Press Release on PERSI and periodicals digitization

Five days ago I blogged about a newspaper article discussing a project that would revolutionize our access to the Periodical Source Index (PERSI) and the articles that the index covered. Today I received the official press release about the project. I am excited about this. For many years I have promoted PERSI and all those wonderful periodicals from the past that hold valuable family history information, queries, indexes, bible abstracts, cemetery abstracts, and more. I will definitely be renewing my findmypast subscription! The Allen County Public Library is one of the local hosts for next month's Federation of Genealogical Societies genealogy conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Findmypast.com is a Platinum sponsor of that conference of which I am one of the co-chairs.

         

        

LOS ANGELES (July 19, 2013) – Findmypast.com, an international leader in online family history, today announced a partnership with the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) Genealogy Center to revolutionize the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), the world’s largest and most widely used subject index for genealogy and local history literature. As part of the partnership, findmypast.com is enhancing PERSI, most notably by linking thousands of individual genealogical periodicals and resources to the index, allowing the original content to be accessed and connected digitally for the first time in the history of PERSI.

During the past 30 years, the ACPL Genealogy Center has created more than 2.5 million searchable records in PERSI, indexing every article from more than 8,000 different periodicals, including magazines, newsletters and journals, according to location, topic, surname, ethnicity and methodology. In the coming months, findmypast.com will launch the most complete version of PERSI online. Once launched, findmypast.com will work in tandem with the Genealogy Center to provide frequent updates to the collection as new entries are added.

PERSI has become an essential tool in helping genealogists and family historians locate valuable information, and this new partnership with findmypast.com will transform PERSI into an even more powerful resource.  Findmypast.com subscribers will be able to search and view digitized images of the articles, allowing unprecedented access to the information contained in these periodicals.

“We are proud to partner with The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library to continue indexing and offering PERSI – an essential tool for genealogical research,” said D. Joshua Taylor, lead genealogist for findmypast.com. “This is an ideal partnership given findmypast.com’s expertise in digitizing records and Allen County Public Library’s continual dedication to adding new records to the index. We look forward to working together to once again revolutionize the way genealogy and local history literature is accessed.”

“Partnering with findmypast.com represents an exciting opportunity to grow PERSI into an extremely relevant twenty-first century discovery tool for genealogists worldwide,” said Curt Witcher, ACPL Genealogy Center manager. “Having the ability to provide much more frequent updates and link index entries to serial issues is a real game-changer, not only for genealogists and local historians but also for the librarians and archivists who serve them.”

The future of online search through this partnership aligns with findmypast.com’s Society Data Initiative, a joint project between the Federation of Genealogical Societies and findmypast.com to preserve, digitize and provide access to the rich resources created by family history, genealogical and historical societies over many decades.

PERSI, and each periodical to be linked over time, will be available across all international findmypast sites, to personal subscribers and library users.

Findmypast.com’s expertise at digitizing historical records and uniting communities provides the tools to help people connect with their past.

To learn more about findmypast.com or to get started on your own family history:

Findmypast.com’s expertise at digitizing historical records and uniting communities provides the tools to help people connect with their past.

To learn more about findmypast.com or to get started on your own family history:

·         Like findmypast on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/findmypastus

·         Follow findmypast on Twitter at https://twitter.com/findmypastus

·         Follow findmypast on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/findmypastus/

 

Genealogy articles indexed in PERSI to be digitized?

I love visiting the Genealogy Center at the main Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My first visit there was in the early 1980s and I have been back there many times. One of the joys of researching there is accessing all those current, older and out-of-print genealogy and historical periodicals that are indexed in the Periodical Source Index (PERSI). This is not an every name index to all articles but a subject index.

For about a year I have known something was afoot about the future of this wonderful resource and now we know something about that. Today's Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne) has a story about the history of PERSI and that all those periodicals may be coming to a computer screen near us! Even better, the plan is to link the index to the actual article.

As the online article states, the index covers about 12,000 periodicals, some of which are no longer published. All hold genealogy gold. "The library’s collection is so big, the index now contains about 2.5 million citations, and ACPL adds about 100,000 more a year."

U.K. based brightsolid is behind this great project.

Read the full story here.

In the meantime, why not do some personal searching in all those periodicals while you attend this year's fantastic genealogy conference in Fort Wayne. I am co-chair of this Federation of Genealogical Societies August 21-24 event. Learn more and register at https://www.fgsconference.org/

PERSI and Fort Wayne

Have you used PERSI? That is the Periodical Source Index compiled by the staff at the Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center. It is a subject index (almost 2 million entries) to more than 10,000 genealogical and historical periodicals published in English and French.

While in Fort Wayne, Indiana in two weeks I plan to spend considerable time in the periodicals section of the Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center.

All. ALL. Every one. All issues. Yep, every item indexed in PERSI is from a periodical housed at the ACPL. When I was there in April, I walked past bookshelf after bookshelf of these periodicals. I didn’t have time to concentrate on the actual articles then – but I do when I return there in two weeks. I am bringing along my digital camera to capture images that I need to save.