Wednesday, January 31, 2018

First database of burial grounds in England and Wales to be created | Culture | The Guardian

First database of burial grounds in England and Wales to be created | Culture | The Guardian:
The first national database to record all the natural and manmade treasures of burial grounds, from the giant Victorian urban cemeteries to little country churchyards, is to be created with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you Read more The grant will be announced on Monday to help record and preserve rare plants and animals in danger of extinction across most of Britain, threatened by development and modern agriculture, but still flourishing among the gravestones in an estimated 20,000 burial grounds in England and Wales.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

New Zealand probate records on FamilySearch

Ambitious project to digitise hundreds of thousands of probate records complete after nine years | Stuff.co.nz:
In an unassuming room, tucked away in Archives New Zealand's Wellington office, volunteers from around the world have been methodically working their way through more than 4 million pieces of paper. For the past nine years, it's been a base for FamilySearch, an international genealogy organisation, working to archive shreds of New Zealand probate records, up till 1993, and make them available online for free. It's an ambitious project that has, this week, finally come to an end with volunteers Mike and Lois Woods of Page, Arizona, in charge of digitising the last of the records.