Blog — Page 6

A Google+ Webinar with Paul, Dan and Mark

16 August 2011 by Carole Riley

I am watching a webinar called Google+ the Next Big Thing that was recorded this morning at 4am (too early for me) with Paul Allen, Dan Lynch and Mark Olsen. To find out more about these speakers, and to watch the webinar yourself, go to http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/webinars.asp. It will be available online for another week or so, and then you can buy it on a CD.

So far Paul Allen is showing slides of the amazing rate of takeup of Google+ compared with Facebook and Twitter, and talking about why everyone isn’t on here yet…
Funny, I saw these slides when he first published them (on G+) and it’s a much quicker process to read them than listening to an explanation. Perhaps I’m more visual than aural.

I take it back, I hadn’t realised how much work went into +Paul Allen‘s surname analysis! On a survey taken by Paul, 93% of Facebook users are happy with it. A large majority are unaware of Google+.

Paul has found much richer engagement with other people on Google+ than on any other site, and distributed to more people. I have to agree with him there. Twitter’s 140 character limit cannot accommodate a serious discussion about anything.

What we see on Google+ now is just the tip of the iceberg. Google is releasing just a bit at a time, and it will connect people around the world as never before. I can’t wait!

Now Dan Lynch is giving us a tour of Google+. It’s an excellent introduction to the features and functionality and would make a great how-to video on its own.

You need a Google account. A lot of people have one of these already without realising it. If you use Gmail or Google Alerts, you already have one.

You can share posts, looooong posts if you like, with pictures and video and web link, to specific people in your circles. Circles are what make Google+ so powerful. You can put similar people together in their own circle, like family or friends or people who are descended from the same Craig ancestor as you. Then you can share posts or photos only to a specific circle.

I tend not to do this; most of what I share is public. I made the decision early on that Google+ is more like Twitter than Facebook and so rarely do I share anything with a specific circle. That will probably change as more of my friends and family use Google+.

I hadn’t looked at the Photos tab since the beginning when there was very little in there. It’s really rather cool! You can see the photos of other people in your circles, as you can in Facebook, but you can also see how many comments have been left for the photo.

I’ve also had another look at my profile to see if I needed to add anything. I didn’t, but I may in the future.

Now Mark is giving us a live demonstration of the Longest Hangout, still running after a month or so… Holding documents up in front of the camera so the rest of us can see them is not an ideal way of sharing documents. There are other ways, though. They require the installation of additional software.

Manycam.com has a free download to screencast in hangouts, and so does webcammax.com. I’ll give that a go!

Use Livestream.com to stream a hangout live over the internet. Free account includes ads, a paid account has no ads but costs… a lot. There was a mention of something called Virtual Cable that I missed.

Skype, Facebook and so on also allow meetings online. Google hangouts are just easier. Hold down CNTRL key and then + or – to make parts of the hangout window (video or chat) bigger or smaller. Hangouts can be shown to large groups of people, in a seminar room or whatever.

Incoming! Incoming is where you can see things that people are sharing with you that are not in your circles and so don’t appear in your main stream.

Google+ is only in beta testing. It’s not cooked yet. By the time Google has finished adding things to it, it will be amazing!

If you want an invitation to Google+ go to Dan’s website at http://danlynch.net/ and click on the G+ Invite friends link. It looks like this:

Filed Under: Communication, Social Media Tagged With: communication, Google, social media

Gazetteer of Central Polynesia, 1857

12 August 2011 by Carole Riley

A gazetteer of Central Polynesia was published in the Sydney Morning Herald over some months in 1857. Included were placenames in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

It can be seen that the spelling is not what we know today, so be mindful of this when you search.

I have added the articles making up the gazetteer into a list called ‘Fiji gazetteer’ on the Trove website at http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=13361

Here is an example from Friday 3rd July 1857, covering the first half of the listing for places beginning with N.

If you come across a placename in an old book or document that you can’t recognise, perhaps it is listed here with a spelling that you wouldn’t have suspected.

Filed Under: Fiji, Newspapers Tagged With: Fiji, gazetteers, newspapers, Samoa, Tonga

How to search for probate files at State Records NSW

4 August 2011 by Carole Riley

Probate is the process of proving that a will left by a deceased person is genuine. Probate files are created by the NSW Supreme Court (or equivalent in other States) and transferred gradually to State Records NSW. They are more commonly called ‘probate packets’, since all the documents are folded in three into an envelope.

Probate packets can contain all sorts of goodies, including a copy of the will, an inventory of assets, affidavits from family members, and sometimes a copy of the death certificate and newspaper notices. Intestate Estate files can also be found, where the deceased did not leave a will.

State Records NSW holds probate packets up to the 1980s, but to find the reference involves searching the index on microfiche created by the NSW Supreme Court. State Records NSW has been gradually adding each packet to it online catalogue, Archives Investigator, so that we can search from home.

Now and Then, the State Records NSW newsletter, describes the packets that have been listed so far and how to find them, and I can do no better than to quote the article here (updated September 2014).

More probate packets listed in Archives Investigator Over 300 000 individual (NRS 13660) Probate Packets are available in Archives Investigator! Listed so far are:

•             Series 1: April 1817 to c. May 1873

•             Series 2: 1873 to 1876

•             Series 3: 1876 to c.1890

•             The years 1928-1976 from Series 4 – Series 4-152150 to Series 4-828673. Part of 1989 has also been listed.

To check if the details of your ancestor’s Probate Packet is now available online just go to Archives Investigator – Simple Search, key in the name of your ancestor followed by the word ‘death’ and click on the ‘Search’ button. If you locate a relevant result you then have the option to order a photocopy of the probate or preorder the probate packet to view in person at the Western Sydney Records Centre (WSRC). A more comprehensive explanation can be found here.

Search for your elusive ancestor today http://investigator.records.nsw.gov.au/

Do a search for all your New South Wales ancestors, male and female, and plan a trip out to the Western Sydney Records Centre (WSRC) at Kingswood. Take your digital camera, or use the camera setup they have. Be prepared to pay for photocopies if you can’t deal with the folded up pages. You won’t regret it!

Retrieval orders for probate packets are only sent at certain times of the day, so you can save time by pre-ordering up to four packets a day or two before your visit, to be waiting for you when you arrive.

Filed Under: Courts, Probate Tagged With: archives, death, probate

Can Google+ replace Facebook and Twitter?

12 July 2011 by Carole Riley

I’ve been playing with Google+ for a few days now, and I’ve had some time to experiment and to see how others in my circles are reacting to it.

Most seem to be using it as a substitute for Facebook – posting to a limited audience in their own circles. Many of them like that you can more easily post about specific subjects to specific people, a capability that Facebook has but hides very well.

The more public figures – developers and power-bloggers, for example, are making everything public; it is part of their professional persona. A few of the power users are replacing their blogs altogether, because they are getting more engagement on Google+ than they ever did in their blogs.

Can it be used both ways at once? Does it have to be one or the other?

I use Facebook for sharing with friends and family, and with my broader genealogical circle of friends, many of whom I have never met personally. I use Twitter for the broader genealogical sharing and for the occasional rant during QandA and so on. Twitter is where I go to find out what is going on in the world.

I have been trying to decide how Google+ could replace both Facebook and Twitter, and I can’t make it work. I’ve been thinking a lot (probably too much, given everything I’m supposed to be doing), and here are some reasons I’ve come up with, in a random and possibly confusing order. I’m sure many, if not all, will change as Google+ matures and grows.

When I want to make public pronouncements, I go to Twitter, and when I want to make more personal ones, I go to Facebook. If I want to do both in Google+ I have to make a few decisions before each post. Google+ defaults the circle you will post your message to depending on what you had last time. Most of us don’t think or check before we post; we just type the message and hit ‘send’. Maybe that will change over time, and maybe we will get more used to it, but as an IT developer I can see that if it’s not immediately obvious people won’t ‘get it’. And they’re not getting it yet.
There are not many people on Google+ yet, and most of the ones I know are genealogists or techos. (Or both). Mostly they post about genealogical subjects or about Google+, although some are starting to share their photos. There are not many posts, and so not much reason to visit multiple times in a day. Yet. Whereas I have Facebook open all day, and am more likely to comment on my day there. Google+ doesn’t seem like the place where anyone would be interested.
On that last topic – Google+ posts when someone comments on a photo in an existing Picasa Web album, so we are now seeing a lot of photos posted as though they are new. This is mildly annoying but the people at Google are tweaking this.
There is not enough integration with other sites. I have already seen many complaints about Google+ not integrating with Blogger, which is Google‘s own blog site. I would also like to be able to post in multiple sites at once, since I am an active member in multiple sites. Again, I’m sure this will change with time, unless some of the sites lock the others out.
Facebook just feels more casual. I am more likely to use the Like button than the +1 button, because +1 feels like I am recommending something, whereas Like just feels like I like it. There’s a big difference in social terms.
I use Twitter in a more professional capacity, and that’s where I go when I want to be updated on what’s happening in the world in general and genealogy in particular. Google+ feels more like an expanded Twitter than a friendly sharing space for family and friends.
I do a lot of my public speaking explaining to people that Facebook is safe, and that it’s worth trying because that’s where their friends and family are likely to be. And they are. They are not in Google+.
Although it’s easy to put people into circles and post to particular circles, I don’t think the posting is intuitive, and I’m not sure what could be done to avoid problems when you don’t notice that your new message has defaulted to the last circle you posted to. Especially if it was Public.
I can get around this problem in Twitter by using third-party tools such as Tweetdeck, where I can categorise my contacts into columns and I can easily see which of my multiple Twitter accounts (and Facebook accounts and pages) is posting or replying to a particular message. Maybe something similar will come for Google+. There is already an option for multiple users in Google+ that comes with more warnings than I care to deal with at the moment.
Google wants us to bring everything we do on the web together in one place. Why leave Google when everything is there? I have not taken these concerns seriously before, but now even I am faintly uneasy. I don’t like that Google+ shows me the people in my Gmail address book to recommend I add them to a circle without me asking for it.

As a Facebook substitute where people share personal stuff Google+ is not working for me, so I’m going to experiment with it as a Twitter substitute, and go Public. You won’t see YouTube videos I find cute, or pictures of my previous holidays (unless someone comments on one of them perhaps, since it’s linked to my personal Google account), but just what I think about things that matter to me as a genealogist and social media fan.

I don’t know if people who are not in Google+ can see public posts, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. You can see my Google+ profile at http://gplus.to/CaroleRiley. At least I hope you can!

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Social Media, Tools and Resources Tagged With: communication, FaceBook, Google, social media, Twitter, websites

First look at Google+

9 July 2011 by Carole Riley

Google+ is Google‘s new experiment in the world of social networks. I say ‘experiment’ because it is only in limited release; you have to wait for someone to be able to invite you, and then you have to accept the invitation during one of the brief, unpredictable periods when new members are being accepted. I also call it an ‘experiment’ because Google have tried something similar before. It was called Google Wave and it didn’t catch on. Google Wave was removed from circulation.

It is inevitable that Google+ will be compared to Facebook and Twitter, and I will be doing the same. I’ve been using both for some years now, and have watched them evolve and become more useful. Google+ is only a beginner, and will become more useful as it grows, adds more features and tweaks, and more people get into it.

I’ve been on Google+ for an hour or so now; long enough for some first impressions:

Looks

So far I like it. It looks clean and easy to understand. Perhaps that will change as new features are added and it gets more complicated, but for the time being I prefer being there than in Facebook.

Friends

In Google+ you add people to circles. The ability to do this, and to differentiate circles, is built into the product and is very friendly and intuitive. Circles are like lists in Facebook and Twitter. You can categorise people according to whether they are friends, family, acquaintances or people you follow; or you can add your own categories. I have already added ‘genealogists’ and ‘Australia’, as many of the people in my circles are genealogists and/or Australians and some of the things I post are only relevant to them. No point asking a Canadian genealogist about what was on ABCTV in Australian last night.

Messages

Google+ looks much like Facebook when you get into it. You get a feed of all the news from the people in your circles, in descending chronological order from the most recent down. Where Google+ is different is that it is very easy to filter the stream by circle, so that you see only the messages in your Family circle, or your Genealogists circle:

If I am displaying all circles and I want to post something, I am asked who I want to share it with:

And it won’t let me post it without selecting someone. So if I’m going to make it public I can’t make a mistake. But if I then post again it assumes what I said last time – Public. So watch out for that.

I think the difference here is that people now use Facebook for their friends and Twitter for everyone. You know that if you use Twitter all the world can see it. So you make the decision before you go in. With Google+ you have to make the decision each time you post something. I think that could be confusing, and perhaps dangerous.

It’s new, though, and so am I, so I’ll withhold my final judgement for the time being.

Photos

Uploading photos is appallingly slow compared to Facebook. I upload photos to Facebook on a regular basis, often from my phone. It’s relatively quick and I can share them without worrying that they are too big for my blogging software. So I’ve tried to upload photos to Google+ of the HMB Endeavour from a recent trip to Cairns. I started it off and went to do some things. I wish I’d recorded when I started it, because it’s still only half way through. Maybe the quality is better, but who’s going to care?

Again, perhaps this is a startup thing, and it will improve as it gets bigger and more experienced. I haven’t uploaded photos to Picasa Web for a long time so I can’t really make that comparison.

When it eventually finished uploading I saw there was a photo I had selected by mistake, and I can’t work out how to remove it. Perhaps I have to go to Picasa Web to do that.

I’ve gone to Picasa Web and it’s changed now that I’m on Google+:

You can see my Endeavour album here. It seems I can edit the album in Picasa Web but not in Google+. Perhaps that will change. I will leave the odd photo there so you can see it. Leave a comment if you pick the odd one!

Organisations

As social beings we don’t just deal with people as individuals; we deal with organisations as well. Facebook and Twitter both allow organisations to connect with us, sharing their news and new features.

Google+ isn’t yet at this stage, so it unfair to judge. When it is ready for organisations there will be a whole new layer of complexity. Or maybe not!

The default circles include one called ‘Following’. Following is what you do to organisations in Facebook and Twitter, so perhaps Google+ has already distinguished them for us. If the people/organisations we ‘follow’ are in separate circles from family, friends, and genealogists then perhaps the distinction will be enough to keep the separate functions of Google+ in our minds. When we want to ‘read the news’ we open the ‘Following’ circle, and when we want to chat to friends we open the Friends circle. If we want to interact with the organisation we can.

Well, those are my first impressions of Google+. What have yours been?

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Featured Articles, Sharing, Social Media, Tools and Resources, Websites Tagged With: communication, FaceBook, Google, photos, sharing, social media, Twitter, websites

Blue Books

19 June 2011 by Carole Riley

Blue books were used to send data back to the Colonial Office in London about how the Colony was doing. Every Colony had to send one every year, including Fiji. From what I can find out they started in 1876 and finished in 1940. The task usually fell to the office of the Colonial Secretary.

Blue Books give a snapshot of the country in time, and since the snapshots are taken every year you can get an idea of how the country is developing over time. Revenue and expenditure, population, education, imports and and exports, agriculture, total grants of land, gaols and prisoners, criminals, lunatic asylums, hospitals, charitable institutions, banks, railways and roads; nothing was overlooked. The British Government was paying for this colony and it wanted to know what it was getting for its money.

Blue Books also list government employees. All of them. So if your person of interest was working in the government or holder of a recognised native office you can follow him or her over time to see what position was held.

The headings listed in the Contents page for 1890 were:

Here is a piece of a random page from the List of Officers on page 77 of the 1890 edition:

You can see everyone here from the Chief of Rotuma and the Buli Bua down to a clerk in Suva Hospital and another in Levuka Post Office. The numbers in the right column refer to the page in the report where the job is described. I’m sorry I didn’t check the page where the Chief’s jobs are described!

Another interesting section is the answers to set questions about prisons:

As onerous a task as it must have been for the Colonial Secretary and his Office to compile these reports every year, we historians must be grateful that they did so.

The Mitchell Library in Sydney has a collection from 1890 to 1940.

The National Library of Australia has them on microfilm from 1876 to 1940 with some gaps.

The University of Queensland has a run from 1889 to 1940.

Other Australian libraries have shorter runs. Check Trove for details.

Filed Under: Fiji, Government Tagged With: Colonial Secretary, Fiji, government

Ask Archivists!

9 June 2011 by Carole Riley

Today was Ask Archivists Day. In much of the world it still is, Australia being ahead of most of the rest of the world. It was/is a great opportunity to ask an archivist a question and have it answered. The hashtag to use is #AskArchivists. You don’t have to be a member of Twitter to read the conversation; only if you want to ask a question.

Questions were varied, from very broad, such as ‘what does an archivist do?’ to quite specific. I asked the National Archives of Australia (@naagovau) a question about understanding the codes and abbreviations on their Defence service records, which are digitised for World War I and in the process of being digitised for World War Two. This is a question that has puzzled me for a while.

@naagovau pointed me to their list of abbreviations and suggested that perhaps @AWMemorial (The Australian War Memorial) could help, which they did with a link to their glossary, which is very comprehensive. Question answered! I’m looking forward to going back through the service records I have for my family with new understanding.

Other questions had to do with such things as where records of births, marriages and deaths are held, and non-British aliens during the two world wars.

I also asked a question of archives in general:

And these are some of the answers:

From this straw poll I can see that archives have been on Twitter for up to two years, with at least one jumping on only today. They use Twitter to communicate with researchers and other organisations, and to give snapshots of their collections. Letting people know what they have that we might want is an important job, and I’m so glad they do it.

There were also some jokes. I asked:

The best answer was:

And then there were comments:

You’ve got to love archivist jokes!

It’s days like this that remind me why I love Twitter! It’s still going on now, have a look.

Filed Under: Communication Tagged With: archives, Twitter

Family history societies using social media

8 June 2011 by Carole Riley

I have written previously about how family history societies can use social media and why I think they should. Social media is a great way to connect with people and let them know what you offer, especially people you may not otherwise reach.

I would love to start a list of societies that use social media – Facebook, Twitter, a blog, Flickr, YouTube, and so on – and put it on this site somewhere. Currently the list is so small that it seems almost counter-productive, but I am willing to try it.

If your society uses social media in any way, or you know of a society that uses it, please let me know.

Filed Under: Blogs, Facebook, Social Media, Societies Tagged With: blogs, communication, Communities, FaceBook, sharing, social media, Twitter

My grandfather served in World War Two after all

6 June 2011 by Carole Riley

I have written previously about how I hadn’t realised my grandfather had a defence forces service file until I saw his name in an index. The file hadn’t been digitised when I searched for it, so I ordered it and waited.

I recently got an email from the National Archives of Australia to say that my file was ready to download.

It turned out to be 16 pages. Richard Norman Eason of Hill Street, Blayney, farmer and grazier, was taken on strength of the 26th Battalion of the Volunteer Defence Corps in March 1943.

He joined the VDC, or Volunteer Defence Corps. According to Wikipedia:

The Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) was an Australian part time volunteer military force of World War II modelled on the British Home Guard. The VDC was established in July 1940 by the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) and was initially composed of ex-servicemen who had served in World War I.^[1] Thegovernment took over control of the VDC in May 1941, and gave the organisation the role of training for guerrilla warfare, collecting local intelligence and providing static defence of each unit’s home area.^[1] General Harry Chauvel, who had retired in 1930, was recalled to duty in 1940 and appointed Inspector-General of the VDC. Chauvel held this position until his death in March 1945.^[2]

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Government expanded the VDC in February 1942. Membership was open to men aged between 18 and 60, including those working in reserved occupations. As a result, the VDC reached a peak strength of almost 100,000 in units across Australia.^[1]

As the perceived threat to Australia declined the VDC’s role changed from static defence to operating anti-aircraft artillery, coastal artillery and searchlights. Members of inland VDC units were freed from having to attend regular training in May 1944 and the VDC was officially disbanded on 24 August 1945.^[1]

According to his Service and Casualty Form he was trained at the Millthorpe School of Instruction for a few days. I would love to know what sort of training he received.

There are no further entries on the form until the disbanding of the unit in September 1945.

This does explain why my grandfather was sent off to look for escaped Japanese prisoners of war during the Cowra Breakout. I guess those sorts of orders don’t appear here.

You can see more about the Australian defence forces here.

Filed Under: Armed Services, Case Studies Tagged With: archives, military, war

Gazetteer of Central Polynesia, 1857

How to search for probate files at State Records NSW

Blue Books

Ask Archivists!

My grandfather served in World War Two after all

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