David Mattison: HistoryFindings

Collect British, new British Library digital collection

Fri, 30 May 2003 05:48:03 GMT

"Collect Britain is the British Library's largest digitisation project to date. Phase One is now live. Over the coming 12 months we will be adding more and more resources. By Summer 2004 you'll be able to view and hear a staggering 100,000 images and sounds selected from our world-renowned historical collections simply by viewing www.bl.uk/collectbritain."

Source: British Library, Collect Britain

Canadian History Website Review open for contributions

Sat, 12 Apr 2003 05:31:38 GMT

The Canadian History Website Review from the Carleton Centre for Public History (Carleton University) offers reviews of Canadian public history Web sites based on a rigorous set of criteria orginally developed at the Public History Resource Center in the United States.

MyFamily Gets Larger

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 14:37:43 GMT

Thanks to Tara Calishain for noting in ResearchBuzz that MyFamily.com bought Genealogy.com. Yet another blended software family, er, company. Tara cites a Yahoo Finance press release dated April 8 which indicates the purchase includes promotional tie-ins to A&E Television Networks. Owned by the Hearst Corporation, ABC, and NBC, A&E TV includes The History Channel, The Biography Channel, History International, and Biography Magazine.

According to the press release, MyFamily.com is "among the largest online subscription businesses, with over one million paid subscriptions. ... The company provides both free and paid subscription services through it's network of Internet properties, which include: Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, RootsWeb.com, and MyFamily.com. The Company also publishes Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Family Tree software, Ancestry magazine, [and] Genealogical Computing magazine ...."

Genealogy.com brings to the mix its Family Tree Maker software and the free GenForum message boards.

And you were worried about media convergence? Should U.S. and other family historians delving into their U.S. ancestors be worried about this concentration of genealogical resources in the hands of a growing monopoly, or is this a "good thing"? One thing's for sure, we're going to see more ads on A&E network stations for MyFamily.com.