - http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmlxhtmltutorials/p/learnhtml.htm?nl=1

The Old Bailey Project

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey - 1674-1913 - summaries of court cases in the City of London and the County of Middlesex were published regularly until 1913. The transcripts were to provide a true, fair and perfect narrative of the court proceedings. The City of London subsidised the publishing of the proceedings from the end of the eighteenth century. As court proceedings were increasing reported in newspapers the need for a sepaprate publication diminished. These valuable resources have been available  online since 2003 at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/.

On 30 June, as part of the Making Public Histories series at the State Library of Victoria, Professor Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield) director of the The Old Bailey Proceedings Online Project discussed digital histories as a form of public history. He also looked at what the Project team learned from its users as well as how the media have used the site, in particular the UK BBC series Garrow's Law, now in its second series and the radio program,Voices from the Old Bailey. Shane Carmody (Director of Collections Access State Library of Victoria) discussed how dispersed digital resources are linked in local projects in Victoria.

Placing the Proceedings of the Old Bailey online was only the initial project. Subsequent projects utilising the resources of the proceedings include -

•  London Lives, 1690-1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis provides fully searchable access to 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
• Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900 provides access to eleven major electronic sources in British history
• Locating London's Past: A Georeferencing Tool for Mapping Historical and Archaeological Evidence, 1660-1800 will allow place name data from the Proceedings to be be mapped onto fully rasterised and georeferenced maps

 Crime in the Community: Enhancing User Engagement for Teaching & Research with the Old Bailey Online enabled us to carry out the first comprehensive analysis of site usage. A report was of analysis was published in 2010.

Shane Caromdy spoke about the digitisation projects at the State Library and also the shift from charging for the use of items provided online to making them freely available with users providing acknowledgement to the library.

Google Docs

Recently I have been having trouble with one of my computers so decided to try using Google Docs which I could access from any computer.

If you go to Google - www.google.com.au -  and then click the 'more' tab you will find a link to Documents.

Available resource options include Document, Presentation and Spreadsheets.

I have created a number of documents for projects and then printed or downloaded them into Word documents. Google Docs may not have all the features of the latest version of Word but the basic features are there.

For the last History Victoria Support Group seminar day, instead of using PowerPoint, I used the Presentation Resource to create the slides and then saved it to PowerPoint for use on the day as I did not have online access when giving the talk.

Advantages of using Google Docs include being able to access them anywhere there is a connection to the Internet. Documents can be shared with people designated by the creator of the documents.

Google Docs is one of several online tools available for creating documents etc. Such tools are worth investigating especially when working on a number of computers or working on a joint project.

Museums Australia Conference 2010

Interesting Times: new roles for collections was the theme of the Museums Australia Conference held in Melbourne from 28 September to 2 October 2010. Generally it was an interesting and sometimes thought provoking experience though by the end of four days I was definitely suffering from information overload. As well as plenary sessions each day along with parallel sessions and workshops more informal discussion sessions were available along with the opportunity to visit a number of collections.

The official opening was held on the Tuesday evening at Melbourne Museum where, after the speeches, we were able to view the Science and Life exhibitions in the ground floor galleries. Interactive features often support the displays and as some of the techniques used in the exhibitions were later discussed  at some conference sessions it was useful to have seen and tried them. This was, of course, the first of many networking opportunities at the conference.

The MAPDA Awards reception was held on the Wednesday evening at the State Library of Victoria. The awards are presented for excellence in design of museum materials including reports, invitations, posters, catalogues, web design etc. There was also opportunity to view the current exhibition, 'til you drop, in the Keith Murdoch Gallery - an exhibition on shopping in Melbourne - as well as a very quick look at the exhibitions in the galleries which I must revisit when there is more time.

The closing reception on the Friday evening was at the soon to be reopened Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne providing an opportunity to view this collection.

The Conference Dinner, which I didn't attend, was held at the National Gallery of Victoria.

I attended two workshops in the Leigh Scott Room in the Baillieu Library outside of which was a display from another University of Melbourne collection on dentistry as practised in earlier times in Australia.

As well as at the conference sessions a number of other opportunities were provided to listen to speakers. Melbourne Conversations held at BMW Edge at Federation Square on the Thursday evening included speakers from the conference including Stephen Heppell, Michelle Hippolite and David McFadden as well as Adrian Franklin discussing the topic, Museums and collections: Are they telling the stories of a diverse society?

There were also two question and answer sessions - xCHANGE - held in the Student Bar, perhaps not the best location for hearing what was going on. These informal sessions, providing further contact with some of the conference speakers, were each chaired by Amanda Smith or Derek Guille from 774.

The opportunities presented by the use of technology in museums to enhance exhibitions as well as for communication were discussed in a number of the sessions that I attended and as time permits I will add posts about some of the papers and issues discussed.

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 9)

Comments continued
Equipment

• Recently purchased a computer – now need to decide what to do next
• Our computer is 7 years old – only Word Pad program
• Old computer & software – we have had help and guidelines, but not enough people
• Only two volunteers use the computer which is old
• Old group with no computers – I’ve just joined and am very interested in upgrading the society
• Group only uses computer for administration
• Need special equipment – large scanner
• Our major problems are training, organisation of equipment & fear of the unknown. Unfamiliar equipment is off-putting

 Finance

• Society has plans to purchase a computer, but no money for one
• Not much money, not many volunteers, no interest in computers by many

 Other

• Backlog of 50 years
• More time would be good
• Difficult to meet professional standards
• Computers used mainly for display and cataloguing
• No access to the internet
• Handful do large numbers of all the jobs about the place – we are slow oldies and too busy – upheavals and new people change things too much – struggling with images, all in fact

A success story

Our story is probably not unique among the Historical Society Network but a brief history of our computer usage might be appropriate at this time.

With the introduction of the RHSV Local History Database we made an application to the local council for a grant to cover hardware and the DB TextWorks software.

We were successful and purchased 4 second hand computers which were connected on a wireless network and now share a Society purchased photocopier as a network printer. Two of the PCs have local printers attached, two have A4 scanners attached and the Printer/Scanner/Fax is also shared on the wireless network.

Recently we have added another 2 PCs of similar specification and we now have 6 PCs on the network. All the PCs are Pentium 4 and run Windows XP and the Open Office suite of programs.

Over the last few years, using these PCs and software, we have been able to increase the quality and quantity of our publications. These range from a 12pp walk book to the most impressive, a very professional looking, 220pp A5, digitally printed paperback.

[This group now also has 3121 records in the Victorian Local History Database]

RHSV Information Technology and Historical Societies Survey 2010 (part 8)

Problems

• Time – 116
• Staff– 99
• Finance – 56
• Inadequate training – 47
• Inadequate equipment – 40
• Inadequate guidelines – 22
• Other* – 25 

 *Lack of interest, inadequate space and aging volunteers frequently cited

Comments
Availability of volunteers

• Limited number of volunteers
• Recruiting people to be involved or commit to projects is sometimes difficult
• Hard to find people interested in historical research – even their own properties
• Availability of data entry operators – age of membership
• Finding volunteers with appropriate skills
• Insufficient number of volunteers computer literate
• Limited time availability for those with limited skills
• We always need more suitably skilled volunteers
• Just commenced cataloguing project and currently training new volunteers
• Had heritage volunteers – great

Age of volunteers

• Age of membership mainly seniors – multiple community commitments
• Most of our twelve members are elderly
• Membership of 15 members, mostly elderly – secretary does all the computer work – membership numbers declining – four moved recently to aged care
• Majority of members past retirement age – most do not have computers or computer skills – those with computer skills, skills limited – many will not even turn on the computer to look at the database despite it being set up for easy access
•  Members in the 75+ age group – they have a go

Computer literacy

• Lack of interest in members learning how to use a computer
• People – not enough researchers or computer literate people
• Computer literate active members (lack thereof)
• Lack of volunteers – due to age find computers a challenge – don’t retain computer skills learnt
• Not many confident (computer) users in the older generation
• Only the secretary is computer literate plus webmaster

Building

• Inadequate space (3)
• Inadequate space – our space is storage – desperately need an office space area
• Room not big enough for more than three
• Facilities inadequate – cold! No plumbing, telephone, internet – but not enough people to warrant it?
• Difficulty of heating premises in winter
• Space / area needs upgrading & fitting out to be used – currently work is done off-site
• Society meets in neighbourhood house where no storage allowed
• Access to the building difficult at night