Author name: Ruth Blair

Mapping Dublin with a Twist

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The Storymap website says “Storymap presents a charming vision of Dublin through its stories and storytellers.” You have a map of the city of Dublin with colourful circles that look like the voice boxes from cartoons.

As you put your cursor over the top a brief tag shows up giving you an idea of what you may find. When you click on the circle you get a brief description of the story, the storyteller and a video link of the storyteller sharing their story.

There are modern stories mixed in with historic stories. There is one connected to a student prank at Trinity College in 1734 that ends up in murder. There is another that looks at the Huguenot Cemetery in Dublin.

There is even a link telling the story of Dan Donnelly’s arm. This has a family connection to me as one of my Kelly collateral lines, Captain William Kelly, was said to have been Donnelly’s manager at one point.

Ireland is a nation with a strong history of storytelling and this is a wonderful 21st century way of keeping the tradition alive.

©2012 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

The Veterans Website for Victoria Australia

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The state of Victoria in Australia has a website devoted to their war veterans called Victorian Veterans Virtual Museum.

The Victorian War Heritage Inventory is a database that “contains information and images of sites relating to Victoria’s war history.” They currently have over 2,000 records and it is an ongoing project.

Digital Stories – In Our Words is an ongoing project to collect stories of war veterans and civilians relating to wars in Korea, WW2 Europe, POW stories, Vietnam stories, Mediterranean and Middle East stories and Pacific and New Guinea. They present a small video presentation of the interview.

They are preparing to remember the centenary of the ANZAC in the First World War and have a page dedicated to the organization of events.

Victorian War Memorials looks at the different memorials to be found in Victoria and the States efforts to restore the memorials.

There is a section for teachers and students called Preserving Veterans Heritage.

The last section is called Victorian Unit Histories which is digitizing the histories of the 30 units that were raised in Victoria during the First World War. The searchable database is on the State Library of Victoria website.

If you have people from Victoria Australia who were involved in the military then this is a place to start your search for information.

©2012 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

Ruth’s Recommendations

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Here are my favourite blog posts from this past week.

The Findmypast.ie blog had a post about the Registry of Deeds in Ireland. Fiona tells us what the Registry of Deeds is and who you may find recorded in the documents.

Along similar lines Eneclann had a post called “The Quagmire of Administrative Districts.” They provide a bit of history, definitions and how they will help you with your Irish research.

The National Library of Ireland blog had a post called “Improving access to the Lawrence Collection.” This is a collection of photographs held by the National Library. You can view some of them on the National Library website or at Ancestry.com. The NLI blog post provides a history of the collection, how it is catalogued and what you may find in the collection.

The Irish Story blog had a post called “The Irish Story archive on the Easter Rising” where they provide links to different stories relating to the 1916 Easter Rising.

The British GENES blog had a post called “RootsIreland protests continue.” It sounds like RootsIreland better start listening to their customers as this story doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

The Scottish Military Research Group blog has a post called “Who was Captain Morley, late of the Light Brigade, U.S. Army and Ayrshire Yeomanry?” They are looking for information on the date of the poster found in the archives.

What were your favourite blog posts this past week?

Let me know in the comments below.

Other bloggers that write their own lists are:

Genea-Musings – Best of the Genea-Blogs

British & Irish Genealogy

©2012 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved