Here’s what to look forward to watching from Ontario Ancestors this week. These virtual presentations are free and open to the public.
The times are in Eastern time.
Monday, February 26, 7:00 p.m. — Sudbury District Branch
Using Canadiana by Dave Obee
The Canadiana website has a vast amount of material for family historians, but not many use it or even know about it. Canadiana’s rich genealogy and local history collection includes local and family histories, telling of pioneering, settlement, and local government in early Canada. The focus on individuals and communities makes the collection an ideal genealogical resource, helping people explore the experiences of previous generations and leaving clues about their wider social and cultural background. Related documents include voters lists, eulogies, directories and gazettes, biographies, civil service lists, published diaries, church magazines and pamphlets, militia lists, publications from professional and trade societies, school publications, and more. This talk is your guide to mining the 40 million pages of primary-source documents. Register to watch online.
Monday, February 26, 7:30 p.m. — Toronto Branch
Building a Genealogy Research Toolbox by Thomas MacEntee
Overwhelmed with the number of online resources for genealogical research? Are you constantly working with unorganized bookmarks or favorites? Printing out lists of websites you use most? Learn how to build a research toolbox that is organized, easy-to-use, and can be accessed from almost anywhere.
Participants will learn not only some of the most important online resources for genealogical research, but also how to organize these resources into an easy-to-access and portable virtual toolbox.
Following Thomas’ talk you’ll want to stay for the bonus presentation, Grandpa’s Secret. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine where your ancestor came from. Toronto Branch member Beth Adams will share her husband’s grandfather’s story, and how it was discovered that he had been a British Home Child. Register to watch both presentations online.
Tuesday, February 27, 7:00 p.m. — Wellington County Branch
Eastern European Research Online by Dave Obee
Without leaving your home, you can research your family’s origins in Eastern Europe. Plenty of resources are found online, but they are not necessarily on the usual family history sites. This talk will provide ideas for pushing your research in new directions, and suggest tools that would make your work easier. It should be possible to sort out problems and questions regarding geography, history and boundary changes. Register to watch online.
Thursday, February 29, 10:00 a.m. — Scottish SIG
Researching British India Family History for Free by Valmay Young
Saturday, March 2, 10:00 a.m. — London & Middlesex Branch
Newspaper Navigator: Reimagining Search and Discovery for Historic Newspapers by Benjamin Lee
The 16-million digitized, historic newspaper pages within Chronicling America, a joint initiative by the Library of Congress and the NEH, represent an incredibly rich resource for a wide range of users. Historians, journalists, genealogists, students, and members of the American public explore the collection regularly via keyword search. But how do we navigate the abundant visual content? Newspaper Navigator is a project that I began while I was an Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress and a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, in collaboration with Library of Congress Labs, the National Digital Newspaper Program, and my PhD advisor, Professor Daniel Weld, at the University of Washington. I will discuss two components of the project. First, I will describe the Newspaper Navigator dataset, consisting of extracted headlines, images, illustrations, maps, comics, and editorial cartoons from millions of newspaper pages and constructed using machine learning. Second, I will describe the Newspaper Navigator search application, which reimagines how we can navigate this wealth of visual content through an exploratory search interface. I will end by describing possibilities for genealogists surrounding machine learning and AI. Register to watch online. Learn about attending in person here.
