Searching family history with OurDigitalWorld
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Use the OurDigitalWorld single search portals and community history sites to search for your family history. Learn more about how to search and get relevant results from the OurOntario.ca portal, our two newspaper portals, as well as the specialty sites like the Federated Women's institutes of Ontario, Maritime History, and OGS provincial catalogue site. The presentation was made at the Ontario Genealogical Society Toronto Branch Kanata to Canada 150 workshops in Toronto, November 2017.
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Searching family history with OurDigitalWorld
- 1. Searching Ontario’s Family History with OurDigitalWorld Jess Posgate OurDigitalWorld November 18, 2017 Toronto Branch, Ontario Genealogical Society
- 2. Who isWho is OurDigitalWorld?OurDigitalWorld? We are a not-for-profit organization that advocates for digital heritage as a public good We develop tools and services that connect people and their communities around digital stories and objects We enable community organizations to upload and share their local history content We provide free access to community collections through search and discovery options for the public
- 3. One search solutions…One search solutions… Ontario content: OurOntario.ca portal Ontario Community Newspapers ODW Newspaper Collection Beyond Ontario: West Vancouver & Squamish, British Columbia Illinois News Index Great Lakes Maritime History sites And more…
- 4. OurOntario.caOurOntario.ca Local history content from and about Ontario Includes more than 2.2 million records with ~4 million pages and parts from 200+ contributors Includes: ◦ Oral histories ◦ Photographs ◦ Scrapbooks ◦ Yearbooks ◦ 3D collections ◦ Women’s Institute documents ◦ Newspaper pages and indexes And more content every day… http://ourontario.ca/
- 5. Ontario CommunityOntario Community NewspapersNewspapers More than 200 years of community newspapers 1810s< Site includes 50+ publications and their content: ◦ News articles ◦ Births, Marriages and Deaths (BMDs) ◦ Clippings ◦ Full page/issue access Primary resources from libraries, historical societies, archives, museums, genealogical societies, and private collections http://news.ourontario.ca/
- 6. ODW NewspaperODW Newspaper CollectionsCollections More than 1 million pages of community newspapers 1810-2016 Site includes 50+ publications with full page/issue access Primary resources from academic and public libraries, historical societies, and private collections An ODW pilot project to test cutting edge digitization and OCR processing http://ink.ourdigitalworld.org/
- 7. Let’s search
- 20. Linked index recordLinked index record Linked issue Linked page
- 23. A word about newspapersA word about newspapers
- 26. OurDigitalWorldOurDigitalWorld Newspaper CollectionsNewspaper Collections Over 1 million pages Full text searchable No index records
- 30. Beyond OntarioBeyond Ontario See our non-Ontario VITA Toolkit sites at http://vitatoolkit.ca/showcase Illinois Newspapers & more – Chicago Area Collections http://vitacollections.ca/illinoisnews Northeast Michigan Oral Histories & Photos http://www.nemoha.org
- 31. Specialty SitesSpecialty Sites Great Lakes Marine History Great Lakes Ships http://greatlakeships.org Maritime History of the Great Lakes http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario Search Tweedsmuir Histories & other WI documents http://collections.fwio.on.ca/search Ontario Genealogical Society Provincial and branch library catalogues http://vitacollections.ca/ogscollections
- 39. Linked names Family HistoriesFamily Histories
- 40. Contributing to theContributing to the collectionscollections Answer Mystery Questions Comments Contribute your photos & stories
- 44. Saving & sharing resultsSaving & sharing results Subscribe & share My Favourites Connecting with colleagues
- 45. Saving & Sharing resultsSaving & Sharing results
- 47. LinkingLinking
- 48. Recap: Getting thereRecap: Getting there OurOntario.ca portal http://OurOntario.ca Newspapers http://News.OurOntario.ca http://ink.ourdigitalworld.org VITA Toolkit Showcase http://vitatoolkit.ca/showcase
- 49. Thank you!Thank you! Jess PosgateJess Posgate jposgate@ourdigitalworld.orgjposgate@ourdigitalworld.org
- 50. Questions? Find slideshow on SlideShare: https://www.slideshare.net/odwcoordinator/pres entations
Editor's Notes
- Search across everything… Keyword Search e.g. “Maracle” Keyword search will bring back all instances of the search term
- Use the facets on right panel to scope search results to relevant items: Location, year, item type, etc.
- Or, use advanced search for more specific terms or full name; use logic or field searches; scope by collection contributor; geographic location; and choose which media types you want returned.
- Investigate reduced results by clicking on item image
- Contributor collection record will give more details; some index records have scans or full text
- Others do not have much more than the index title and the contributor can be contacted
- The portal also includes records from other collections like Elgin County Archives. (click) When you link to one of these records, you step into a new space where the object is hosted. Use your browser back button to return to your results.
- Use the keyword or advanced search options to broaden or narrow your search; This portal offers others options for searching and browsing specific fields: search publication title; browse by location (top 100) and browse by last name (alphabetic for index records) Use the facets on the results to further reduce the number of results.
- Advanced Search – scope your search
- Unless the search is scoped ahead of time, you are searching hundreds of thousands of index records PLUS billions of words from newspaper pages. Your results sets will return a mix of these, with “relevance” being the default sort term (this can be changed in the facet panel).
- Some index records are part of larger digital collections and will have digitized pages linked to them. Click on the Linked page image to browse the page to find the item. If no page has been assigned to the index record, you might need to browse the issue or click through and search the issue to find your item.
- When you are returned a full text result, you can usually mouse-over the pages/parts links to see OCR snippet where search term has been found. This can help you determine the context and whether or not the result is relevant to your search needs.
- Click through on the page/part link to arrive on the digital page and, for most collections, your terms will be highlighted in red. You can download a PDF version of the page and save it or snip the relevant article for your files. Any other “hits” for the term in that issue will be linked at the top of the screen.
- Also remember that not all of the searchable full text will be “correct”, never mind “good”. This can be either because of the technology used to recognize the text in those pages or the state of the papers that were digitized. If you know the region and a close date range for your search, sometimes it’s worth approaching the collection by searching for the publication title, almost like searching for items that are hand written.
- Or use the “about our newspaper collections” to see a list of significant regional coverage and their date ranges. If you don’t see the publication you’re looking for in those lists, we have some other titles – mainly from southwestern Ontario – in the INK Newspaper portal
- The ODW pilot site called “INK” has some overlap with the Community Newspapers but also some completely unique runs of papers. The idea with this pilot is to build and enhance open source tools for improving newspaper digitization and full text search.
- Use the simple or (click) advanced search
- Results will return with linked title and snippet of the first instance of your keyword(s) on the page image. Use the filters on the side panel to reduce your results
- Click through to see the full page – light purple highlights show the found instances of the keyword. Use the tools panel to print or bookmark this page or navigate to other terms or areas on the screen. Remember: this is a pilot site and while the content is stable, these tools are often under development.
- Family histories rarely have one location; search our other sites to discover migrations or relatives outside Ontario’s boundaries Our extensive marine history sites are other gold mines of names and patterns of movement through the Great Lakes
- Other sites of particular interest to this group might include the maritime history collections, the FWIO collections and OGS online collections
- Great Lakes Ships is an extensive vessel-based database with just about 17,000 records, including peripheral information like owner, builder, etc, and focus on but not exclusively Michigan.
- MHGL site contains multimedia records about and surrounding maritime history, including photos, newspaper clippings, manifests and more. Use search facets like dates and location to narrow search for these and other handwritten materials.
- The FWIO has been granted money to gather Tweedsmuir and other WI histories from around Ontario They have digitized the entire back copy archive of Home & Country magazine Started by uploading and making searchable the Tweedsmuirs originally digitized by OGS Adding hundreds of volumes -- thousands of pages – every year. Branches are independently seeking grants as well to digitize then add their collections to the FWIO site, e.g. Prince Edward/Hastings Districts Full text search so much as the scrapbooks will allow – some hand written material needs page-by-page browsing Search by branch name, location, or keyword.
- The OGS site includes links to theirs and other branches’ library catalogue, including Family Histories Periodicals Reference material Other books & documents As well, the site includes cemetery transcription project records And a series of digitized images with mystery questions
- How to tell the results apart – mainly generic igraphics because items are records more than items with descriptive metadata
- The OGS library catalogue includes ID number for finding the physical item at OGS library
- Cemetery records include the cemetery ID as well as location information and Notes about historic locations, the transcription status and more, depending on depth of the record
- Family histories are physical items at OGS library; the records will include as often as possible the personal names of families mentioned in the histories; contact the OGS library to have on-site access to the collection item or see “Location of Original” for location of the item.
- Some organizations realize their records are incomplete and will ask the public to help. We’ve found that genealogists provide the most prolific answers! Mystery questions appear at the tops of the record or will be demarcated in results sets with a questions mark
- Respond to mystery questions or add a comment using the comments tab Here you will also find other responses. All public responses become full text searchable so by adding your information, you enhance the search and discovery for that record i.e. the response here re: Grey cup and in the second: regimental numbers and a brother’s name. Or, discover other personal links to collection items that might connect you with other people on the same quest
- Any site with a “Share your story” or similarly titled link is inviting community contributions to their collections. Use the advanced search or follow links to see what others have contributed.
- Use the collection options to gather items for your own use and sharing your discoveries
- For searches you would make frequently, using a feed reader can help bring back new results automatically without you having to re-trace your steps. Do your search and use the Web Tools options to save your search to an RSS feed reader (select from “alternative formats” list) Or broadcast what you found using the share bar drop down options. Share to facebook, twitter, pinterest and more… Share Bar lets you save results sets as a browser bookmark, email results, post results link to social media sites and print web page
- Once at the record level, most items will have an option to Login to My favourites My favourites lets you privately collect items from across ODW-hosted collections. Add notes and tags, save items randomly or set up specific collections to organize them
- Genealogical blogs and websites are a strong internal network for finding new resources and sharing new discoveries. We’d encourage you to share the links I’ve mentioned and share your experiences online to help others find these collections and keep an eye on new additions.