The Genealogy Guys Podcast, co-hosted by George G. Morgan and Drew Smith, and Vivid-Pix, makers of RESTORE photo and document restoration software, announced Friday at the virtual RootsTech Connect 2021 conference that Ontario Ancestors was the recipient of their Unsung Heroes Grant.
The Unsung Heroes Grant program is designed to provide a scanner and software to help genealogical societies, historical societies, and museums make digital images available to the genealogy community.
The grant includes a high-quality scanner, software to save and back up images, and two copies of Vivid-Pix RESTORE software. The package is valued at $500.
In the news release, the Genealogy Guys Podcast and Vivid-Pix said, they “salute these selfless volunteers whose efforts make invaluable genealogical and historical information available to researchers around the globe.”
Ontario Ancestors, also known as the Ontario Genealogical Society, has access to unique microfilm collections, including content published as early as 1750 and as late as the 2000s. The materials include newspapers, wills, and local church records.
These record collections are relatively small and are currently held by local genealogy branches or by public libraries, none of which can afford the cost to commercially digitize their materials.
Ontario Ancestors performs the digitization service for free.
The project originated with their Societies Tech Team building their own Provincial Heritage Cloud system and purchasing a microfilm scanner.
The system is loaned out to society branches and to libraries across Ontario to do the work. The only cost to Ontario Ancestors is that the society retains a copy and assists with making the digital material available online.
Since 2019, more than 300,000 images have been digitized.
Because these records have been previously housed in small, local collections, without exposure to the mainstream genealogical community, placing these records online will have a huge impact. The goal of the society is “Free the Data.” Ontario Ancestors is careful to ensure compliance with all privacy and copyright laws.
The Ontario Genealogical Society was founded in 1961 and has been operating under the name Ontario Ancestors since 2018.
Congratulations to Ontario Ancestors and their volunteers for this well-earned recognition.
Savoir faire is an occasional feature about genealogists and genealogical societies and organizations that are doing good things. To read about other creative and inspirational ideas, click on the ‘Savoir faire’ category in the right margin.
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