Research Notes is our weekly update bringing you the latest happenings in the genealogical community. The latest news, deals and upcoming events are delivered to St. Augustine Genealogical Society members via your inbox or newsreader every Monday morning.
Over the weekend we received a reminder that we’re are still in hurricane season. The disturbance that moved through the Florida Straits over the weekend is expected to strengthen. It could go in any number of directions. Even it it remains only a depression, it could cause serious damage. It wouldn’t hurt to review your disaster plan. Are your research notes and personal archives included in that plan? If you need a disaster plan refresher, take a look at the May issue of the Ancient City Bulletin. You’ll find it and all copies of the Bulletin in the SAGS Support Library.
Keep an eye on your inbox this week . . . the September issue of the Ancient City Bulletin is headed your way.
Security Alert
Last Friday Apple released a security update for all iOS devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. This update will prevent outside sources taking control of the camera and microphone on your device. If you haven’t already updated your devices with iOS 9.3.5, do it now. Open the Settings app and go to General > Software Update to check and install updates.
News & Updates
As you know, Rootsweb had a massive server crash earlier this year. Some of the content has been restored, but there are still large quantities of data that appear to be lost. Here is the latest restoration status update from the Ancestry Insider blog:
Freepages FTP service seems to be down still.
Mailing lists seem to have miscellaneous problems with archives and admin tools.
I was able to browse mailing list archives. I understand that was recently broken.
The mailing list archive search doesn’t return any emails since sometime in April.
I was able to subscribe to a mailing list.
I hear reports that emails are being sent, but spam filters are not working, so a lot of the email is spam.
User contributed data stats haven’t been updated since 24 February 2016. I don’t know if RootsWeb is currently accepting new data.
There are currently 15,297 web pages in the freepages genealogy community index. I haven’t monitored it for change, but there it is.
The freepages file manager, http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/fileman/, is still missing.
Fold3 has a couple of free datasets you might find interesting. First is the Civil War Horse Soldier Artifacts Collection which includes images and descriptions of both Union and Confederate artifacts. When available, it also includes the name of the soldier associtated with the item. Next is a collection of photos and stories of the men of the 500th Bomb Group during World War II.
It also appears that Fold3 has a growing collection of military records from the UK that includes both World Wars.
At Findmypast, more than 9,000 images from 20 publications have been added to the Periodical Source Index (PERSI). You’ll also find a growing number of American collections here too.
September Meeting
Mark your calendar for 10:30am Saturday, September 10th. Our speaker is Jack Butler and his topic is DNA 101 – Checking Out the Genes in Genealogy! Jack is a professional genealogist, author and lecturer with more than 20 years experience.