Sunday, August 28, 2011

Using ArkivDigital and ADOnLine2

I tried this out today, using the free access link to Swedish Records that I blogged before.
I downloaded adonline2_installer-1.4.2-r610.exe and installed it.
This produces only the Swedish version.

The was no problem in installing it, but running it caused my Webroot firewall to crash.

I found the Swedish version difficult to understand.
I then downloaded the  arkivdigital-installer-1.4.3-beta-r654.exe version and it installed fine, but on trying it, it too crashed the firewall.

I restarted my PC and was then able to use it (and the firewall didn't crash).
This has English commands and record type names but the record names have not been translated. There are no help topics in this version.

The images are great, but what I hadn't realised is that the only information in the database is the type of record, and its name.

I looked at Riksarkivets_ämnessamlingar, which I think means National Archives Topic Collections, and Skaraborgs_regemente (Skaraborg Regiment).
So you can search by type of record and by place, but not by personal name.

The images are very good and clear, but you have to read them and interpret them, and that's difficult, probably impossible, without a reasonable knowledge of Swedish and without a knowledge of old Swedish handwriting.

However, if you can manage that, and you know which records are likely to be useful, then this is a great resource.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know Swedish, but found a website that has been of great help to me when using records from ArchivDigital.

It is called "SweGGate" and is currently hosted on Rootsweb. There are many, many (colorful!) pages in sections covering dictionaries (for categories such as medical, work, general, geography, legal, and abbreviations), examples of records, information on regions, and so much more it is impossible to cover in a comment.

Some of the words in the dictionaries you would probably not find elsewhere - they are from the time period of the old records, not modern.

Visit it at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swewgw/sweggate.htm

Using the information there, plus a Swedish-English dictionary (and Google Translate), I have made a lot of progress.

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