Genealogy Blogs and SC updates

Genealogy blogs can be a great tool for keeping up to date with new materials, digitization and interesting news. There are a few that I check regularly.

Genealogy Books - http://www.genealogyandfamilyhistory.com: I like this site because, for whatever reason, genealogy books are not always reviewed in the main publications we use for collection development. I have to constantly check Ancestry Magazine, Everton's and other magazines to see what new publications are coming out. This site helps.

Genealogy Librarian - http://genlibrarian.blogspot.com/: Of course, I have to visit a site with librarian in the title. No matter what, we are public servants and it is helpful to see what our colleagues are doing but it is good for the general public to see what we are doing, also, so take a look at it.

Genealogy Reference-http://basicsofgenealogyreference.blogspot.com/: This site is from Jack Simpson, Curator of the Newberry Library in Chicago. It is a beautiful facility. I visited it during an American Library Association conference a few years ago. On a lark, I looked for information on some Illinois ancestors and I found a goldmine. There was a book I read, not too long ago, called the Time Travelor's Wife that took place in Newberry Library. It was a fun read, actually great for summertime reading.

NEW NEWS: The University of South Carolina was recently awarded a grant to digitize a selection of South Carolina newspapers from 1860-1922. Here is the link for the press release but i have also linked this post's title to it: http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=315.

Kate Boyd asked me about a year ago to be on the advisory board for this project. I am looking forward to having input on what gets digitized. So more information is on the virtual horizon. Hooray!

Online indexes clean-up

The barometric pressure is going haywire and there is an 80% chance of rain today so it seemed a good day to do some blog house-cleaning. I went through all the online index links and checked their status. I did make some important changes that I want to share with everyone.

1. I deleted the online obituary index links for Florence and Horry Counties. I talked with Florence Public Library about their status. They told me that the index is down and they are not sure if or when it is going back up. The indexes are still available in-house. Contact them and they can still PDF an obit to you. The link for the SC Room is: http://www.florencelibrary.org/scroom.html. (Between you and I they also said that they will e-mail copies of SC death certificates at no charge.)
While I haven't heard anything officially from Horry County I heard from a patron that there is some sort of dispute over their obituary index. It has been offline for a long time and I am just removing it from the list. If and when I hear something concrete I will let you all know.

2. The links for Greenville have been updated to include their obituary index and news index. They are doing an awesome job with their indexing project.

There...it feels good to have a tidy little blog house.