Showing posts with label trade union archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trade union archives. Show all posts

Monday 30 April 2018

Newgate Calendar, DNA talks & other news : Genealogy Notes 24-30 Apr 2018

My goody bag from the Caloundra
Family History Research Inc last week
Reviewing old society journals can be rewarding - finally relocated my membership card for Genealogy SA. I obviously was using it as a book mark in one of their journals, it's now safe with all my other membership cards. Sometimes it is useful just to browse and check out urls or other resources and stories.

For example, in the Genealogical Society of Queensland's journal Generation, December 2014 there was an article 'Serious Crimes in the United Kingdom 1700-1825' from The Newgate Calendar.

Although most of my ancestors were criminals with a variety of crimes, none of them were too serious. However I'm fascinated by these types of records. The article finished by saying that the book is online free although it is a multi volume work. You can download volume by volume or browse the thematic contents including sneak thieves, highwaymen, smugglers, traitors, abductors of maidens, body snatchers and much much more.

Some of the entries are really quirky but fascinating. From the Ex-Classics home page, you can do a Google search such as Newgate and the surname of a person if you think one of your ancestors might be listed.

Blogs
Received some nice feedback on my Australian Trade Union Archives blog post for The In-Depth Genealogist. It's always nice to know that people are reading and learning something from our writings.

Tuesday's resolve is to do another Trove Tuesday post. The hard part I find is trying to pick a topic, so many interesting things to write about. Of course, it is also very easy to be distracted while searching in Trove.

Books
I've just finished reading Nathan Dylan Goodwin's The Suffragette's Secret, a Morton Farrier short story (and enjoyed it - review to follow) and now I've started on The Wicked Trade, another Morton Farrier adventure looking into Kent and smugglers in the 1820s. For me the attraction of Nathan's books is the combination of genealogy, history and a good story plus the development of his lead character as he progresses through his own life. I think we can all relate to crying babies and sleepless nights.

Talks
Last week I mentioned that I'm speaking at a Gold Coast Family History Society seminar at the end of May. Should have checked my diary - there are two talks for the Cooroy-Noosa Genealogical and Historical Research Group in conjunction with Noosa Libraries on 14 May.

Since moving back to Queensland I've done a few talks for Noosa Libraries but it has been quite a while since I last did talks for the Cooroy-Noosa group. It was in their old premises so I'm looking forward to seeing the new premises.
Cooroy-Noosa Genealogical & Historical Research Group premises

Moreton Libraries have booked me to do my blogging for family history talk at the Strathpine and Caboolture libraries later in the year. Plus I received my first request to do a presentation in 2019. No wonder time goes so fast!

What's Coming Up?
Front page of the bible Sarah Finn nee Fegan
brought to Queensland
I've just booked for the Queensland Family History Society seminar on Genetic Genealogy with Maurice Gleeson on 19 May. He is giving two talks - Managing your matches: a step by step approach to interpreting your DNA matches and Marrying DNA and Irish family tree research.

Learning more about how to read my DNA results and what to do with them is something I really need plus I have Irish ancestors from Wicklow - John Finn and Sarah Fegan. Should be a great day and a chance to catch up with geneafriends from Brisbane.

Until next time have a great genealogy week.




Wednesday 26 October 2011

Genealogy notes 22-26 Oct 2011 collecting archives & genealogists

So much for my last entry wishing for a quiet week this week. I've barely been able to keep up with emails let alone anything else. I was meant to have the weekend alone and Saturday was very much a genealogy day where I tidied up bits and pieces of filing, did some scanning, checked out some sites, caught up with print magazines and so on. I had hoped that Sunday would be similar but as it was cold and wet, the camping trip had been a bit of a fizzer and my 'me' time came to an abrupt end late Sunday morning.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, but we've bought the caravan and of course that means a bigger, stronger vehicle to tow it so we put my beloved little green 'beemer' for sale online. I secretly never expected it to sell as nobody likes fern green. Two days later my car was gone to a lady very much like myself who simply loved the colour. The 'beemer' was my 50th birthday present to myself some years ago and I can still remember my son saying 'where did I get the money' and the look on his face when I said I was spending his inheritance. It was definitely a Kodak moment. Anyway this week has been spent looking at cars, test driving and after a few they all look the same to me which is probably why I pick my cars by colour. The search goes on!

The one think I did have to do yesterday is visit the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) for a professional development seminar with the staff over a very delicious lunch. They sat there eating and I talked (but I made certain I didn't miss out by putting a chicken and avocado wrap on my plate just in case they were ravenous). Basically I was there to talk about what genealogists want when they are searching and how they might want to access it and how the UMA might be able to make genealogists more aware of what they have. So after confessing that I had been using them as an example in my talks and books over the last two years, we had a wide ranging discussion which also called on my previous work experience in various archives. (NB the reason I use them as an example is because they have an online catalogue, digitised images online (also through Picture Australia), various subject guides including a summary guide).

Collecting archives like UMA are very different from government archives where all the records are the records of the government. Issues such as ownership, custody, copyright, privacy, access are more complex with private records and especially with older material that may have been brought in without consideration of these issues. Digitising, indexing and volunteers were all discussed and that age old question of how much time to allot to reference queries was also on the table. I found myself slipping back into government speak by saying it was a 'question of priorities, resources, goals, objectives and so on' and at one point I almost asked to see their strategic plan. This morning I am wondering if researchers should look at an archives' strategic plan - are researchers the focus or at least one of the major focuses or are they further down the priority list?

The other key area was how to make the archives more visible and known and this is where I got on my social media treadmill and advocated following Twitter and participating in things like #followanarchive and #askanarchivist day. I raved on about blogging too and how archives can highlight parts of their collection and how more and more genealogists are writing and reading blogs and reading online e-newsletters. I also suggested photos on Flickr or even podcasts in YouTube giving State Records NSW as an example of an archive actively using social media to keep researchers informed. Podcasts, webinars, wikis and by the time I mentioned nings I felt I was losing them, so I pointed out that it was possible to just focus on a few rather than all of the available media.

UMA have already agreed to give a talk at the Genealogical Society of Victoria's lunchtime seminars next year and they do have a newsletter The UMA Bulletin (print and online) so it's very much a question of raising the profile and then the invitations to speak will flood in!

I suspect after I left the conversations continued and it will be interesting to see how they progress in future months (are they reading this now?). Should I become a researcher and go looking for my 'wharfie' grandfather in their waterside workers trade union records. The Australian Trade Union Archives (ATUA) website is also worth a look for any unionists in the family. You may not get direct information on the person,  but if they were active in a union you may be able to put some context around their working lives.

From my perspective I found the session stimulating and left a bit nostalgic for working in a collecting archive. I was always amazed at some of the collections held in the John Oxley Library, in the State Library of Queensland, the first place I ever worked in the archives/library field. Still, I have my own collecting archive of family history material and probably more scanning than I want to think about, so enough reminiscing and back to work on my own records!



Wednesday 28 September 2011

Genealogy notes 23-28 Sep Business and trade union records

Last Sunday I gave two talks to the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies here in Melbourne. Both talks highlighted how much is not online (based on my book It's Not All Online: A Guide to Genealogy Sources Offline) and as usual the feedback was along the lines of they 'had never thought to look there'. Two of my favourite websites are the Guide to Australian Business Records and the Australian Trade Union Archives. Although most of these types of records are not online, you can use the online catalogues to identify information that might be relevant to your own family history.

I have a few reviews to do at present (even an e-book and digital scrapbooking software so there's two new experiences) which means I have been doing a fair bit of reading this week. Given Melbourne is having a return to cold, wet and windy weather that hasn't been a bad thing. The hard part comes writing up the reviews, although they are all subjects that I am personally interested in. Stay tuned.

The other thing that has kept me busy is scanning family photos and relooking at some of my older research. By using TROVE and in particular the digitised newspapers I can now add more details to my original research. It is so easy to find stories or family notices doing simple keyword searches especially if you have dates and places. Of course once I find relevant entries, I then have to correct the OCR text and I usually add a tag (person's name or place) so that others can then find it even more easily.

When I took an early photo of my parents out of its frame (originally from my grandmother's place after she died) I found another photo behind it of a woman and child, but of course no names or date. The woman has a slight resemblance to my grandmother but I have no idea who it might be. I will take the photo up to Mum's at Christmas and hope she may know who it is.

We continue to declutter our house and make preparations to sell and move further north where it is warm. Although now there is talk we may just live in a caravan for a while before we decide where to buy. That all sounds nice but I can't see where all my family history files are going to live, not to mention my books and other memorabilia. While I am slowly digitising my research of the last 34 years it won't be finished by the end of the year. I can't see myself leaving it in a storage shed somewhere or even in a shipping container. All I can hope is that we will finally agree on where to settle on our next trip up and down the Queensland/New South Wales coast!! Christmas/New Year is going to be interesting.