Courses

Transcription Tip: Line Numbering
Transcription Tip: Line Numbering

Transcription Tip: Line Numbering

As The National Institute for Genealogical Studies students begin the October rotation of courses, we continue to explore the foundational research practise of developing Transcribing Skills. See below for links to our courses designed to equip our students with this vital ability. All family history researchers, no matter what their level of expertise, should strive to acquire these core research skills.  When preparing to make a transcription, it is good practice to make a digital scan of the original document and then put the physical document away. This keeps your original safe with as little handling as possible. Once you have the copy, you can make a print out and mark on it as you wish. Viewing the digital image on your computer allows you to enlarge difficult-to-read sections. Today’s Transcription Tip is the use of Line Numbering. On your printed working copy (never the original!), number the lines on the page. This will keep you on track as you start transcribing. It is so easy to lose your place and skip to the line before or after the line you are working on, especially in a document with repetitive wording. If the lines are written unevenly, you may also want to draw lines between each numbered line to keep them separated to work on each individually.  Remember our Transcription Definition: A transcription is a true word-for-word rendering of a document with the original punctuation and spelling (i.e., an exact copy of the original, line by line, sentence by sentence, word by word, and letter by…

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Family History and Cultural Heritage

Family History and Cultural Heritage

As the calendar turns another page to reveal a new month, The National Institute for Genealogical Studies is preparing to open the next round of online courses for family historians and genealogists on the first Monday of the month. Various organizations have set October as Family History Month or Heritage Month for numerous Ethnic backgrounds. It reflects a growing interest in exploring our cultural roots and a desire to discover more about our Heritage.  Many of our courses are designed to teach research methodology and where to find relevant resources, but we also have courses that explore the historical and cultural aspects of the regions and peoples you may be researching. Our country-themed Certificate packages focus on all aspects of research in a specific country. A list of certificates can be found on our website.  When you choose one of the certificates, a list of the compulsory courses will appear directly below, with all other courses listed under Electives. Choosing a different certificate will display its compulsory courses. This is a good way to see which courses are specific to a particular certificate program and which courses are compulsory for more than one certificate.  TIP: Choose compulsory courses from a second certificate as electives and completed two certificates at once. Valuable Courses for Researching Your Cultural HeritageDemystifying Culture & Folklore Life of Our Ancestors Research: Grandmothers, Mothers & Daughters-Tracing Women Research: Social History Whether it is Autumn or Spring for you, ENJOY the month of October! Be grateful for all you have discovered on…

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Transcription Tuesday: Handwriting

Transcription Tuesday: Handwriting

One of the very first basic skills to develop as a Transcriber is learning to read various handwriting scripts. Start with modern day cursive handwriting. If you cannot master every day current handwriting styles, you will really struggle with older scripts. Practice reading whenever you can. Read handwriting from different people. Everyone develops their own style. Learn to write in cursive yourself. It is a skill that will help you as you are trying to decipher handwritten documents. Soon you will be tackling more difficult handwriting on older documents. These are a few quick examples. The top one is an address from 1891. The first word “Davenport” is not too difficult. Knowing it was an address, helps us to figure out that the second word is “Road.” For this word, the “a” is clear and the “d” will become familiar with its upward curl. The “Ro” is more difficult. The word directly below it is “Richard” and has the same “R” at the beginning. The other two names beside it are both “Wm” – the abbreviation for William. They can look different, depending on who is writing it. These names are from Ontario Birth Registrations in 1880.  The third example is a record from the Drouin Collection in 1791. The handwriting can be quite challenging, especially if the record is in French or Latin! Deciphering the text is compounded when having to translate from an unfamiliar language. If you are researching records in a language you do not understand, the Family Search…

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British Home Child Day

The National Institute for Genealogical Studies offers a number of courses covering immigration, emigration and migration. For some of our ancestors and extended family members, they seldom stayed in the same place for multiple generations. These major, life-changing decisions were made as a result of multiple factors, which varied dramatically depending on their unique situations. For some young migrants, these decisions were made for them. This is true for the Child Migration schemes from Britain. We have designed a course which specifically explores this topic. Research: Child Migration from Britain From the Course Description:This course provides an overview of the history of child migration from Britain and an introduction to the records that can be accessed to research them. Britain has a very long history of exporting children. Child migration from Britain occurred over a period of nearly 350 years through various private and government sponsored emigration schemes. This course is a good starting point for anyone who knows, or even suspects, that they have a British child migrant ancestor in their family tree. Children were sent to the American Colonies, the West Indies, Australia, Canada, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and New Zealand. The major recipients of children, based upon numbers, were Canada and Australia. The course is structured to address research in each of the receiving countries, in Britain and from the sending agencies themselves. The course concludes with a case study which uses a child who migrated to Canada during a time period when child migration to Canada was…

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Transcription Tuesday: Census Names

Whether you are just beginning your family history journey, you are a professional genealogist, or somewhere in between, learning the importance of Transcribing every document we discover in our research will greatly influence your success. Census records are one of those documents not to be skimmed through too quickly.   One of the first things we look for in a census record is the names. We want to find that family group listing everyone in the household. Sometimes this is easy. We search in our favourite database and there they are – just where we expected them to be. But what if they aren’t?  Maybe the census was taken before the birth of some of the children we expected to see. Some family members who were on the previous census are absent because they have died. Sadly, some children were born and died in the years between the last census and the next. Perhaps an older child has left the family home to seek employment opportunities, or they were married and have started their own family, either nearby in the same community or elsewhere.  A common reason for those elusive missing entries is not knowing how to find them. The biggest tip is to search for the most unique name in the family. Pricilla is going to be easier to find than Mary or Ann. Once found, check to see if her family members match your list of her siblings and parents. However, with unique names comes some creative spelling variations, so watch…

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