I never really envisaged Ancestry using any of the established OCR systems. I felt there might be some significant re-work in the pattern recognition algorithms and the lexicographical dictionaries they use - plus some sort intelligent learning approach. Or maybe that is just the triumph of hope over experience. Brian -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Aidan Jones Sent: 18 March 2012 14:19 To: Gareth; Dyfed List Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers - postscript ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aidan Jones" <> To: "Gareth" <>; "Dyfed List" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online PS Add to the list of potential problems when submitting old newspapers to OCR: (i) Fairly frequent use of damaged type faces (ii) Need for more rapid proof reading - greater likelihood that words might have been misspelt (or have used archaic spelling).

Dear Paul I can help you to some extent - but there are far more experienced people in the USA who have done DNA testing to answer this very question. I can suggest two things. If you want to discuss it with the real experts face-to-face - then come to Who Do You Think You Are, 2013, next February. I would suggest otherwise you need both a standard 37-marker Y-DNA test and also a Family Finder test from FTDNA. I am almost certain there will be a discount if you order both together. Far more people have tested so far with the 37-marker Y-DNA test than with Family Finder. If you want to chat to someone more knowledgeable than me - I would go and try Emily Aulicino in Portland, Oregon. She writes a very good blog and is a personal friend of mine. She is always very busy - and will probably curse me for sending you to her - but she has a lot of practical experience with this sort of case in America. Also Richard Kenyon has a very personal experience of this sort of thing - and you can find and read his experience on the internet. He is a big fan of DNA testing to resolve this sort of problem. Just google him. We are away on holiday in Wales from Thursday for a fortnight - which is why I am recommending this course of action. If you can wait - I can pick it up when we return about the 4th April. I suggest we discuss it off-list - unless you want to continue the discussion in open forum - but I am very busy over the next 3 days so won't guarantee to reply. I am changing the title of the message thread - as it now has nothing to do with newspapers. Brian -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Jubbie Sent: 18 March 2012 11:53 To: Dyfed List Subject: [Dyfed] DNA (was NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online) Hello Roy and others I have been reading this thread with great interest and seriously considering putting some money aside for this. I have a similar situation to others on here: My great grandfather was a deserted child and grew up in various institutions. He never knew who his parents were or when he was born. No parents names were listed on his marriage certificate and no birth certifcate circa 1893 can be traced for him despite spending over £100 looking for one. In the 1901/1911 census he was recorded with two different surnames; JUBBIE/GUBBIE or STRANGE, and two differerent places of birth; London or France. My great grandmother (wife of the above) was fostered as a baby girl circa 1892 and never knew her real parents either. In the 1901/1911 census she was recorded with two different surnames; DAVIES or THOMAS but same place of birth Llangendeirne. The marriage certificate does give a clue to her fathers name but is one of the most common names in Wales; Tom THOMAS, coal hewer. There are a couple of possible candidates for this father in Llangendeirne around the right time but I have still yet to find any matching birth certificate, depsite spending well over £100 in search of her birth certicate also. I am unsure which type of test/tests would be most appropriate in helping to find out who the fathers/mothers of the above were and wonder if anyone might be able to advise me further about it, what tests would be best and who i would need to get samples from, etc. Hoping someone 'in the know' can offer some advice on how to best achieve a result for this. Looking forward to any help. Many thanks. Paul Jubbie

Hello Paul, The y-chromosone is only carried by males and therefore a close match on the y-DNA test would tell you that you and the person you match shared a great, great, great ... grandfather approximately x number of generations ago. You would have to be very lucky to find a match recent enough for your to overcome your brick wall. However as the databases grow in size the chances of finding a relatively recent match should increase. It is a bit like waiting for Premium Bond prizes to come up. If you want a chance of finding matches sharing a reasonably recent common paternal ancestor e.g. one who lived not more than two or three centuries ago, you need to test a reasonably large number of markers, e.g. Ancestry's Y-46 test. There is an MTDNA test that covers the purely maternal line, i.e. your mother, her mother, your mother's mother's mother etc. but while such tests can prove you and someone else do NOT have a recent great, great ... great grandmother in common even if you do have a perfect match that does not prove you do have a recent common maternal ancestor - unless you have all your mitochondrial DNA analysed which is pretty expensive. Family Tree's full sequence mt-DNA test costs $299 and even it can only prove that you and an exact match share a common maternal ancestor some time within the last 16 generations, which is still not very specific. Autosomal DNA tests can find matches on any of your ancestral lines but they are only reliable going back a few generations, e.g. they can often identify distant relations as far back as 4th cousins but beyond that are less useful because although they may be able to say that you and someone else probably share a common ancestor they cannot say with any certainty how far back that ancestor lived if you and the other person are more distantly related than 4th cousins. Family Tree DNA offer an autosomal test (as well as Y-DNA and mtDNA tests) and they occasionally have sales so itif you are thinking of taking a test with them it might be worth waiting about 3 months and checking their website every week just in case they have a sale in the near future. Ancestry.com currently offer y-DNA and mt-DNA tests. I don't think their current mt-DNA test is specific enough to identify anyone with whom you share a recent common maternal ancestor so I would only consider their y-DNA test using either 33 or 46 markers - a 12 marker test is not much use for proving that you share a RECENT common paternal ancestor with someone. However Ancestry are planning to announce a new test soon - probably an autosomal test but I'm not sure about that. Therefore I would be inclined to wait to see what Ancestry's new test is before making up your mind. Since you have brick walls on both your great grandfather and great grandmother's side I would be inclined to opt for an autosomal DNA test as well as a y-DNA test. However you need not have both at the same time. If they seem too expensive (given that there is no certainty of a close match with anyone already in the database) you could choose one this year and then have the other next year or later still. Ancestry's DNA Tests http://dna.ancestry.com/ Family Tree DNA tests http://www.familytreedna.com Good luck! Roy On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Paul Jubbie <[email protected]> wrote: >  Hello Roy and others, > I have been reading this thread with great interest and seriously > considering putting some money aside for this.  I have a similar situation > to others on here: > > My great grandfather was a deserted child and grew up in various > instittuions. He never knew who his parents were or when he was born. No > parents names were listed on his marriage certificate and no birth > certifcate circa 1893 can be traced for him despite spending over £100 > looking for one. In the 1901/1911 census he was recorded with two different > surnames; JUBBIE/GUBBIE or STRANGE, and two differerent places of birth; > London or France. > My great grandmother (wife of the above) was fostered as a baby girl circa > 1892 and never knew her real parents either. In the 1901/1911 census she > was recorded with two different surnames; DAVIES or THOMAS but same place > of birth Llangendeirne.  The marriage certificate does give a clue to her > fathers name but is one of the most common names in Wales; Tom THOMAS, coal > hewer.  There are a couple of possible candidates for this father in > Llangendeirne around the right time but I have still yet to find any > matching birth certificate, depsite spending well over £100 in search of > her birth certicate also. > > I am unsure which type of test/tests would be most appropriate in helping > to find out who the fathers/mothers of the above were and wonder if anyone > might be able to advise me further about it, what tests would be best and > who i would need to get samples from, etc. > > Hoping someone 'in the know' can offer some advice on how to best achieve a > result for this.  Looking forward to any help.  Many thanks. Paul Jubbie > > ================================ > Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DYFED-reque[email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Pat I would suggest you leave a comment on their blog post letting them know of your disappointment and asking if there was any reason why this wasn't picked for inclusion. Alison On 17 March 2012 23:03, pat <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Alison > > Thanks for the tip - I've just looked at the list of newspapers and am a > bit disappointed that the Western Telegraph doesn't seem to be included. > > Have I missed something ? there are a great number of newspapers on the > list so I'm puzzled why this has been left out. > > Pat > > > > > In message <CALL2ezwmV89SAJk3yOBoMAxT6S8+dQz_mUPZo0iVkaKY- > [email protected]>, Alison Bryan <[email protected]> writes >>Dear all >> >>Something to look forward to, NLW are digitalising Welsh newspapers >>(which are out of copyright) and will be freely available online: >> >>http://www.llgc.org.uk/blog/?p=3499 >> >>I'm probably more excited about this than I should be! >> >>Alison >> >>================================ >>Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html >> >>------------------------------- >>To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] >>with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of >>the message > > -- > pat

Very disappointing that the Western Telegraph is not available. I have just had to ask for a copy of a report of one Hunt Ball that I attended in 1935 to see the detailed list of the 450 guests. These balls were always reported and it is a wonderful way to remember so many of the local names of that era, historic, too. I got my copy and will treasure it. It also helped me to give information to another correspondent. Vera

I think it would be great if this is kept on list, no matter how sporadic. I think you are being helpful to lots of us <G> I am loving the explanations of how it has helped people and I have male cousins who could help me find my 2 X ggf in Wales. Eliz On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Brian P. Swann <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Paul > > I can help you to some extent - but there are far more experienced people in > the USA who have done DNA testing to answer this very question. > > I can suggest two things.  If you want to discuss it with the real experts > face-to-face - then come to Who Do You Think You Are, 2013, next February. > > I would suggest otherwise you need both a standard 37-marker Y-DNA test and > also a Family Finder test from FTDNA.  I am almost certain there will be a > discount if you order both together.

Just to add my own two penny worth  - I know that a lister has already mentioned the Australian archive "trove", and frankly any library or archive looking to digitise or put on line any old documents could do no better than use that as a model - even if there are new software developments around.   Yes the OCR can be diabolical, BUT because the original can also be seen at the same time then (A) users can contribute to others enjoyment by adding their corrections and (B) if you are looking at an unedited page it really isn't that difficult to find what you want.   Without Trove I would never have discovered that my distant relation John David Gambold of Rudbaxton, who was sentenced at Monmouth Assizes to be transported to Australia for life in 1832 eventually took passage from Sydney to San Francisco as evidenced by the Shipping Intelligence in the Maitland and Hunter River General Advertiser of 1849.   Megan

----- Original Message ----- From: "Aidan Jones" <> To: "Gareth" <>; "Dyfed List" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online PS Add to the list of potential problems when submitting old newspapers to OCR: (i) Fairly frequent use of damaged type faces (ii) Need for more rapid proof reading - greater likelihood that words might have been misspelt (or have used archaic spelling).

----- Original Message ----- From: "Gareth" <@clara.co.uk> To: "Dyfed List" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 12:16 PM Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online >I must agree that the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process is > unlikely to achieve 100% perfection - although I hesitate to say 'never'. ... > The NLW have got it right with their digitisation of Welsh journals project, > perfect reproduction every time. But the print quality of the original pages in most commercial books and academic journals tends to be of a noticeably higher order than that used in many early provincial newspapers. This makes it easier for the OCR to function to a higher standard - especially with modern books. The newspapers quite often suffer from paler patches on parts of the sheet - whether this be caused by uneven inking on the original typeface due to the limitations of the letterpress, or caused by slippages or creases, or whatever. The paper quality is also generally lower (being intended to be current for shorter periods). It is thus more likely to have suffered deterioration or other incidental damage over the years, with much less chance that any alternative copy of the original will be obtainable. Sometimes the closeness of the printed newspaper lines and the greater use of small type, or a more variable range of fonts, might cause added complications for OCR. Some early attempts at using OCR for old newspapers had to be based on microfilm (often bearing scratches), rather than the original pages. There is no doubt that the latter will produce a superior result. However in some instances the original pages might not even still survive. The short currency of newspapers meant that printed illustrations were rare before the late 1890s (or even later). Technological improvements subsequently made the process easier and more commercially worthwhile. Before this date the only illustrations tended to be based on the re-use of engraved plates, which normally had been originally prepared for some entirely different publication (e.g. a book or a magazine) with a longer shelf life. AJ

I must agree that the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process is unlikely to achieve 100% perfection - although I hesitate to say 'never'. I have OCR'd a considerable amount of material into Genuki over the years and some of the sources have presented major headaches. I use a programme called Omnipage pro by Nuance, which is a market leader, and it is true that when faced with a long run of work then it is worthwhile persevering with the 'learning phase' to the point where most, if not all, mis-transcriptions are eliminated over time. The rest can, in theory, be dealt with by a final human proof reading of course, but it all adds up to a lengthy business - as I found with the Hanes Eglwysi Annibynnol Cymru project! I read a lot of books on my Kindle and it is a constant source of surprise that the proof reading hasn't been carried out as effectively as I would have expected with a commercially produced book. And some examples of 'original' Welsh pages reproduced with OCR, seen on the net today, are gibberish. The NLW have got it right with their digitisation of Welsh journals project, perfect reproduction every time. They also give you the option of switching to 'text mode' with the caution; "This text was generated automatically from the scanned page and has not been checked. Typical character accuracy is in excess of 99%, but this leaves one error per 100 characters." And, importantly, the search facility they provide has apparently worked perfectly in the *digital* mode every time I've used it. Of course you can only 'copy/paste' individual words in Text mode, which may be it's biggest downside in practice. The recaptcha site has this para; "The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect." There does seem to be a place for both OCR and digitisation, horses for courses ? Gareth Genuki Wales http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/ Gareth's Help Page http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ukwales2/hicks.html Cwmgors a'r Waun http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cwmgors/Waun.html -----Original Message----- From: Aidan Jones Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 9:57 PM To: David Rowlands ; Dyfed List Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online <Actually I'd have put your point even more strongly. It's not merely a case of 'unlikely' about OCR not reading everything correctly - it's an absolute certainty! There are frequently issues which are traceable to the printing of the original pages. To name just a few other possible examples, there are often problems with figures such as 3, 8 and 9, and with 'm' being confused with 'r n' (hence the well-known Lancashire town of Blackbum). AJ

Hello Roy and others, I have been reading this thread with great interest and seriously considering putting some money aside for this. I have a similar situation to others on here: My great grandfather was a deserted child and grew up in various instittuions. He never knew who his parents were or when he was born. No parents names were listed on his marriage certificate and no birth certifcate circa 1893 can be traced for him despite spending over £100 looking for one. In the 1901/1911 census he was recorded with two different surnames; JUBBIE/GUBBIE or STRANGE, and two differerent places of birth; London or France. My great grandmother (wife of the above) was fostered as a baby girl circa 1892 and never knew her real parents either. In the 1901/1911 census she was recorded with two different surnames; DAVIES or THOMAS but same place of birth Llangendeirne. The marriage certificate does give a clue to her fathers name but is one of the most common names in Wales; Tom THOMAS, coal hewer. There are a couple of possible candidates for this father in Llangendeirne around the right time but I have still yet to find any matching birth certificate, depsite spending well over £100 in search of her birth certicate also. I am unsure which type of test/tests would be most appropriate in helping to find out who the fathers/mothers of the above were and wonder if anyone might be able to advise me further about it, what tests would be best and who i would need to get samples from, etc. Hoping someone 'in the know' can offer some advice on how to best achieve a result for this. Looking forward to any help. Many thanks. Paul Jubbie

People seem to think that DNA testing is only useful for two things: 1) To prove or disprove that a particular person was one of your ancestors and therefore extend your family tree back one or several generations. 2) To say where your extremely distant origins lie, e.g. that your remote ancestors entered Europe from the Middle East 20,000 years ago. However, by comparing your results with those of other people you can learn about the place of origin of more recent lines even if you are unable to extend your paper trail, as I discover after a y-DNA (i.e. the paternal line) test with Ancestry.com over two years ago. The earliest ancestor on my purely paternal line that I have much information about is 4 generations back - my 2xgreat grandfather, David Davies. He was born in Carmarthenshire in about 1818 and died in Merthyr Tydfil on 9 March 1889. Unfortunately I don't know exactly where in Carmarthenshire he was born. Most censuses just give "Carmarthenshire" as his place of birth. Two are more specific but they don't agree! One said "Carmarthen Town" but another said "Llanwenyd." Unfortunately there is no such place as "Llanwenyd." The census enumerator probably did not speak Welsh since he obviously had trouble with the place name. Perhaps it should be the parish of Llanfynydd but I am not sure. When David Davies married my 2xgreat grandmother, Jemima Evans, in 1839, his father's name was also listed as "David Davies" but that is all I know about him. However, after my first DNA test (with Ancestry.com) I also added my results to the The Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation Database. http://www.smgf.org/ Although my closest matches (with people who had taken tests with a reasonably large set of markers, 20 or more) were actually very distant ones I was able to deduce some interesting geographical information from them. The two "closest" matches had listed their earliest known ancestors as follows. Timothy DAVIES b. 14 Sep 1748 Ty-Yn-Y-Berth, Nantymol, Llangyfelach, Glamorgan, Wales Most Likely TMRCA 21 generations, 651 years ago. Llangyfelach is about 22 miles east of Carmarthen Town where David Davies may have been born. Thomas JOHN b. 22 Jan 1820 Woodroach, Mathry, Pembrokeshire, Wales Most Likely TMRCA 29 generations 899 years ago. Mathry is about 33 miles west of Carmarthen Town. Even if my earliest known paternal ancestor, David Davies, was not born in Carmarthen Town but some other part of the county, he would still have been born in between the birth places of the earliest known ancestors of two men with whom I share common ancestors about 6 centuries and 9 centuries ago respectively. Therefore those remote common ancestors would almost certainly also have lived in southwest Wales. Consequently there is good evidence that my purely paternal line goes back the best part of a thousand years in southwest Wales. For all I know they might have been living in that part of Wales for much longer it is possible that proof or disproof will be obtained in future if other people with whom I share a common paternal ancestor more than 9 centuries ago have also been able to determine the minimum length of time their paternal ancestors lived in southwest Wales by using similar analysis to the one I have described. What about other lines? When you go back many generations you have a huge number of ancestral lines and Y-DNA analysis tells you about only one of them, doesn't it? Well, it is true that the y-chromosone is only inherited by males. However, if all the males on that line for the past 9 centuries or so were born in southwest Wales then their mothers were obviously living in southwest Wales too! Therefore a lot of the maternal lines that join my paternal line must also have roots in southwest Wales that go back a long way. Autosomal DNA tests, as offered by Family Tree DNA can find matches across any branch of your family tree back to the level of 4th cousins, and can give some indication of more distant matches too. I think Ancestry.com are also planning to offer autosomal DNA tests. So far, unfortunately, I have not been able to extend my family tree any further back but, as I have indicated, I have still learnt something about my origins from DNA tests. The more people that are tested the more chance there will be of matches with someone who has the necessary evidence to extend my tree. Therefore DNA tests should be regarded as a long term investment. Roy

Hi Darryl   I love this!  I have a similar situation with one of my grandparents, who was illegitimate.  We have a 'surname clue' on the 1911 census where a different surname is listed, its not a very common name, so I am hoping one day when I have more spare cash and time to spend, that DNA testing might both help solve a family mystery and fill in a huge blank part of our family history.    Regards Sandra        >I inherit my surname from my 3x g grandmother Mary, a single mum who died in her 30s in the Pembroke Workhouse. The only lead I had to the paternity of her surviving son >James Gwynne was the "father" on his marriage certificate, a James "Meriless".  I had no evidence that the paths of Mary and James M. had even crossed but censuses etc uncovered a suspect - James Merrilees living in south Wales  at the right time, but miles from Pembroke in Whitland Abbey, but with an occupation (steward) that matched that on James Gwynne's marriage certificate. It was my luck that the Scottish Merrilees clan were conducting a world wide Y chromosome study and my Y DNA sequence (37 loci) was a near perfect match for other extant Merrilees males, thus confirming my hypothesis beyond any reasonable doubt that Merrilees had inseminated my 3x great grandmother. Cheers Darryl ------------------------------------------------- Darryl Gwynne Glen Williams, Canada -------------------------------------------------- > Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > ================================ Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

I too agree. If you want to see an example of newspapers going on-line, we've been very lucky in Australia that the National Library of Australia has been putting major and regional newspapers on-line. In most cases this is only up to the 1950s. Nevertheless, it has been possible to do a lot of family history using this resource. In addition, as an example of 'crowd-sourcing', the NLA has been using anyone who would care to register with them to correct optical character recognition errors, and tens of millions of lines have been fixed by this means, with some people having corrected over a million lines each! I hope the NLW picks up on this idea, as it i unlikely OCR will read everything correctly and this makes it difficult then to find. See: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ David Canberra On 17/03/2012, at 9:59 PM, Charani wrote: > Brian P. Swann wrote: > >> Think this is a perfectly valid reason to get excited. >> >> I have certainly made quite extensive use of them in the USA to reconstitute >> families. > > I agree. Newpapers can add plenty of meat to the bare bones of a > family as well as pointers for further research. >

Hi Alison Thanks for the tip - I've just looked at the list of newspapers and am a bit disappointed that the Western Telegraph doesn't seem to be included. Have I missed something ? there are a great number of newspapers on the list so I'm puzzled why this has been left out. Pat In message <CALL2ezwmV89SAJk3yOBoMAxT6S8+dQz_mUPZo0iVkaKY- [email protected]>, Alison Bryan <[email protected]> writes >Dear all > >Something to look forward to, NLW are digitalising Welsh newspapers >(which are out of copyright) and will be freely available online: > >http://www.llgc.org.uk/blog/?p=3499 > >I'm probably more excited about this than I should be! > >Alison > >================================ >Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] >with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of >the message -- pat

Brian P. Swann wrote: > And - to be honest - it doesn't matter too much what you think. It doesn't actually matter what anyone thinks. I doubt anyone even really cares either. When a discussion is started and comments start getting personal, that's when I take appropriate action. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk http://www.savethegurkhas.co.uk/

----- Original Message ----- From: "David Rowlands" <[email protected]> To: "Dyfed List" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 8:58 PM Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online > In addition, as an example of 'crowd-sourcing', the NLA has been using > anyone who would care to register with them to correct optical character > recognition errors, and tens of millions of lines have been fixed by this > means, with some people having corrected over a million lines each! I hope > the NLW picks up on this idea, as it i unlikely OCR will read everything > correctly and this makes it difficult then to find. Users of the British Newspaper Archive please note - this website also offers readers a similar facility (a point which certain of the site's critics appear to have overlooked) and there is no additional registration required for this purpose http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/. Actually I'd have put your point even more strongly. It's not merely a case of 'unlikely' about OCR not reading everything correctly - it's an absolute certainty! There are frequently issues which are traceable to the printing of the original pages. To name just a few other possible examples, there are often problems with figures such as 3, 8 and 9, and with 'm' being confused with 'r n' (hence the well-known Lancashire town of Blackbum). AJ

Thanks David You are way ahead of the game over here. I would make one point again - just to be controversial. If you are involved in DNA - you need to get to living people today. There is a drive to protect personal privacy which is making that increasingly difficult. So for anyone under 40 - my first port of call these days is Facebook. Very recent newspapers are very useful too - especially obituaries - but those are being truncated these days too. I regard this as the Law of Unintended Consequences. The drive in family history is to share more and more - but folk in the UK in particular fear for their information being sequestered by someone who posts it on Ancestry - it gets corrupted and can then never be undone. I really would recommend Debbie Kennett's new book on DNA and Social Networking if you want to learn more about all this. It is a globalised game now, like it or not - and I can remember back to the days when there were no Welsh family history societies and no magazines, pre-1975. Communication is instant and ability to correct things is getting almost instant - and a better quality end product eventually emerges. But some folk you encounter just don't want to hear that their work is wrong - both in the UK and in the USA, in my experience. Brian -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Rowlands Sent: 17 March 2012 20:58 To: Dyfed List Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online I too agree. If you want to see an example of newspapers going on-line, we've been very lucky in Australia that the National Library of Australia has been putting major and regional newspapers on-line. In most cases this is only up to the 1950s. Nevertheless, it has been possible to do a lot of family history using this resource. In addition, as an example of 'crowd-sourcing', the NLA has been using anyone who would care to register with them to correct optical character recognition errors, and tens of millions of lines have been fixed by this means, with some people having corrected over a million lines each! I hope the NLW picks up on this idea, as it is unlikely OCR will read everything correctly and this makes it difficult then to find. See: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ David Canberra On 17/03/2012, at 9:59 PM, Charani wrote: > Brian P. Swann wrote: > >> Think this is a perfectly valid reason to get excited. >> >> I have certainly made quite extensive use of them in the USA to reconstitute >> families. > > I agree. Newpapers can add plenty of meat to the bare bones of a > family as well as pointers for further research. > ================================ Dyfed list http://home.clara.net/daibevan/DyfedML.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Dear Charani I will just correct one impression where you are totally wrong, in my opinion. The first human genome took 15 years to sequence and cost $3 billion dollars. They are now talking about doing this in under 3 hours for under $1,000 dollars. And - to be honest - it doesn't matter too much what you think. The Americans will take this up and show what can be done - and then the British will eventually get their heads round it. Sequencing the Y-Chromosome in its entirety does have some unique challenges - to do it to the degree of precision required for family history purposes. But my plan for WDYTYA 2013 is to take a small group of Americans into the Wellcome-Sanger Sequencing Centre at Hinxton near Cambridge - and we will discuss this very topic. I have already identified who we need to talk to. DNA is not a panacea - but if used intelligently with the appropriate networking and recruitment strategies - it is a game-changing technology. But almost all family historians in the UK do not appreciate that yet - which, for me, is just great - right now. It requires a very different approach to run your family history projects. If you can do whole genome sequencing of the Y-chromosome to the required precision - you can answer the question you pose below. I will just remind you of how far we have come in 11 years. Some of the brightest minds on the planet are working on this - because of its implications for human disease. We are just spinning off their coat-tails. So it will be a game-changer - if I have anything to do with it. And at the moment I am responsible in part for the DNA Area at WDYTYA through my involvement with ISOGG. But I do agree we want both - i.e. OCR recognition and simultaneous indexing - and DNA. So I did write by email this week to Angela Crouch - who is the International Commerce & Business Development Director at Ancestry.co.uk - and who was at WDYTYA. And I will call her on Monday too - to make sure my email gets her attention. I'm not sure we need Ancestry for the DNA - but we do need them to do the OCR stuff. I also agree about the fear over jobs at Archives - but, unfortunately, money will drive this, as it does so many other things in life. I recognise some clergy and archivists have some concerns over this. But what are the Archives for - unless it is for people to have access to them? They will either gradually adapt - or retire / die and be replaced by someone with not so entrenched views as to what they think they are defending. At the end of the day - Archives and Archivists are paid for by the rest of us. You just have to contrast the attitudes of some County Record Offices with the National Archives at Kew - it can be mind-boggingly different. And I do suspect job concerns are an unwritten and unsaid part of that equation. Best regards Brian -----Original Message----- From: Charani [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 17 March 2012 15:29 To: Brian P. Swann Cc: 'Dyfed List' Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online Brian P. Swann wrote: > Well - let's try and widen the debate a bit. > I wonder if anyone on this list watched any of RootsTech in Salt Lake > City about just over a month ago? I heard about it but didn't watch it at all. 8>< > I did watch the team from Ancestry through their whole 1 hour presentation. 8>< > But Optical Character Recognition and indexing of handwriting remains a bit > of a holy grail. And you have to do that before you can get into > latin and other real paleographical challenges. But if anyone can > tackle that - I think they can. I think the challenge of OCR definitely needs addressing and Ancestry are the most likely to be able to crack it. When and if they can, it's going to open a fantastic insight into the past, not just for the family connections. TBH, if Ancestry can afford to spend $12-15m, then I'd rather see them working with FMP to digitise as many of the parish registers and old documents as they can between them and share their databases for safety as much as anything. I'm not knocking the efforts of FreeREG at all: not everyone can afford the annual subs. A transcript is better than nothing. It can also be quicker to skim through a transcript to find a family member than struggle through a parish register that looks as though a drunken spider that's fallen in an ink pot has staggered across a sheet of vellum. The image can then be used to confirm (or not). Many libraries have Ancestry, some have FMP as well, but it's more convenient to be able to access them from home, which is something Ancestry won't allow (AIUI). Much depends, I believe, on the type of licence the County Library has purchased. With the economic climate as it is currently, some libraries are looking at cutting back on the number of such subscriptions they'll take out. > Essentially that is where the family history revolution is heading > now, in my opinion - back more into 17th century and earlier research > by far more people, faster than ever. Agreed :)) I'm seeing more and more researchers who are that far back and further. At one time researchers considered themselves lucky to get into the early to mid 18th century. Once back into the 17th century, sources other than parish registers are needed as the PRs start to thin out or cease to be extant. > So all those estate records start to become important for Wales - let > alone the Court of the Great Sessions material. Not just for Wales, although that is the primary focus as far as this list is concerned. > But OCR scanning and indexing directly of older documents would be a > game-changer for everyone, as will DNA. Absolutely, although there is another obstacle to be overcome. and that is the resistance of some diocese to allowing their holdings to be put online at all, let alone on a subscription site. This is something that affects parts of England but I'm not sure Wales is similarly affected. There are some archives and record offices which are resistent as well because, rightly or wrongly, they fear for their jobs. Until DNA can tell me the name of my 5xgr grandfather's father was (for instance) Luke and his father was Matthew and that Luke had a younger son called Mark, it will remain a gimmick and "must have" that has no real place in family history. That DNA *might* tell me my origins lie in Africa or that a family with no known paper connection to mine *may* be related isn't good enough for me. Knowing where my origins *probably* lie in the dim and distant past is irrelevant to my current research which is millenia later. OK, I'm related to Moses but NOT *the* Moses, just a guy who was named after him about 250 years ago and who is now long dead. DNA has a place in the sciences but not, as far as I'm concerned, in family history. I'd rather see OCR brought closer to perfection and Latin documents accompanied by an accurate modern language translation before DNA is given more credence than perhaps it deserves. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk http://www.savethegurkhas.co.uk/

> Alison Bryan'" <>; "'Dyfed List'" <> > Something to look forward to, NLW are digitalising Welsh newspapers (which > are out of copyright) and will be freely available online: Any extension of what is already being achieved by the British Library and by the British Newspaper Archive (harshly maligned by a small number of users on its feedback page) will of course be welcome. The only slight note of caution would be that Welsh newspapers were slower to develop than in England, with no regular weekly titles published within the principality until 'The Cambrian' in 1804, and with many areas still not covered by a really local title until much later. Also that newspapers are still unlikely to mention more than a relatively small number of people - the majority of people during the 19C still probably never featured even once within their local press. Some titles were written in English; some in Welsh, and some in a mixture of both. From: "Brian P. Swann" <Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 9:52 AM Subject: Re: [Dyfed] NLW scanning Welsh newspapers to put online > We have a talk on Wednesday at the West Surrey FHS by Jeannie Bunting > entitled - Is the Internet Spoiling the Fun of the Chase? Another interesting and related question (albeit not necessarily an easy one to answer) is whether the Internet is serving to increase or alternatively to decease the *proportions* of genealogical research being undertaken which actually meet the highest standards of quality. How far does it encourage impatience and carelessness, rather than emphasising the virtues of attention to detail? I wonder what Jeannie Bunting (and others) would say to that one? There are many potentially relevant sources which are not online, and which are unlikely to be available online for a long while yet (if ever). However any difficulties of access should NEVER be offered as though they were some sort of an excuse for failing to check alternatives, in those cases where the online evidence remains no better than tenuous. If the evidence remains weak, the cautious and the most appropriate attitude is to say "for the moment - at least - there is still too little evidence at my disposal for me to be certain". A few weeks ago on another group I noticed one contributor triumphantly announcing (courtesy of an online index) that he had finally discovered the baptism - within a more distant parish - of the ancestor for whom he had been searching for many years. Unfortunately another wretched individual then had to go and spoil the backslapping celebrations by unapologetically pointing out that the burial of the same baby had apparently been entered within exactly the same parish register during the following year! > But Optical Character Recognition and indexing of handwriting remains a > bit of a holy grail. And you have to do that before you can get into > latin and other real paleographical challenges. The considerable difficulties of recognising and deciphering different styles of handwriting by mechanical means are also the same reasons why many websites use a written "captcha" as a security feature when enrolling on the site. From: "Charani" > Absolutely, although there is another obstacle to be overcome. and > that is the resistance of some diocese to allowing their holdings to > be put online at all, let alone on a subscription site. This is > something that affects parts of England but I'm not sure Wales is > similarly affected. There are some archives and record offices which > are resistent as well because, rightly or wrongly, they fear for their > jobs. The issue is for individual parishes - there are currently no Anglican dioceses in England & Wales which have issued blanket prohibitions. The situation in England is governed by the Parochial Registers & Records Measure, which does not apply to the Church in Wales (since there is a separate agreement with its church representative body). It's worth remembering that many records were originally created for purposes other than family history or local history. At first, relatively few people would have needed to have access to them. Very frequently, once the records had ceased to be relevant for their original administrative purposes, their orderly arrangement (assuming it had ever existed in the first place) would have been allowed to deteriorate - in some cases disastrously - as might also the suitability of their conditions of their storage. Remedying the situation for historical research at a later date often requires the investment of a considerable amount of time and money for rearrangement, repair and conservation, cataloguing, better storage, together with making the administrative arrangements necessary for providing much wider public access. And the subsequent provision of digital copies and indexes - whether done in-house or externally - will always require the investment of still further money by somebody or other. All of which can't really be done satisfactorily on the cheap, nor without a considerable amount of patience. Deposited collections often require a great deal of initial preparation, and protecting the necessary investment ultimately requires that people are ready to take a long term view and not merely a short term one. Which may partly help to explain the misgivings of some record offices. AJ