Friday, November 13, 2015

Ancestors in Sweden ? Free Access to ArkivDigital's Swedish Records - 14 to 15 November

This weekend, 14 to 15 November, ArkivDigital are opening their digital online archive to give all new users free access to ArkivDigital with over 57 million images or approximately 114 million photographed historical pages.

The free offer is to celebrate National Archives Day which will be celebrated at many places throughout the Nordic countries.
Many archives, libraries and genealogical societies will be open to the public offering lectures, exhibitions and archive tours.

This is a unique opportunity to explore Swedish historical sources, everything from church books and estate inventories to military records and court records are found in ArkivDigital. There are also prison records, tax registers, documents from the Second World War and much more.

For those who are entirely new users or for those who haven’t used ArkivDigital in a while, this is a unique opportunity to explore or maybe rediscover the historical treasures which are available in their continually growing database.

Search ArkivDigital.

There's also a reduced subscription of 195 Swedish Krona (about £15) for the next month that you can take advantage of until 19 Nov.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

How to use Berlin Directories before 1925

There's a very interesting article on the Worldwide Genealogy blog about Berlin directories.

I've failed to find people in the directory but now I realise I wasn't looking in the right place !

You need to read the whole article about Berlin directories but here's an excerpt:

"the Berlin directory sorts by surname and then occupation and then first name .... (mostly abbreviated),.... then by men, women ....
and Fräuleins."

What's worse is that the directories like almost everything I've seen before World War II is printed in the Gothic German font making it difficult for foreigners to read and also a very small type face.