Genealogy Path

The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2007 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com. 

I have written several times about Google Books and occasionally about Microsoft Books. Those two organizations are working with some major libraries to scan millions of older books. However, some libraries are no longer cooperating. They do not like the restrictions placed by those companies.

Several libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Google pays to scan the books and does not directly profit from the resulting Web pages, although the books make its search engine more useful and more valuable. However, Google does not allow the scanned books to be made available on other commercial search services. Microsoft Books has somewhat similar restrictions. Some libraries, like the Boston Public Library and the Smithsonian Institution, refuse to accept such restrictions. Instead, they are now affiliating with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Last month, the Boston Library Consortium of 19 research and academic libraries in New England that includes the University of Connecticut and the University of Massachusetts, said it would work with the Open Content Alliance to begin digitizing the books among the libraries’ 34 million volumes whose copyright had expired. These 19 libraries are not willing to accept the restrictions that are in the Google and Microsoft agreements.

“We understand the commercial value of what Google is doing, but we want to be able to distribute materials in a way where everyone benefits from it,” said Bernard A. Margolis, President of the Boston Public Library, which has in its collection roughly 3,700 volumes from the personal library of John Adams.

It is interesting to note that Bernie Margolis of the Boston Public Library is well known as one of the leading library experts of today. His opinions will carry considerable weight.

You can read more about these issues in the New York Times at http://tinyurl.com/2mzhbb.

NOTE: The New York Times often places articles online for only a few days but then removes them. The article is available as I write these words but may disappear soon.

My thanks to Amelia James for telling me about this article.

Posted by Dick Eastman on October 22, 2007

Tags: digitized books, eastman, google, libraries, microsoft, online books
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Books We Own: Using Other People’s Personal Libraries to Find Your
Family
  By Jana Lloyd

Sometimes, amid all the links on RootsWeb’s homepage, useful resources get lost. We continually tout the advantages of adding your family tree to WorldConnect, posting queries about your family on message boards, or joining a mailing list to keep updated on an area, name, or topic of interest to you. But what about some of the other resources available on
RootsWeb?

This week, I’d like to highlight a very useful, but often overlooked resource on RootsWeb: “Books We Own.”

What Is “Books We Own?”

Simply put, Books We Own is a list of genealogical books owned by different volunteers who are willing to do look-ups. 1,500 volunteers contribute to the project, and all are willing to look up genealogical information in one or more of their family history books.

More than 1,000 surnames are represented in the books, which include family histories, town and county histories, atlases, gazetteers, directories, and more. There are books on the U.S., multiple Canadian provinces, and forty-nine other countries.

How Do I Find Out Whether There Is a Book of Interest to Me?

To find out if there is a book that might have details you’re looking for about your family, click on the “Books We Own” link under “Hosted Volunteer Projects” on the RootsWeb homepage; or, go here: http://www.rootsweb.com/~bwo/

Scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see a search box and a Master Index. Enter a term you are looking for or browse through the index. It is divided into regions and other categories. To find a book on a particular surname, click the “Family Genealogies” link.

How Do I Request a Look Up?

If you find a book of interest to you, request a look-up by clicking on the link at the end of the book citation.

A form will appear where you can fill out your information, the name of the book, the surname(s) you want looked up, and any additional information that will help the volunteer in his/her search. Some but not all volunteers will provide photocopies or scans of pages. If this is the case, you will need to reimburse the volunteer for the cost of
copies and postage.

A useful request will include the name of the book you want a look-up performed in, full names of the people you are looking up information for, relevant dates, and any other information that may help the volunteer distinguish your ancestor from someone else. A good sample request, taken from the “Helpful Tips” section of the site, looks like
this:

Subject: BWO Look-up of Fingerhut in Ohio

Please look in your books Early History of Coshocton County, Ohio and Cemeteries of Paulding County, Ohio for John, James, Sarah and Lucinda Fingerhut who lived in Coshocton County from 1820-1850 and Paulding County from 1850-1900.

Here are a list of other helpful tips for effectively filling out a request form: http://www.rootsweb.com/~bwo/tips.html

Have a Book You Want to Contribute?

If you have a book you think would be of value to others, and you would be willing to volunteer your time to do look-up requests, you can register to become a volunteer for “Books We Own” by going to the contributor’s page: http://www.rootsweb.com/~bwo/contrib2.html

Make sure to read all the instructions for contributors. You will want to pay special attention to the copyright laws. If your book was published before 1923 you can freely transcribe or photocopy from it. If it was published after 1923, you will only be able to say whether you found an individual in the book and provide brief excerpts of it, unless you have permission from the author or publisher or the book contains a copyright-waiver clause.

And the Moral of the Story Is. . .
“Books We Own” is one of many great services provided by RootsWeb volunteers. It breaks down research barriers and allows us all to enlarge our genealogical libraries. Take a few minutes to browse the library of available books and see if any are of interest to you; or, choose to give back by listing your own book and making your resources available to us all.

Previously published in RootsWeb Review: 26 September 2007, Vol. 10, No. 39

Tags: free, libraries, look-ups, personal, Resources, rootsweb
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