Anglo-Celtic Connections

The Ottawa Public Library has posted lists of the most borrowed books in various categories. For Adult Books (English)

1. 1. Spare by Prince Harry
   2. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
   3. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
   4. Happy Place by Emily Henry
   5. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
   6. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
   7. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
   8. Ducks by Kate Beaton
   9. Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
   10. Everyone Here is Lying by Shari LaPena

See comments and the other lists at https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/blogs/ottawa-public-library%E2%80%99s-most-popular-books-2023

The items bolded are recommendation from the Halifax Public Library staff.

Here’s the list from the Vancouver Public Library

1. 1. 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest
   2. Spare by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex
   3. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
   4. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
   5. The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté
   6. A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny
   7. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
   8. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
   9. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
   10. It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover

Item in red are also on the Ottawa list, one is on the Halifax staff list, none are on all three.

Want another opinion? Here are lists of the “best” books of 2023 from the New York Times and the Telegraph.

Which book would you put at number one? Are there any outstanding books from 2023 missed out?

Joe Lycett’s Parking Ticket Story

The FreeBMD Database was updated on Friday, 22 December 2023, to contain 289,764,153 unique entries, up from 289,525,246 on 22 November.

Years with more than 10,000 new entries are for births, 1992-1994; for marriages, 1991 – 1993; and for deaths, 1993 – 1995.

Looking back over the year. the bulk of the updates were for 1991 to 1994, with other additions for deaths for 1987 and 1990.

Think innovation in family history and you think MyHeritage.  Only there can you animate photos, have a life story narrated with DeepStory, and see an ancestor as they might have been with AI Time Machine™.

Just released in BETA, MyHeritage introduces AI Record Finder™ and Ai Biography™

AI Record Finder™ searches historical records using a chat interface. It starts by asking for basic information “Please provide the first and last name of the person you are looking for, along with any additional details to help locate relevant genealogy records.” It will show sources for records that might be relevant, such as MyHeritage Family Tree, FamilySearch Family Tree, England & Wales, Birth Index, 1837-2005, or Famous People Throughout History. It then requests further input “To narrow down these results and provide more precise information, please specify any additional details such as the names of his spouse or children, specific dates of events, or locations where he may have lived or worked.” It keeps asking for further information.

You will then be ready to try AI Biography™ which uses data from MyHeritage and content generated by OpenAI. There are several parts to the biography report starting with a listing of birth, death, marriage, parents, siblings, spouse, children. That’s followed by a biography text, historical context, last name origins, consistency issues and citations.

I had the opportunity to test it using a person I’ve researched in depth, Ezekiel Stone Wiggins.  The text reads well, just don’t expect the exact truth. I found OpenAI hallucinations —  added were a government appointment, a distortion of his interests and a child. It even gave her a name — Lillian Maude

Such flights of fancy are common with OpenAI. Get around it by conversing — asking for the evidence, “what is the evidence that he had a child?”. The reply “The records do not explicitly mention children for Ezekiel Stone Wiggins.” It then advises on how to search for this (mythical) child.

It’s worth experimenting. While the cup is more than half full the contents are not to be swallowed whole.

Read more on this MyHeritage blog post and give it a try.

This year YouTube hasn’t produced any updated version of I’ve Got a Little List … well … not one I can understand!  Instead here’s a pre-war version with a few variations on the familiar lyrics.

I’ve Got A Little List – Larry Clinton and His Orchestra 1939

Thanks to gail benjafield for the suggestion.

 

Thanks to Margaret MacDermaid for the suggestion.

War diary from 1939 with posters and Christmas cards

Miscellaneous items I found of interest during the week.

Dress code: How a Winnipeg codebreaker cracked one of the ‘world’s top unsolved messages’

Free Irish Genealogy eBooks

Ireland’s Christmas traditions

How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food

How the Christmas royal broadcast evolved – from the first reluctant monarch to an enduring queen and a new king

Victorian Britain had its own anti-vxxers – and they helped bring down a government

BOOKS THAT SOUND INTERESTING

The Fraud by Zadie Smith review: a dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England (available at OPL)
Weird Medieval Guys: this deeply researched book takes you on a romp through the Middle Ages (not available at OPL)

Thanks to this week’s contributors: Ann Burns, Anonymous, Barbara May Di Mambro, Brenda Turner, Christine Jackson, Denis Bourque, gail benjafield, Helen Gillespie, Margaret MacDermaid, Nick Mcdonald, Sunday Thompson, Teresa, Unknown. Wayne Shepheard

 

In the FMP last record update of 2023, are monumental inscriptions from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire workhouse guardians’ minutes, and 18th-century school records from the UK’s first free school for deaf children. That’s over 18,500 English records in total.

Yorkshire Monumental Inscriptions
Find 8,273 transcriptions to the over 318,000 records in the existing collection of monumental inscriptions from Yorkshire;  from 1807 up to 2022.

Lincolnshire, Workhouse Guardians’ Minutes
Poor Law relief applications as recorded by the guardians who administered each case are in this 9,354 item collection from Lincolnshire between 1837 and 1901.

Though the information included varies slightly, each record typically contains a full name, residence, date of birth, status, and event date. There are transcriptions and images available, so consult the original record to glean all the details. Within the documents attached to each record, you may be able to see the rates that were paid, as well as more biographical details and notes about the case.

London, Asylum for the Deaf & Dumb Pupils 1792-1859
New this week are 899 records from the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb – the first free public institution in England to offer education to deaf children from poor families. These transcriptions span almost 70 years, from 1792 to 1859.

The information recorded changed significantly over time. For some pupils, only very brief detail is included.