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/

Brian/Charani - I thought I might jump into the debate a little. While I missed the Roots Tech presentation, I do think DNA studies are of some use to researchers. I had a lady in Florida contact me about my surname and wanted my brother to submit a DNA sample so that she and her friends could determine if their Ingles ancestors were related to our Ingalls ancestors. It turned out some of them were barking up the wrong tree, so it saved them a lot of time researching the wrong family. For those who were a match, it reinforced the information we had tracing the family back to England (Lincolnshire) in the late 1590's. We assume we were part of the Viking invasion? I'd like to tie into someone's DNA on my mom's side of the family now - the Obray's from Pembrokeshire. I think it may be the only way thru the block wall I've encountered. I'm heading to Salt Lake later this summer to find a male Obray willing to undergo a grueling DNA test (kidding). Then I hope to find an Aubrey somewhere in Wales to see if it’s a match. In the meantime, I look forward to the newspapers coming on-line. Lynne in Tucson -----Original Message----- From: Charani Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 8:29 AM 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.

Charani The "dim and distant past" is only one use of DNA information to understand our roots (e.g. The National Genographic Project that seeks to understand past migrations etc of our ancestors.) However, there are more "fine scale" analyses that can be very useful to family history studies e.g. confirming hypotheses from studies of documents. An example: 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 -------------------------------------------------- On 2012-03-17, at 11:29 AM, Charani <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 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/ > > ================================ > 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/