DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- NOV 2014

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE --
FREE SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND WEBSITES

This page was last updated 2014-11-05
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DON'S FREEWARE CORNER  2014-11

THE INTERNET ARCHIVE -- FREE SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND WEBSITES

©2014 Donald R. Snow

These Freeware Corner notes are published in TAGGology, our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group (UVTAGG) monthly newsletter, and are posted on  http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html  where there may be updates, corrections, or additions.

INTERNET ARCHIVE OVERVIEW
The Internet Archive is an effort to take "snapshots" of the entire Internet at periodic intervals.  This is called "crawling the Internet".  The Internet Archive started in 1996 and, since then, has stored all the data, programs, information, audios, photos, videos, etc., that it finds on the days it crawls the web.  There is an article about the founder, Brewster Kahle, and other workers at  https://archive.org/about/bios.php .  FamilySearch had Brewster Kahle as a keynote speaker at one of the RootsTech conferences.  Because of storing these snapshots of the web you can find information and downloads that were there at one time, but have been removed for various reasons.  It also allows you to see a history of the website of an organization, for example the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group (formerly the Utah Valley PAF Users Group).  A good history and discussion of the Internet Archive from the New York Times is at  http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/the-internet-archive-trying-to-encompass-all-creation/?_r=0 .  If it's "out there" on the web, or was "out there" on the web, it's findable and is NOT private, so don't post anything you might want to keep private.  The Internet Archive website contains several parts including the WayBackMachine, Videos, Audio, and Texts.

Here are examples of information related to family history that is stored on the Internet Archive.  Everything is downloadable in various formats, e.g. texts can be downloaded in formats that include pdf, EPUB, and Kindle, and they are all OCR'd.  That means they are Optical Character Recognized so they are every-word searchable when you download them.

MARIE TAYLOR'S GENEALOGY LINKS WEBSITE
Marie Taylor worked at the FamilySearch Library and compiled a good collection of hundreds of FH websites and information.  It was online for several years, but is not now.  But go to the WayBackMachine on Internet Archive -- http://archive.org -- and type "genealogy-links.org" (without the quotes)  and you'll see all the dates a copy of her website was preserved.  Or click here to go there directly -- https://web.archive.org/web/20061001000000*/http://genealogy-links.org .  Click on any date and you will see what the website looked like then.  In about 2006 her website had the most information on it.  Many of those URL's are still valid and of those that aren't, you can copy and paste them into Google to see if there is a more current version.

LDS CHURCH FAMILY HISTORY VIDEOS
Enter lds.org in the WayBackMachine to see how many times the Church website was crawled; or go directly to it at   http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://lds.org .  Here's the link to a 4-minute video that the Church put out in 2008 on Member Involvement that included Diane and I when we were serving as Directors of the New York FHC in Manhattan -- http://web.archive.org/web/20110101190749/http://broadcast.lds.org/familysearch/Training/FH_2008__03_MemberInvolvement__8757_eng_.wmv .  They included us in the middle of a presentation by President Uchtdorf.  This video was released on DVD several years ago and was posted on the Internet, but isn't now.  All the old FH training videos that were ever posted are available this way.

JOURNALS AND MAGAZINES INCLUDING LDS ENSIGNS, IMPROVEMENT ERAS, AND CONFERENCE REPORTS
On the Internet Archive there are nearly 7 million texts stored.  Click on Texts and type in "Mormon" without the quotes and you get 1500 hits.  Use the Advanced Search and enter Creator Contains "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" and you get 4000 hits including all the Church magazines such as The Improvement Era, the Relief Society magazine, the Millennial Star, The Ensign, all the General Conference Reports, foreign language Church magazines, etc.  These are mostly linked there from other websites such as the Church History Library or the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.  The Internet Archive must have signed contracts with many libraries to show their postings and, I imagine, save a copy of them.  The General Conference Reports are from the first one printed in 1880 through 2009.  In searching you need to use the complete name of the Church unless Mormon or LDS was shown as the creator of it somewhere.

BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS
You can type in the name of a book and, if it's there, you can download a copy to read on your computer or portable device.  Since all texts are OCR'd, they are every-word searchable, so you might try typing in your ancestor's name and see if it occurs in some text somewhere.  Try typing in a place, for example, Provo, Utah, and you get many items, including City Directories of Provo.  There is also a collection of newspapers on the Internet Archive so there are obituaries and other articles.  I don't know how complete that collection is, but if the newspaper had an archive posted on the Internet somewhere, it should be stored on the Internet Archive.

VIDEOS, LIVE MUSIC, AND AUDIO
On the Home page are links and numbers of each type of item stored on the Internet Archive.  For example, there are over 2 million audio recordings.  Everything is grouped into categories so you can browse any category of interest.  There are over 30,000 podcats and over 10,000 audio books.  I have enjoyed browsing through and downloading some of the music items.  There are nearly 2 million movies in the Videos section, all categorized.  In the Feature Films section there are over 300 comedy films.

CLASSIC ARCADE GAMES
A recent article pointed out that they have just included 900 classic arcade games on the Internet Archive -- http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/internet-archive-offers-900-classic-arcade-games-for-browser-based-play/ .

THE UVPAFUG WEBSITE
By entering uvpafug.org in the WayBackMachine to see all the crawlings of our UVPAFUG and now, UVTAGG, website.  They crawled it 214 times between 2000-08-16 and 2014-08-18.  You can click on any date and see what it looked like then.  So all my old FH notes are stored there and can be viewed, if anyone is interested.  This is a source of all the announcements we made of weekday classes sponsored by UVPAFUG and lots of other information.  All the dates and notes for all our classes are there.  Too bad we didn't start our website sooner.  To get back to the Home page click on the Internet Archive logo in the upper left corner.

THE HYDE PARK FAMILY HISTORY CENTER WEBSITE (NOW THE LONDON FHC)
You may have to use Google or some other search engine to find the old URL.  For example, I couldn't remember the Hyde Park Family History Centre's old URL, so I Googled it and found it was www.hydeparkfhc.org .  Using that in the WayBackMachine it was fun to look at the website from a few years ago when Diane and I were serving missions there and I was the webmaster of it.  It's now changed to www.londonfhc.org .  Interestingly, the Mission President had asked me to write and I had posted on the earlier website notes of Helps for new Senior Missionaries coming to the England London Mission and we would send them the URL so they would know at little of what to expect.  Those notes were not linked anywhere on the Internet and you had to know the URL to get to them.  The result is that they are not available on the WayBackMachine since there was no way the bot could know about them.  When a new couple was called to the England London Mission, the Mission President would send me an email to contact them and tell them where to find the Helps.  Fortunately, I still have one of the original files because it is not saved on the Internet Archive.  There is a link to download a copy of the old PAF 5.2.18 there, though, and that still works on the WayBackMachine, so if anyone needs a copy of PAF it is still available.

Well, you can see the value of knowing and using this resource.  I'd be interested to know if you find anything this way that has really helped you in your family history.

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