Ask an Archivist Day, June 9

Ever heard of Ask Archivists Day? On June 9, readers around the world can ask questions of worldwide archivists via Twitter.

Readers will need a Twitter account to participate, and then remember #AskArchivists, the hashtag for the event. Already have a Twitter account? Then follow @AskArchivists.

Click here for the list of participating archives in North America (some 36 and growing). This list - at the AskArchivists Blog - also offers all the Twitter addresses for those archives.

Here's how it will work: Tweet a question, including the #AskArchivists hashtag, on June 9. Point your question to any archivist participating or to one archive (by including their Twitter address, such as the US National Archives @USNatArchives. Follow @AskArchivists and look for the answer.

Read more about the event at the AskArchivists Blog (link above). [Note: Be aware that there is another Archivists blog (International Institute on Archives) mostly in French, with some posts in English.]

What questions do you want to ask?

Twitter revamp: Geneablogger impact?

It's the way of the world - improvements, changes, tweaks.

What will the widely-touted Twitter revamp mean for geneabloggers?

It sounds like it will be a richer experience, with more features. I've heard the term "iPod look with Facebook functionality."

In any case, no one wants to miss out on what might be the next best thing.

Not yet following Tracing the Tribe on Twitter? Click the birdie to join our flock of followers. Make sure you are tuned in and tuned up.


Tracing the Tribe
"Tweet, Tweet" from Tracing the Tribe!

AP Styebook: 'Web site' is now 'website'

Language changes are always interesting, and the AP Stylebook (print/online) has announced two changes to become the rule on May 15.

Finally, we can now write "website" instead of "Web site," according to the copy editor's bible:

Tracing the Tribe has been doing this for a long time. Now I don't need to feel so guilty about it.

However, Internet remains cap-I, Web remains cap-W, and e-mail still has a hyphen, according to recent AP Online questions.

Another change, also adopted long ago by Tracing the Tribe to prevent confusion among international readers - is to spell out the names of US states and also to write Canada instead of the province after major cities. This is the AP announcement:

AP CHANGING STYLE ON STATE ABBREVIATIONS

The Associated Press is changing its style on state abbreviations and Canadian cities to create a consistent and universal style for international and domestic use. Starting May 15, the proper style will be to spell out the names of U.S. states in all stories and datelines where a city is followed by a state name. SACRAMENTO, Calif., for example, will become SACRAMENTO, California. We also will drop the practice of including names of Canadian provinces in datelines. We will instead use Canada. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, for example, will become VANCOUVER, Canada.

Changes become the rule on May 15, for those who do not already follow the new style.

Now, if there were only one official spelling for Chanukah-Hannuka-Hanukah-Channuka, etc.

Maybe that will come next.

Your Tweets are History!

How Tweet it is - for eternity!

If you have ever sent a Tweet, your descendants will now have an even better picture of what you were like, your life, your interests.

For genealogists, this may be quite helpful to future generations who really want to know what their grandparent had for lunch.

Others do not feel quite the same.

Read on for the upside, and the down, of this recent development.

The Library of Congress, according to Matt Raymond's blog post, has acquired the entire Twitter archive. Every 140-character-or-less tweet that you have ever sent since Twitter launched in March 2006 - in anger, in humor, in simple status updates - will now be available at the LOC.

How many are there? Twitter gets more than 50 million - Twitter says some 55 million - tweets a day, totalling billions of the darned little things.

It was announced to the Twitter community via the LOC's own feed (@librarycongress); the LOC's feed has more than 50,000 followers:

Twitter posted the information on its own blog.

Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive -- ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow. (11:36 AM Apr 14th via web Retweeted by 100+ people)

That blog post also mentioned Google Replay.

"... It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history. It should be noted that there are some specifics regarding this arrangement. Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation. ..."

"... Today we are also excited to share the news that Google has created a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events. They call it Google Replay because it lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time. ..."

Read about Google Replay here. Although it currently only goes back a few months, it will include the very first Tweets ever created.

Raymond indicated that soon there will be a LOC press release with even more details, focusing on scholarly and research implications.

Other facts gleaned from these announcements: the LOC holds 167 terabytes of web-bsed information. That includes legal blos, national office candidates websites and Congressional members' websites.

For positive and negative reactions to this development, see the LOC post comments at the link above. Remarks included: Awesome, who owns the copyright (Twitter or the re-Tweeter)?, what right does the government have to a private individual's Tweets, is the 167 terabytes backed up?, tax dollars at work, waste of time and money, banal and narcissistic, no warning?, awful, access policies?, incredibly valuable resource, be careful what you Tweet online, what happens if a public Twitter account goes private?, can't put the genie back in the bottle, who owns non-US-generated Tweets? and more.

As should always be the case, be careful as to what private information you post on any social media networking site, such as Facebook, Twitter or others.

Technology: Facebook revamp

Are you Twitter-tired, Facebook-fatigued? Tracing the Tribe is so busy that we just don't log in as much as think we should. Perhaps this information will help.

The New York Times today writes about how Facebook is revamping itself to look more like Twitter.

Unlike Facebook, where friends mutually agree to let one another into their online lives, Twitter lets people share updates and links with anyone who cares to read them.

That has turned Twitter into a tool for people to peer into the collective mind and see what people are talking about in real time. It is also a tool for businesses to reach customers and monitor what their customers are saying about them.

Facebook seems to be very interested in those features. Since last fall, when Facebook tried and failed to acquire Twitter, it has been slowly introducing features that mimic Twitter.

Last week, Facebook added two new, Twitter-like features. Users can now “tag” friends or companies that they mention in status updates, and they can use a pared-down version of the site called Facebook Lite that resembles Twitter’s stream of status updates.

While a Facebook spokesperson says they are making changes to reflect the rapid evolution of how people share online information, others think it is Twitter envy and that Facebook is trying to copy Twitter features.

To tag another Facebook member in a status update, users type the @ symbol before the friend’s name. The @ symbol is a convention that Twitter users started. In response, Twitter added a section on its site where people can see any tweets that mention them. The mentions are hyperlinked so others could click on them to see the subject’s profile page.

Facebook calls this “a common Internet mechanism,” and expects Facebookers to use it more for storytelling.

Although we've always tagged friends in Facebook photos, this capability has not been available for status updates. Now, however, tagged people will receive an e-mail, along with a profile page update and their names will be hyperlinked to their pages.

Facebook says it enables users to “to talk about their real-world connections” and to interact more. Additionally, it will help the tagged (people and businesses) to see what others are saying about them.

What does the future hold? According to the article, Twitter will soon be introducing features to help businesses interact with customers. Facebook already offers special commercial pages and the option of buying ads.

According to a restaurant manager quoted in the story, he's happy and says that when the place is mentioned, friends can go to the company's profile page with a single click and the company will get an email alert. He also believes the new feature will bring people to the site because of the tagged alerts.

Facebook Lite is the other new feature. Its target market is Internet users with slow connection speeds or new users who want to learn about core features. The article calls it "essentially a stream of updates, like Twitter." Photos and comments are included (not on Twitter) but gets rid of a lot of current Facebook homepage static.

Previous changes - I think I really need to log in more often! - have included updating homepages to show real time updates from all friends, allowing brands and "names" to send status updates directly to Twitter, and allowing Twitter users to send tweets to Facebook.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Jamboree: A great story

The Jamboree's "local paper" - The Burbank Leader - ran a nice story on the event, with a spotlight on how researchers are climbing their family trees with online help from blogs, Twitter and Facebook. It also revealed how ancestry hunting has become high-tech.

New technology, like blogs, are one of the new ways people are finding their relatives, said the event's co-chair Paula Hinkel, who was quoted in the story.

“There are lots of different blogs,” she said. “Some let you know about new products and services for genealogy research. Some are blogs about particular family research. For example, one of our bloggers put up all his family on a blog — text and pictures of his family history.”

Some blogs provide a specific type of family research, like Tracing the Tribe, which is just for those of Jewish faith, and then some bloggers create podcasts, she said.

“It all fits in this new world of communication,” she said. “We have a lot of Twitter people at the jamborees. It’s just another way to communicate with each other and find potential cousins. It’s all about finding family members who are trying to trace families.”

Hey, Paula - thanks for the pointer to Tracing the Tribe!

The article also covered the first day's free workshops, including the Kids Family History Camp, which attracted more than 85 young people, ages 8-16. Paula also said that many society members started out as Boy and Girl Scouts doing it for merit badges. She still has her badge.

Paula and I share many ideas on how to bring family history research to our young people, who will be taking over from us in the future. It is a great achievement to get a young interested in this search.

“One of the things that society members worry about is who is going to take over our research when we are gone,” she said. “When we get a kid interested, it’s a win for us.”

It is an excellent article touching on many important points.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Tweeting in style - AP style

Journalists know that the annual Associated Press Stylebook is the grammar, punctuation and style Bible for writers, although some publications still prefer their own localized tweaks of certain elements.

There's also a Stylebook Online (see below for pricing) feature offering a package of audio clips by AP's Broadcast News Center in Washington, D.C., for pronunciation of more than 200 names and places in the news. Podcasters might find this useful.

Bloggers can follow AP Stylebook Twitters here - twitter.com/apstylebook - where AP posts updates and answers questions. There were 6,000 followers when the press release was published on June 11.

The 2009 Stylebook has some 60 new or updated terms, according to the press release:

Twitter, the social networking tool that has turned millions of people around the world into instant micro-bloggers, has made it into the 2009 edition of The Associated Press Stylebook, along with complicated business terms such as credit default swaps and derivatives that have gained more exposure amid the global recession.

The new edition of the Stylebook adds a "Quick Reference Guide" to make it easier for users to answer the most common questions on topics such as abbreviations and acronyms; homicide, murder and manslaughter; and polls and surveys.

Twitter, the Middle Eastern eggplant dish baba ghanoush and texting as a verb are among more than 60 new or updated entries in the new AP Stylebook, which includes more business, food, medical and Arabic terms and expanded information on major U.S. and international companies.

The range of new business terms also includes collateralized debt obligations, Libor, recession-proof, reverse auction, securitization and solvency.

Twitter and Tweet are defined:

The new entry for Twitter notes that the social networking Web site limits messages to short Tweets. The verb forms are to Twitter or to Tweet.

The paperback 2009 Stylebook is $11.75 for member news organizations and college bookstores; $18.95 retail. Stylebook Online prices are $25 annually;$15 for member organizations. Prices are the same as last year, due to the current economy. Order the book or the online service here.

For more AP information, click here.

Using Twitter for genealogy

Diane Haddad at Family Tree Magazine's Genealogy Insider blog posted "10 Ways to Use Twitter for Genealogy."

Twitter isn’t just a place to exchange meaningless thoughts in 140 characters or less. Many people find the social networking site a useful place to meet and learn from those who share the same interests. The genealogy community has really embraced it.

According to Diane, family historians can use Twitter in these ways (read the complete post for more information on each):

1. Find other genealogists.

2. Learn about research resources.

3. Get opinions on genealogy Web sites and products.

4. Ask questions.

5. Be heard by people who work at genealogy companies.

6. Get links to how-to advice.

7. Hear about industry news.

8. See how funny genealogists can be.

9. Find events.

10. Learn about relevant sales and giveaways.

Sign up for an account at Twitter.com, then you can follow Family Tree Magazine at @FamilyTreeMag, Tracing the Tribe at @tracingthetribe, or any of your other favorite geneabloggers.

Twitter & Facebook: Getting fast answers

Randy Seaver's weekly Best of the Genea-Blogs feature at Genea-Musings is a great idea. While most genea-bloggers read hundreds of blog postings plus distill huge numbers of news resources, Randy's weekly listing helps by providing some really interesting posts.

Tracing the Tribe sometimes finds its way onto Randy's list, which is always very nice. (Thank you, Randy!).

In his latest listing, Randy pointed to Dan Lawyer's Taking Genealogy to the Common Person where Dan wrote about using Twitter and Facebook to get fast answers to a genealogy question.

This past Wednesday I was thinking about how much I’d like to find the death certificate for a particular ancestor when the thought struck me, “I’m sure someone out there knows the answer to this question.” The question for me was, how do I find the death certificate for Warren Dodge, who died about 1888 in Barton County, Kansas?

Well I decided to try a little experiment. What if I could throw that question out to a large audience. Would they respond? Would they answer my question? Here’s what happened.

Dan posed his question on Twitter, which automatically also put the tweet on Facebook. This was on May 6, at 11:47am.

The first response came in six minutes (T=Twitter, FB=Facebook) at 11:53amT, 12:04pmT, 12:14pmFB, 12:31pmFB, 12:51pmFB and 4:14pmT.

Wrote Dan,

All responses were accurate and helpful. As a result of the information provided I went to the Barton County genealogical society website and discovered that the county did not have death certificates that early and the state (as my online experts indicated) did not keep death certificates until 1911. I did not waste any more time looking for a death certificate but rather changed my focus to probate records. I called the Barton County records office and asked if they had a probate record for Warren Dodge who died there in the 1880s. Without even putting me on hold, she looked it up confirmed they had it and is sending me a copy of the whole file. Wow! That was a terrific experience.

A great experiment, Dan - thanks for sharing it. Look at Dan's post to see how he worked in the answers from the two sites.

And thank you, Randy, for this special pointer.

Social Networking: New ways to connect

And we thought we only had to contend with networked blogs, applications already available and Twitter-related apps.

We'll have to face many more applications after Facebook announced they were opening up to developers so they could create more programs to tap into it.

The New York Times' Brad Stone wrote an interesting article on this announcement.

TO understand the counterintuitive business wisdom infecting Silicon Valley these days, consider an imaginary corner supermarket, Joe’s Foods.

After establishing his store as a vibrant enterprise and a hive of neighborhood activity, Joe makes a strange decision: he props open the front door and invites everyone to come in, take the merchandise free of charge, and then give it away themselves.

All the extra foot traffic, Joe says, will make Joe’s Foods the social center of the community.

That is roughly comparable to what Facebook, the popular social network, did this past week. In a loud and proud public announcement, it said it didn’t care whether its members visited Facebook.com at all.

Facebook will provide tools to let other companies create programs tailed to a wide range of mobile devices like iPhone, and make it possible to share more information in more ways.

This is similar to what Twitter did - allowing third parties to create programs to help users. Numerous companies are creating new ways to access social networks.

French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur's start-up faced high costs, so he fired half the staff and developed Seesmic Desktop, which allows Facebook and Twitter users to update without logging into either one. It also allows people to create groups of more than 1,000 followers or in a certain locality. It has been downloaded about 1.5 million times.

Ian Didsworth's TweetDeck is used by more than a million people, blending Facebook and Twitter streams. Amit Kumar's SocialScope is for BlackBerry users to check multiple social networks. Glam Media's network has about 600 lifestyle sites and blogs for women, and is working on Tinker, which allows people to receive moderated or edited update streams for specific events. The company believes it offers advertising attraction.

It seems there will be many more announcements. Things are free for now, but one never knows about the future.

Stone speculates that the new companies might even smother Facebook and Twitter by attracting users and advertisers away from those sites.

There's much more. Read the complete article at the link above.

Twitter cooking: Very brief recipes

A former editor used to tell me that not everything is genealogy. She was right. Some of it is food-related! So here goes!

As we learn essential Twitter skills, here's a challenge that some of us might appreciate.

Ever tried to write a recipe in 140 characters a la Twitter?

Maureen Evans, 27, does it all the time from Northern Island at twitter.com/cookbook: “Tiny recipes condensed by @Maureen. Serves 3-4. Delicious ideas from all over the world.”

Read the New York Time's story on Maureen here.

What an interesting challenge. This one is for yummy thick chocolate in a cup - ah! to be in Barcelona enjoying this! - seems easy.

Chocolate a la Taza: Spanish. Melt 8oz/227g drkchoc/2c h2o; +2c milk/ch2o+3T cornstrch&sug. Stir@med~7m (until yogurt-thick); +.5t vanilla.

Having trouble decoding the instructions? Try this:

Melt 8oz/227 grams dark chocolate in 2 cups water.
Add 2 cups milk, 1 cup water plus 3 Tbs cornstarch and sugar.
Stir at medium heat for 7 minutes until as thick as yoghurt.
Add 1/2 tsp vanilla.

See how easy it is?

Read the related link: Take the Twitter Recipe Challenge, by Pete Wells.

First, what if we challenged readers to take a long, involved recipe — for instance, this one — and condense it as much as possible? What would the shortest intelligible version look like? If you’re on Twitter and share my passion for verbal compression, give it a whirl [SHOULDN'T THAT BE TWIRL?], and include the characters #nytrc. This stands for New York Times recipe challenge, and putting a hash mark before it lets you search Twitter to see if anyone is playing along. I can’t imagine bringing this recipe in under 140 characters, so we’re allowing “serial tweets” — as many 140-character bursts as it takes. Use the hash tag for each installment.

The link is to a six-step recipe for Stuffed Artichokes with Lemon Zest, Rosemary and Garlic. Sounds yummy, but 140 characters?

Anyone up for the challenge of writing a 140 character twitter for cholent? Or brisket?

You can add your own twitter-style recipe to the comment section for Wells' story.

Or post it here as a comment.

Twitter: Learning yet another language!

Twitter is all the rage these days. A bunch of geneabloggers are now listed in the #Genealogy category. I've been reading email alerts from people who are following me on Twitter and decided to check it out.

I don't exactly understand it yet - being a complete non-techie. However, Tracing the Tribe is now signed on, so others with more understanding can follow the blog.

While looking around for a simple Twitter badge (see my "follow me" badge at right), I found this neat site with a range of colorful yet simple graphics. If you'd like to see the others and generate your own, click TwitterMySite.com.

The next thing I need to do is learn how to get new posts added onto Tracing the Tribe's Twitter page.

Look for an upcoming post (being prepared right now) providing articles and resources to help newbies understand this new media. If I can understand these sources, hints and tips, anyone can!

Tracing the Tribe readers are invited to chime in with their own Twitter experiences and tips.